Florida Senator Apparently Voted The Wrong Way Over USA Freedom Act [UPDATE: Or Not]

Politics

from the you-had-one-job dept

Update: And, of course just as this story came out, Nelson’s office finally spoke on the issue after dodging requests from multiple reporters all morning. They told Kevin Collier that the vote was not a mistake, despite the rumors and questions (and the fact that he was the only Democrat to vote against cloture. The original post is below. According to Collier, Nelson’s office says that he feared the bill would have “undone a provision allowing for retention of certain telephone records that he feels is helpful in preventing future terrorist attacks.” That’s a funny statement, of course, given that the program in question has yet to be shown to have prevented any terrorist attacks. Ah well…

Oh, Florida. As we noted last night, the Senate failed to move the USA Freedom Act forward in a cloture vote. Sixty votes were needed to bring the bill to a real vote, and only 58 made it. Many people focused on the fact that “Republicans blocked the bill” while noting that the vote was mostly along party lines, with just four Republicans voting for it: Senators Mike Lee, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkowski and Ted Cruz. A lot of the focus was on Senator Rand Paul, who is vocally opposed to NSA spying, but voted against this bill, saying he didn’t think it went far enough (nearly all of the other no votes were because they felt it went too far). Bizarrely, after voting no on cloture, Rand Paul now claims he’s sad — and that “they probably needed my vote.” Uh, yeah.

However, few have mentioned that there was only one Democrat who went the other way and voted against cloture: Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Now there are reports from Alvaro Bedoya (a recent Senate staffer) that Nelson actually meant to vote for cloture, but voted no “by mistake.” I have a request in with his office to see if this is accurate, but haven’t heard back yet [see the update above if you haven’t read it already]. However, that’s quite an incredible mistake if true. It’s certainly not unheard of for elected officials to accidentally vote the wrong way, but on major issues like this, they’re usually pretty careful. And, yes, if Nelson had voted for cloture it would have only brought the vote up to 59, but that just highlights how important Rand Paul’s vote was in killing off this attempt at reform.

No matter what, can’t we at least expect our Senators to vote the way they actually planned to vote?

Filed Under: bill nelson, nsa, rand paul, surveillance, usa freedom act