Word: nebraska
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...then, to explain Bob Kerrey? The junior Senator from Nebraska, whose personal valor was certified for all time when he lost a leg in Vietnam, is equally fearless wading through political minefields. Opposing a Senate resolution supporting George Bush's gulf policy, adopted 97-3, Kerrey declared, "No American should die in the Persian Gulf in order to hold down the price of gasoline." Impatient with the inadequacy and dithering of the budget debate, he predicted, "We will pass a budget that will reduce the deficit by $34 billion, the economy will continue to weaken, and the deficit will grow...
Beyond the borders of his native Nebraska and outside the domains of the political cognoscenti, Kerrey, 47, is known, if at all, as actress Debra Winger's sometime boyfriend. But since taking his seat in the U.S. Senate 21 months ago, J. Robert Kerrey has emerged as an intriguing figure in a capital where blunt talk is a scarce commodity that attracts lots of attention. Explains Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman, who has worked for Kerrey: "He isn't caught up in status quo thinking. I don't know if I have seen anyone quite so fearless." There is of course...
Despite the family sport of wrestling with issues, Kerrey gave no early indication that within him beat the heart of a skillful, if unorthodox, politician. High school classmates remember him as bright, fun loving, outspoken and very competitive, but he was not a B.M.O.C. At the University of Nebraska he held a few minor student and fraternity offices, dated often and pursued a degree in pharmacy, which he was awarded in 1966. By then, U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam was escalating and Kerrey enlisted. "I was pretty gung-ho," he says now. In March...
...send Kerrey to the state house. Kerrey inherited a state debt of $24 million, which he attacked with budget cuts, a temporary new tax and a broadened tax base, "none of which was popular," he notes. After dating Winger several times (they met when she was on location in Nebraska for a movie), he moved her into the Governor's mansion and somehow his approval rating in staid Nebraska remained...
...Washington, Kerrey is usually in his office by 6 a.m. He jogs six miles (on his good leg and his prosthesis) almost daily, has run marathons, reads voluminously. "He always does his homework," says Leahy. On weekends, he usually returns to Nebraska, where he divides his time between constituents and his children, Ben, 15, and Lindsey, 13, who live in Omaha with their mother. On longer recesses, he is likely to travel abroad (early this year to Vietnam and Cambodia, in part for sentimental reasons, chiefly to shore up his foreign policy credentials). He is critical of the Bush Administration...