Sen. Chuck Hagel will announce Monday he’ll not seek re-election next year.

Hagel also will tell an Omaha news conference he does not intend to be a candidate for any office in 2008, clamping a lid on speculation he might be pondering a late-inning presidential bid.

In a prelude to Monday’s announcement, he conferred Friday with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Later, Hagel gathered his Washington staff together to inform them of his decision, according to sources close to the senator.

Hagel’s departure at the end of 2008 will bring an end to a meteoric 12-year Senate ride that propelled him to national prominence as the most outspoken Republican opponent of President Bush’s Iraq war policies.

It also will open the floodgates for what could be an epic 2008 battle in Nebraska for an open Senate seat.

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey already has informed New School University trustees in New York City he might resign as president of the institution to return to Nebraska and seek the Senate seat if Hagel is not a candidate for a third term.

Kerrey said Friday he expects to reveal Monday when he’ll make his own plans known.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, a former two-term governor, is a possible Republican candidate for the Senate seat.

Attorney General Jon Bruning already is in the GOP race.

Hagel’s high national profile, elevated by dozens of appearances on Sunday network news shows, won him a spot on early lists of potential 2008 Republican presidential contenders.

After initial probing at the 2004 GOP national convention and what appeared to be a couple of successful three-day campaign-style visits to New Hampshire in 2005 and 2006, Hagel seemed to gradually disengage from a presidential bid.

Although he has compiled a solid conservative voting record in the Senate, he outraged core elements of the GOP by opposing his party and Bush on Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative talk radio guru Rush Limbaugh were among his critics.

Hagel was the leading supporter of the president’s legislative agenda in the Senate last year, backing Bush’s position 95.5 percent of the time. He has been a strong ally in the president’s efforts to reform immigration policy, and, before that, the Social Security system.

But Hagel’s sharp differences with Bush on Iraq and foreign policy defined him in the view of many Republicans closely bound to partisanship and presidential loyalty.

Confronting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January, Hagel said the president’s Iraq strategy “represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

Hagel was twice wounded as an Army infantryman in Vietnam.

Bruning’s entry into the GOP Senate race before Hagel’s own decision was prompted, in large part, by his opposition to the senator’s views on Iraq, as well as immigration reform.

Riding the wave of a 19-month campaign, Hagel emerged from relative political obscurity as an Omaha investment banker in 1996 to win the first Republican Senate victory in Nebraska in 24 years. 

His win over Democratic Gov. Ben Nelson — now Nebraska’s other U.S. senator — was a long shot at the beginning and a runaway victory at the end.

In 2002, Hagel was re-elected with 83 percent of the vote, nailing down the most overwhelming Senate triumph in Nebraska history.

During his initial campaign, Hagel told voters two terms might be enough. But a bid for a third term appeared to be a possibility until recent months, when all the signals began to turn red.

Hagel’s decision marks the fifth straight time in modern Nebraska political history that elected senators have decided to leave the Senate on their own terms.

Kerrey was the most recent, leaving in 2001 after two terms.

Before him were Jim Exon, Carl Curtis and Roman Hruska.

David Karnes was defeated by Kerrey in 1988, but Karnes was an appointed senator, named to fill the unexpired term of Edward Zorinsky, who died in office.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com.