Less than a week after being revealed as the likely next president of the University of Florida (UF), the Republican senator Ben Sasse was met with protests when he appeared on campus in Gainesville on Monday.
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Ben Sasse has got to go,” protesters chanted, seeking to draw attention to the Nebraskan’s views on LGBTQ+ rights.
According to the UF student newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, after Sasse left a student forum early, leaders of a crowd of around 300 called the senator “homophobic and racist in between yelling from the audience”. One protester called out “Get the fuck”, the crowd responding, “Out of our swamp!”
Online footage showed the noisy scenes.
A former president of Midland University in Nebraska, Sasse was elected in 2014. He emerged as a relatively independent voice in Republican ranks, criticising Donald Trump though usually voting with him. He voted to convict in Trump’s second impeachment trial.
But in 2015, when the supreme court made same-sex marriage legal, Sasse called the ruling “a disappointment to Nebraskans who understand that marriage brings a wife and husband together so their children can have a mom and dad”.
Under the heading “Nebraska values”, Sasse’s website says: “The family is the most basic unit of civilization, and the heart of our society. Senator Sasse supports the right to life, the sanctity of marriage, and the right of families to choose how to educate their children.”
In Gainesville on Monday, Sasse first spoke to faculty members. The first question was about his opposition to same-sex marriage.
He said: “I believe in the universal dignity and the immeasurable worth of every single person, all the tens of millions of Floridians, all … 56,000 students here, all 30,000 faculty and staff … we need to create a community of inclusion and respect and trust where people feel heard and appreciated and cherished.”
Regarding Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 ruling which made same-sex marriage legal, Sasse said: “There are definitely federal policy issues where I’ve had disputes before about which decisions courts should be making versus legislatures, but Obergefell, for example, is the law of the land and nothing about Obergefell is changing in the United States.”
However, when the right to abortion was overturned earlier this year, Clarence Thomas, one of six conservatives on the supreme court, suggested same-sex marriage could also be reconsidered.
Democrats responded by seeking to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. Sasse told reporters that Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, was “trying to divide America with culture wars”.
“I think it’s just the same old bullshit,” he said. “She’s not an adult.”
In Gainesville, as the young adults of UF protested, a staff forum featuring Sasse was moved online.
The Sasse pick prompted the Republican governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts, to deny that he intended to appoint himself as Sasse’s Senate replacement. It also fed claims of growing Republican political interference in university affairs.
There are no other named candidates for president. On Monday, the campus paper reported, one protester said: “I thought America was supposed to be a democracy. So why don’t we have a choice?”
Alex Noon, president of the UF law school’s LGBTQ+ organization, told the Alligator: “It blows my mind that this is the sole person that they came up with. I could probably go downtown on a Thursday and find someone better.”
RJ Della Salle, a gay student, said of Sasse: “We either have someone who’s a genuine homophobe as our president or we have a sleazy politician who just says what the people that he’s trying to get elected by want to hear.”