Larry Pressler: Refusing the Abscam Bribe and the Pressler Amendment

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Larry Pressler was born in 1942 and raised on a South Dakota farm, where 4-H sent him to Cairo in 1961 and a national citizenship award brought him to meet John F. Kennedy in 1963. He led the student association at the University of South Dakota, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned a Harvard master's in public administration, then enlisted in the Army and served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968, earning a Bronze Star. After work as a Foreign Service officer and a Harvard law degree in 1971, he filed on the last day for a 1974 House race without state party funding and became one of six Republicans to flip a Democratic seat that year.

In the House he refused a pay raise, opposed foreign aid, pushed cheese tariffs and sought new inquiries into the Kennedy and King assassinations, weathered a 1976 plagiarism controversy, and won reelection with nearly 80 percent. Elected to the Senate in 1978 as its first Vietnam veteran, he turned down an Abscam bribe from FBI agents posing for Arab sheiks and reported it. He wrote the Pressler Amendment and, as Commerce chair, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, then lost that year to Tim Johnson. He later taught at more than 20 universities, ran in 2014 as an independent losing to Mike Rounds, and endorsed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

• Judge George C. Pratt singled him out as setting the standard citizens should expect from representatives under pressure.
• The Pressler Amendment barred most U.S. aid to Pakistan unless the president certified yearly it had no nuclear explosive device.
• The 1996 telecom law let local phone, long distance and cable companies compete in each other's markets.
• His 2014 platform pledged one term, no caucus commitment, and no fundraising while in office.
• He signed an amicus brief supporting marriage equality and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 73.