Former Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler, a Republican defeated for re-election in 1996, is reportedly planning a political comeback by seeking the at-large House seat in South Dakota.
Pressler didn't return calls last week, but his press aide in South Dakota said the former senator would make an announcement in Humboldt, S.D., on Nov. 3.
If Pressler wins the House seat, he would likely make political history because few, if any, lawmakers have jumped from the House to the Senate and back to the House.
Pressler lost his seat to Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), nine months after President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a landmark law that Pressler played a big role in passing through Congress with broad bipartisan support.
Pressler, 59, served in the House from 1975 to 1979 and in the Senate from 1979 to 1997. Since his defeat, Pressler has been a Washington lobbyist and a teacher at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of South Dakota.
He is expected to run in a primary against four other candidates. The House seat became vacant when incumbent Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) announced he would challenge Johnson for the Senate seat in 2002.
Pressler's return to the House would be an historical anomaly. Lawmakers overwhelmingly migrate from the House to the Senate, not from the Senate to the House.
"It almost all goes in one direction, not two," said American Enterprise Institute Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein. He called Pressler's House bid "not a usual thing."
President John Quincy Adams was elected to the House from Massachusetts in 1830 after leaving the White House in defeat in 1829. He died in 1848 two days after collapsing on the House floor from a stroke.
Sen. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.) lost his seat in 1950 but won election to the House in 1962. He served there until his death in 1989 at age 88.
Pepper, however, was elected to the Senate after serving in the Florida Legislature.
