John Ensign gives farewell on Senate floor, apologizes to colleagues

By Karoun Demirjian

Published Monday, May 2, 2011 | 1:40 p.m.

Updated Monday, May 2, 2011 | 7:01 p.m.

WASHINGTON — When John Ensign came to Congress in 1994, he did so in a rowdy season of Republican renaissance so fraught with bombast that it came to be known as a revolution. Two years ago, when he announced that he’d been having an affair with his campaign staffer and best friend’s wife, the shock waves reverberated so violently that they eventually caused his political career to collapse.

But Monday afternoon, when Ensign took to the Senate floor to say his official farewell, suggest his legacy and offer an apology, his words caused no commotion. Ensign was addressing an almost-empty room.

“The more power and prestige a person achieves, the more arrogant a person can become,” Ensign said from the back row of desks to a few security guards and Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the Senate’s presiding officer. “I was blind to how arrogant and self-centered that I had become ... unfortunately, the urge to believe in it was stronger than the power to fight it.”

Although the Senate chamber normally looks mostly empty on an average Monday afternoon, protocol suggests that your closest friends and fellow members of your state delegation usually see you off.

But neither Ensign’s C Street colleagues, who helped him through his affair, nor his Nevada counterpart and “true friend” Harry Reid, showed for the swan song — although a spokesman for Reid did say the two met in Reid’s office immediately after the speech.

You don’t get to see the empty chairs on C-Span, and so Ensign kept a straight face, and addressed his absent colleagues anyway.

“I would like to take a moment to apologize for what you have had to go through as a result of my actions,” he said to his absent Senate colleagues. “I know that many of you were put in difficult situations because of me, and for that I sincerely apologize.”

Ensign announced 12 days earlier that he would resign from the Senate before the end of his term, a promise that takes effect today. Nevada Rep. Dean Heller, who’s also the GOP’s presumptive nominee for the seat in 2012, will complete Ensign’s term.

His resignation brings about an accelerated end to a political career that most in Nevada assumed had been over for months, his legacy all but entirely dominated by the affair and scandal that brought about his political undoing.

Ensign did his best to steer memories in a more sympathetic direction Monday, recalling his proudest accomplishments as a senator.

The list wasn’t terribly long, and wouldn’t mean much outside of Nevada. He talked about the Public Land Management Act, which passed when Ensign was still a member of the House in 1998, and his work on other lands bills.

“Because of these lands bills, Nevada has been able to keep over $3 billion that has been raised from land sales in Southern Nevada,” he said. “This land revenue has been used to purchase sensitive land to protect it for future generations ... I cannot tell you how proud I am when I drive around Las Vegas and I see families enjoying these beautiful areas.”

He continued this conservation-minded love of the outdoors with a nod to Lake Tahoe: “I worked hard to ensure that the beauty of those waters and surroundings are just as beautiful decades from now as they are today,” he said.

Ensign got a little closer to the grittier, uglier sort of issues — the ones plaguing Nevada on a daily basis — with nods to his work as “a passionate advocate for education reform” who brought money to the state’s school system through the land bills.

He also applauded his successful efforts, in partnership with Delaware Democrat Sen. Tom Carper, to lower health care premiums for people who maintain a healthy lifestyle, calling it “an accomplishment of which I’m so proud.”

It’s not the list you’d expect, given the portfolio Ensign usually brings to the Senate floor. He’s railed against President Barack Obama’s health care bill without interruption; he spends more time talking about energy than education, and although he may back bills to preserve the natural beauty of his state, he spends far more breath speaking about spending. He skipped over that subject entirely Monday, save for saying that “I hope that my voting and legislative record here in the United States Senate will continue to speak for me longer — long after I have left this chamber.”

But what’s more striking was not which policies he chose to highlight in his parting words, but which policy staffers he chose to give a nod of public appreciation. The list included John Lopez, his former chief of staff, who left Ensign after the scandal; several investigations and subpoenas later, the two have no relationship left to speak of.

Ensign also thanked Reid (“two people with opposite voting records, opposite views ... but a true friendship formed between Sen. Reid and myself, and for that, I want to thank him”), his wife, Darlene (“I do not deserve a woman like her, but I love her”), and offered a surprise apology to two former senators who had ethics scandals of their own: Larry Craig of the airport bathrooms, and Ted Stevens of the lobbying graft. Ensign chided himself for “judging two of my colleagues when I had no place to do so.”

It was an oddly philosophical and haphazard speech to close the door on a career that’s come to focus around events Ensign doesn’t seem to know how to address head on. He appeared to be looking for guidance and clarity on that front as he closed his remarks with an appeal to the one entity, other than the reporters in the gallery, that may have been listening at a distance: God.

Church and state are officially separate under the U.S. Constitution, but a relationship between them lingers in the everyday affairs of Congress.

Every morning, the Senate and House start the day under the leadership of a chaplain, who opens the day for business with a short prayer. On Monday, as Ensign closed out his official career for the last time, he ended with one.

“Lord, thank you for all that you’ve done in my life. I hope that I can do better in the future. I hope that I can learn to love you with all of my heart, soul, and strength and to love others as myself,” he said. “My colleagues, I bid you farewell. Know that you will all be in my prayers.”