House of Representatives During the
1968 House elections Pressler considered running for the Democratic nomination for the 1st Congressional District, but chose not to run. In 1974, he filed to run for the Republican nomination in the 1st District on the last day possible and later won it, but the South Dakota Republican Party told him that he would not be given any campaign funds. Despite the
Watergate scandal hurting the Republicans nationally in the 1974 elections Pressler was one of six Republicans to gain a seat held by the Democrats. In April 1975, he was accepted as a member of the Congressional Rural Caucus, later supported having open committee meetings for the
House Republican Conference, and throughout the year he served as assistant minority leader to Minority Leader
John Jacob Rhodes. On April 2, 1975, he was hospitalized at the
Bethesda Naval Hospital to be treated for
diverticulitis and had surgery in December for it. Later in the month he cosponsored legislation to create a
House select committee to reinvestigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempted assassination of George Wallace. On July 30, the House voted 214 to 213 to increase its salary from $42,500 to $44,600. Pressler and eight other members of the House stated that they would not keep the raise given to members of Congress. During the
1976 Republican presidential primaries, he criticized the rivalry between President Gerald Ford and former governor
Ronald Reagan which he stated would hurt moderate Republicans as both Ford and Reagan were pushing their conservative stances. In March 1976,
Jack Anderson and
Les Whitten claimed that multiple articles written by Pressler had been copied in their entirety from
The Washington Post and other newspapers. Pressler denied the charge of
plagiarism, but admitted that a January 1976 article had "accidentally" included excerpts from
The Washington Post. After winning reelection in
1976 with almost eighty percent of the vote, Pressler stated that he was interested in running for the Senate in 1978.
House committee assignments •
Committee on Education and Labor •
Committee on Science and Technology Senate In
1978, he was elected to the
United States Senate, succeeding retiring Democratic incumbent
James Abourezk and becoming the first
Vietnam War veteran to serve in the Senate. He served in the Senate from 1979 to 1997 and was chairman of the
Commerce Committee (1995–1997). While in the Senate, he also served on the Science and Transportation Committee, Foreign Relations Committee and European and Asian Subcommittees. Pressler ran for a fourth term in
1996 but lost by three points to Democratic Congressman
Tim Johnson. He briefly sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, campaigning on Vietnam veterans' issues. Pressler authored and won Congressional and Presidential approval of a sweeping reform of
telecommunications legislation through the
Telecommunications Act of 1996. Among Pressler's staffers included future
U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Schieffer and future state senator
Neal Tapio.
Abscam investigation During a
sting operation conduced as part of the
Abscam investigations in 1980, Pressler refused to take a bribe from undercover FBI agents and reported the bribe attempt. In a front-page story,
The Washington Post reported: Thanks to the FBI's undercover "sting" operation, there now exists incontrovertible evidence that one senator would not be bought. Preserved among the videotape footage that may be used as bribery evidence against a number of members of Congress, there is a special moment in which Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD) tells the undercover agents, in effect, to take their sting and stick it. Pressler, according to law enforcement sources was the one approached member of Congress who flatly refused to consider financial favors in exchange for legislative favors, as suggested by undercover agents posing as Arabs. At the time he said he was not aware that he was doing anything quite so heroic. In an overall review of the Abscam cases, Judge
George C. Pratt praised Pressler, writing that, "Pressler, particularly, acted as citizens have a right to expect their elected representatives to act. He showed a clear awareness of the line between proper and improper conduct, and despite his confessed need for campaign money, and despite the additional attractiveness to him of the payment offered, he nevertheless refused to cross into impropriety."
Pakistan and the Pressler Amendment Pressler was also the sponsor of the Pressler Amendment, which banned most economic and military assistance to Pakistan unless the president certified on an annual basis that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed United States assistance program will reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device."
Post-Senate career After his defeat in the
1996 election, Pressler passed the New York bar and worked again as a lawyer. Pressler subsequently became senior partner of the law firm O'Connor and Hannan, where he served for six years, and then formed his own law firm, The Pressler Group. Pressler is a member of the New York Bar, the Washington DC Bar, and the Supreme Court Bar. He has also lectured at more than twenty universities in China, India and the U.S., and has been granted two lifetime Fulbright teaching awards. In 1998, Pressler considered a bid for
Mayor of Washington D.C., though he ultimately would not go through with it. During the
2000 presidential election he served on Governor George W. Bush's
presidential campaign on its Information Technology Steering Committee, and later served on the Bush Presidential Transition Team in 2001. Pressler attempted a political comeback in 2002 by
running for South Dakota's open at-large House seat but he essentially discontinued his campaign when Republican governor
Bill Janklow unexpectedly entered the race. Pressler was appointed an official observer of Ukraine's national election in December 2004. On November 10, 2009, President Obama named Pressler to the
U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. He also serves on the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission. In October 2012, based on veterans' issues, Pressler endorsed Obama for a second term with an article in
The Huffington Post and on national television networks. Pressler campaigned in a bipartisan team for Obama in the fall of 2012, speaking on behalf of the Obama ticket to certain veterans’ groups in Virginia. He taught as a distinguished visiting professor at Sciences Po University, Paris, France, and Reims, France, in the fall of 2012. He chiefly teaches international relations to graduate students. In 2013, Pressler was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the
Hollingsworth v. Perry case. During the
2008 and
2012 presidential elections he endorsed and voted for
Barack Obama. Pressler endorsed
Hillary Clinton in the
2016 presidential election and
Joe Biden in the
2020 presidential election. Pressler continued his public lectures including a speech at
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland, on June 4, 2018, for the 2018
International Security Forum. In 2020, Pressler, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement that asserted that
Donald Trump was unfit to serve another term, and "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."
2014 U.S. Senate election The
Native American Times reported in November 2013 that Pressler, at the age of 71, was weighing an
independent comeback bid for the seat vacated by retiring Democratic
Senator Tim Johnson in the
2014 election. After being approached by a group of citizens asking him to run, Pressler assessed his chances of victory by saying, "I think it's possible but unlikely." At the conclusion of an exploratory tour of South Dakota's 66 counties in late 2013, however, Pressler announced his candidacy and stated confidently, "I intend to win." Pressler faced Republican former
Governor Mike Rounds, Democratic congressional aide
Rick Weiland, and independent conservative state legislator
Gordon Howie in a four-way race. Shortly before announcing his intention to run for office, Pressler explained his becoming an independent: "I don't think I've moved, I think the party has moved. I feel like a man without a party. … My intent is not to hurt anyone." During his unsuccessful campaign, Pressler did not commit to caucusing with either party in the Senate if elected. Pressler has said that he views both parties as being "too entrenched in their respective ideologies at the expense of common sense solutions." Pressler stated his support for
same-sex marriage and filed an Amicus Curiae brief to the Supreme Court in regard to
Hollingsworth v. Perry. During the 2014 campaign, Pressler was endorsed by South Dakota's two largest newspapers, the
Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the
Rapid City Journal, as well as
The Daily Republic in Mitchell. The race also drew some national attention.
The Wall Street Journal reported, "Republicans had been expected to easily win the open Senate seat in South Dakota this year, but the race has tightened recently. Earlier this month, Democrats began sending cash to the race after concluding the unusual, four-way race was winnable." The
New York Times said, "A race that most had thought was safely Republican is suddenly the focus of national attention, thanks to the surprisingly successful candidacy of former Senator Larry Pressler, a Republican who is running as an independent." Pressler ultimately lost the 2014 Senate election to Governor Rounds. ==Political positions==