The hair, the smile, the staff and the votes. We love Senator Nelson and we will miss having a voice for moderate Nebraskans representing our state.

In politics and as a progressive I get asked a lot why I support and deeply respect Senator Nelson. During the health reform debate I wrote about why I do but its pretty simple–when Janet, a breast cancer survivor, needed someone to listen to her story of almost losing her home Senator Nelson was there showing her respect and taking her story with him as he worked for a middle ground solution to get historic health reform passed.

Below is Senator Nelson’s last floor speech. He does not mention all the bills he helped pass or the hours he spent making sure we had a voice. Instead he left the body with one final thought, “Congress needs to change its math. By that I mean members of Congress should be more concerned about addition and multiplication and less involved in division and subtraction that seems to overtake this institution at times.”

Bold Nebraska was not around during the major health reform battle, we actually got started as group about a month after reform was passed. But I led the health reform group Change That Works Nebraska and just like with our fight on the pipeline, we told the stories of folks who were leading in their community and why we needed our elected officials to stand up for us and not the guys in suits.

We had many critical moments in the health reform fight. We had rallies in Lincoln. We held candle light vigils. We brought pictures of Nebraskans who needed health reform to our Members of Congress.

You can see some of those videos of the many events here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChangeThatWorksNE

Please leave a message on Senator Nelson’s Facebook page thanking him for his service. He needs to know we love and respect the work he did for our state and for our families.