Former US Senator Ben Sasse. Photo / Getty Images
Former Republican senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said today that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and suggested he would not have long to live.
“Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” Sasse wrote in a lengthy social media post.
“Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence … Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer.”
Sasse, 53, was first elected to the United States Senate in 2014 as a political newcomer - he had previously served as president of Midland University in Nebraska.
Sasse handily won re-election in 2020 but resigned from his seat partway through his second term to become president of the University of Florida.
Sasse abruptly stepped down from that post last summer, citing concerns about his wife’s health.
Nearly a year and a half later, Sasse said it was he who was facing grim news about his health.
His terminal diagnosis, he wrote, was “hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad”.
“I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, [my wife] Melissa and I have grown even closer - and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have,” Sasse wrote.
He continued by listing the achievements of his three children and hinted at undergoing possible treatments.
“I’m not going down without a fight. One subpart of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more,” he wrote.
“Death and dying aren’t the same - the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humour in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.”
After US President Donald Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, Sasse became an outsider in his own party.
He was one of a handful of Republican senators who regularly spoke out against Trump and who tied Trump’s rhetoric and actions to the violent siege of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump periodically attacked Sasse, ridiculing him as “the least effective” GOP senator and calling him a “Rino”, or Republican in name only.
Sasse was also one of the few GOP senators who supported moving forward with Trump’s impeachment trial.
Because of that, Sasse faced the threat of censure in 2021 from the Nebraska Republican Party, which accused Sasse of, among more than a dozen purported offences, having “persistently engaged in public acts of ridicule and calumny” against Trump. Sasse pushed back in a video message directed at party leaders.
“Let’s be clear: The anger in this state party has never been about me violating principle or abandoning conservative policy. I’m one of the most conservative voters in the Senate. The anger’s always been simply about me not bending the knee to … one guy,” he said then.
Ultimately, the Nebraska GOP voted to rebuke Sasse, stopping short of a censure.
Though Sasse at one point considered leaving the Republican Party, he said he would remain “committed to the party of Lincoln and Reagan as long as there is a chance to reform”.
In subsequent years, he described himself as an “independent conservative”. Earlier this month, he was named a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank.
Public figures from across the political spectrum responded to Sasse’s announcement to wish him well.
“I’m very sorry to hear this Ben. May God bless you and your family,” Vice-President JD Vance wrote on X.
Senator John Fetterman (Democrat-Pennsylvania), who suffered a stroke in 2022, told Sasse he was “firmly in your corner”.
“As someone who had severe encounters with mortality, I especially connect with your news and am deeply saddened by it ... Me and the fam are thinking of you and yours,” Fetterman wrote.
Pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose early, partly because symptoms of early stage cancer can be minimal and because of the location of the pancreas.
About 13% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive five years or more, according to the National Cancer Institute, making it one of the deadliest cancers.
That rate drops down to about 3% for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that has metastasized.
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