Bill Nelson

The title of this article is ambiguous. For more meanings, see Bill Nelson (disambiguation) .

Bill Nelson
Country:	United States
Organization:	NASA
selected on	November 9, 1984 ( 1st politician group )
Calls:	1 space flight
Begin:	January 12, 1986
Landing:	January 18, 1986
Time in space:	6d 2h 3min
retired on	January 18, 1986
Space flights
STS-61-C (1986)

Clarence William "Bill" Nelson Jr. (born September 29, 1942 in Miami , Florida ) is an American Democratic Party politician and former astronaut . From 2001 to 2019 he was a representative of Florida in the United States Senate and resigned in January 2019 after losing the 2018 election. He was previously a member of the US House of Representatives and served in his state's government.

Family, education and work

Bill Nelson grew up as an only child in Melbourne , raised cattle and played sports. With his herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle , he financed his higher education. His father, Clarence Nelson, a lawyer and real estate developer whose family relocated from Chicago to Florida in 1915 , died of a heart attack when Bill Nelson was 14 years old, his mother Nannie Merle, who had ALS and whom he last cared for when he was 14 Was 24 years old. He graduated from high school in Melbourne in 1960, where he was president of 4-H in Florida and international chairman of the Key Club International - including a speech at Radio Free Europe to Soviet citizens - and initially studied at the university of Florida , where he was elected freshman president. He moved to Yale University , where Bob Woodward was a fellow student and his roommate was the son of Democratic Senator George Smathers and he was a member of the Book and Snake secret society . In 1961/62 Nelson completed an internship at Smathers. He graduated from Yale in 1965 with a bachelor's degree in political science ; his thesis was entitled The Impact of Cape Kennedy on Brevard County Politics . He then completed a law degree at the University of Virginia and received the Juris Doctor there in 1968 . He was admitted to the Florida bar that same year.

From 1965 to 1971 Nelson served in the US Army Reserve and did his active service from 1968 to 1970, which he completed with the rank of captain. He began practicing law in Melbourne in 1970 and advised Florida Governor Reubin Askew on legislative issues the following year.

Nelson has been married to Grace Cavert since 1972; they have two children and live in Orlando .

Political career

Nelson himself entered politics in the 1972 election and was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, to which he was a member from 1973 to 1979. There he worked on the first legislation against computer fraud and campaigned for laws that control population growth and prevent oil drilling off the coast.

In the 1978 election , Nelson was elected to the United States House of Representatives. There he was a member of parliament from 1979 to 1991, first for the 9th, then for the 11th congressional constituency - an area that includes Orlando and the central east coast of Florida ("Space Coast") with the space centers Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center . He was one of the early advocates of a balanced federal budget in Congress and was chairman of the subcommittee on space travel .

In 1990 he applied within the party for the nomination of the Democrats for the post of governor of Florida , but was clearly defeated by former US Senator Lawton Chiles . Nelson then worked again as a lawyer and was elected to the Florida state government in 1994, where he served for six years as a treasurer, insurance commissioner and fire marshal, doing pragmatic, concrete work, for example for consumer protection. After Hurricane Andrew, he campaigned against the sharp premium increases of large insurance companies.

In the 2000 election , Nelson was elected to the United States Senate for Florida . With a share of the vote of 51 percent, he narrowly won against Republican Bill McCollum . In the 2006 election he was confirmed with 60.3 percent of the vote against Katherine Harris . Nelson was also able to prevail against the Republican candidate Connie Mack in the 2012 Senate election with over 55 percent . He received a donation from Donald Trump for his election campaign . Nelson is a ranking member , i.e. the highest-ranking Democrat, on the trade committee and has the second highest rank on the armed forces committee . His current mandate runs until January 3, 2019.

In the election in November 2018 Nelson ran again. He was now the only state-elected Democrat in Florida. With his challenger Rick Scott , the outgoing Republican governor of the state, he had grown into a strong opponent according to political observers; they expected a head-to-head race. Right from the start, Scott invested large sums of money in Florida's expensive media markets and sought the support of Latinos, so that during the summer polls and members of the political community saw him at an advantage. The first poll after the primary election in late August saw both politicians at 49 percent each. While Republicans pointed out that Scott received more votes in the primary than any previous Senate candidate in Florida, Democrats hoped that the nomination of African-American Andrew Gillum as gubernatorial candidate would mobilize minorities for Nelson as well. At the end of September, polls and observers saw Nelson slightly ahead again. On election night, Scott was slightly ahead, declaring his victory over Nelson; Nelson saw the provisional result, however, with a deficit of 12,500 votes from a total of 8.1 million submitted, so closely behind (0.15 percentage points) that first a machine-based and then a manual recount of the votes was ordered on November 10th. The recount showed that Nelsons was 10,033 votes (0.12 percent) behind. In Broward County , about 10,000 ballot papers - to a significantly higher extent than in all other counties - were cast for gubernatorial, but not for Senate elections ("undervote"). Nelson's team had suspected that there might have been a machine counting error, but the discrepancy persisted even after the hand count, so that the confusing appearance of the ballot paper is the most likely explanation for the “undervote”.

Nelson resigned from the Senate on January 3, 2019.

Positions and Style

Nelson is primarily committed to regionally important topics such as the space program or environmental protection regulations and is considered to be technically experienced. In matters of principle he is considered to be left-wing (“ liberal ”); He advocates freedom of choice in abortions ( Pro-Choice ) and stricter controls on arms sales. In 2010 he voted for the abolition of the Do not ask, don't tell rule that openly denied military service to homosexuals, and in 2013 he supported the opening up of marriage to homosexuals . In terms of fiscal policy , he advocates an increase in taxes for the wealthy and an increase in the minimum wage. He also deals with the effects of climate change on Florida in particular.

He is reserved and unassuming and is not widely known due to his sparse television presence . With his southern accent , he is described as keeping his feet on the ground. With his Republican colleagues Senator Florida, Marco Rubio , Nelson often works together, and during the government shutdown in 2013 he went to the Tea Party-backed Senator Ted Cruz to. As part of his 2018 Senate election campaign, Nelson made more public appearances, including when he criticized the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents when illegally crossing borders and demanding access to a reception center for these children in southern Florida.

Astronaut activity

NASA photo by Bill Nelson

Nelson went into space as the second politician after Senator Jake Garn of Utah (see list of spacemen ). With Garn he also went through NASA's astronaut training at Johnson Space Center ( Houston ), which began in September 1985.

Nelson started on January 12, 1986 as a payload specialist on the Columbia space shuttle for the six-day STS-61-C mission . The main objective of the mission was to put the SATCOM Ku-1 communications satellite into orbit. In addition, smaller astrophysical and material science experiments were carried out.

Ten days after his return, the Challenger space shuttle exploded during take-off, killing the entire crew. Nelson was originally supposed to fly on this mission, but a scheduling conflict led to his flight being rescheduled to an earlier start.

Fonts

• with Jamie Buckingham: Mission: An American Congressman's Voyage to Space. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, CA 1988, ISBN 0151055564 (Memoirs).

Web links

Commons : Bill Nelson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Bill Nelson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Bill Nelson in the nndb (English)
• Web presence at the Senate ( Memento from November 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
• NASA biography of Bill Nelson (PDF)
• Senator Bill Nelson. In: Florida 4-H Hall of Fame , 2009 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Senator Bill Nelson. In: Florida 4-H Hall of Fame , 2009; Alex Leary: On the run with Sen. Bill Nelson, no signs of slowing down. In: Tampa Bay Times , September 22, 2017.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} NASA biography of Bill Nelson , July 2008 (PDF).
3. ↑ Senator Bill Nelson. In: Florida 4-H Hall of Fame , 2009.
4. ↑ Alex Leary: On the run with Sen. Bill Nelson, no signs of slowing down. In: Tampa Bay Times , September 22, 2017.
5. ↑ Short biography at Spacefacts.de.
6. ↑ Bill Nelson. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , February 9, 2009.
7. ↑ Senator Bill Nelson. In: Florida 4-H Hall of Fame , 2009.
8. ↑ Florida Election Results 2012: Sen. Bill Nelson coasts to reelection; Rivera loose house seat; Obama leads Romney. In: The Washington Post , November 7, 2012.
9. ↑ Alex Leary: On the run with Sen. Bill Nelson, no signs of slowing down. In: Tampa Bay Times , September 22, 2017.
10. ↑ On the election campaign in the context of the political history of Florida Sean Trende: Sizing Up the Florida Senate Race. In: RealClearPolitics , August 28, 2018.
11. ^ Adam C. Smith: New Florida poll shows dead heat governors' races, Rick Scott edging Bill Nelson. In: Tampa Bay Times , May 8, 2018; Adam C. Smith: Florida Insider Poll: Doubts about Bill Nelson beating Rick Scott grow. In: Tampa Bay Times , May 10, 2018; Chuck Todd , Mark Murray, Carrie Dann: In Florida Senate race, Dems face down a daunting price tag. In: NBC News , May 15, 2018.
12. ↑ Ledyard King: Dead heat: Poll finds pivotal Florida Senate race between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson tied. In: USA Today , September 5, 2018; John Kennedy: Could Andrew Gillum victory give boost to Bill Nelson? In: The Daytona Beach News-Journal , September 1, 2018. See also poll compilation Florida Senate - Scott vs. Nelson. In: RealClearPolitics.
13. ^ Harry Enten: The Florida Senate race may be moving away from Republican Rick Scott. In: CNN.com , September 29, 2018.
14. ^ John Kennedy: Florida's US Senate race headed for recount. In: Gainesville.com , November 7, 2018; Matt Dixon, Marc Caputo: Florida readies for massive recount. In: Politico , November 8, 2018; Gregory Krieg, Ryan Nobles, Ellie Kaufman, Dan Merica: Florida recounts begin as tensions escalate across state. In: CNN.com , November 10, 2018.
15. ↑ Nate Cohn, Kevin Quealy: A Mysterious 'Undervote' Could End Up Settling the Florida Senate Race. In: The New York Times , November 9, 2018; Matthew Isbell: The Numbers behind Broward County's Terrible Ballot Design. In: MCIMaps , November 13, 2018; Matt Dixon, Marc Caputo: Florida Playbook: Did Brenda Kill Bill? In: Politico , November 19, 2018.
16. ↑ Alex Leary: On the run with Sen. Bill Nelson, no signs of slowing down. In: Tampa Bay Times , September 22, 2017.
17. ↑ Bill Nelson. In: Encyclopedia Britannica , February 9, 2009; Patricia Mazzei: Meet Bill Nelson, the Under-the-Radar Senate Candidate in Florida. He's the incumbent. In: The New York Times , August 6, 2018.