This is the last thing Larry Pressler needs.
With opponents on the both the right and left trying to make an issue of the former Republican-senator-turned-independent’s longtime presence in D.C., an old Associated Press story from the 1990s surfaced on Twitter Monday in which Pressler himself touted how long he’d lived in DC and openly pondered a run for D.C. mayor.
Pressler, whose presence in the South Dakota Senate race has disrupted that race, was weighing a Washington, D.C., mayoral bid in the AP story headlined “PRESSLER MAY RUN FOR D.C. MAYOR” and dated July 11, 1998. The uncovered press clipping follows a report from Politico last week that Pressler’s primary residence is still in Washington.
“I have lived in D.C. since 1971, longer than anyone else who’s running,” Pressler, a senator from 1979 to 1997 and a congressman before that, said in 1998 to explain why he was toying with running for mayor. He never ultimately went through with it.
Pressler also explained to the AP why a white South Dakotan could contend in what was then majority-black D.C.
“I have a lot of African-American friends,” he said.
