6:02 p.m. | Updated Former Senator Bob Kerrey announced on Tuesday that he would not be returning to Nebraska to run for his old United States Senate seat.
Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, was considering the comeback bid after a decade out of office and posed the most tangible threat to Republicans in Nebraska trying to win the seat of Senator Ben Nelson, who is retiring, and potentially upset Democrats’ majority in the Senate.
After Mr. Nelson announced in December that he would not run for re-election, Mr. Kerrey, a former Nebraska governor and presidential candidate, expressed interest in the position, but backed away just weeks later.
“It’s one of those decisions where doing the right thing feels worse than doing the wrong thing would have,” Mr. Kerrey said Tuesday, adding that he made his decision Monday night because didn’t want to spend time away from his wife and 10-year-old son, who live with him in New York. “I’m convinced it was the right thing, but I don’t feel terribly good about it.”
Mr. Kerrey served in the Senate from 1989 to 2001. After he chose not to run for re-election, he moved East to run the New School in Manhattan.
Republicans in Nebraska had already been hitting Mr. Kerrey with pre-emptive attack ads that painted him as an out-of-towner “bringing his liberal act to Nebraska.”
“After ditching our state over a decade ago, Kerrey is back, pushing an East Coast liberal agenda,” said one advertisement by a conservative advocacy group.
Mr. Kerrey, whose name has not appeared on a Nebraska ballot since 1994, would most likely have been considered an underdog in a state dominated by Republican politics.
Michael Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln, said few Democrats are likely to do well against the strong showing of Republican candidates in Nebraska this year, which saves the Republican Party money it can spend on other contests.
“The Democrats that are known enough to mount a credible challenge are smart enough to know they won’t win,” he said.
But Mr. Kerrey, who said he didn’t know if he will consider running for office again in the future, has a more optimistic outlook.
“Even in the campaign you accomplish something,” he said. “There’s a great debate going on in this country about our economics, our society, our culture. I could have, I think, contributed positively to that, even if I had lost.”