Columbus industrialist Tony Raimondo said Thursday he will seek the 2008 Republican Senate nomination if Sen. Chuck Hagel does not pursue a third term.

“I’ve decided if Hagel doesn’t run, I will be running,” the chairman of Behlen Manufacturing Co. said in a telephone interview.

Raimondo, a nationally recognized businessman once in line for  White House appointment as federal manufacturing czar, said he would bring business development experience in a global marketplace to the Senate.

“Competitiveness and job creation are basically what I’ve worked my whole life on,” he said. “I think we need more business leaders in Congress.”

Raimondo has been on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers since 1996 and is chairman of its small- and medium-sized manufacturing directors, who represent 10,000 companies and employ 8 million workers.

At Columbus, Raimondo built Behlen from a company on the cusp of financial failure two decades ago into an enterprise that employs 1,100 workers at four plants in the United States and one joint venture plant in China.

Its annual sales now total $220 million.

Behlen manufactures grain systems, livestock equipment and metal buildings.

Already identifying themselves as potential GOP Senate candidates are Attorney General Jon Bruning and Hal Daub, former Omaha mayor and former 2nd District congressman.

Bruning is the only one of the three who has said he’s prepared to challenge Hagel if the senator makes a bid for re-election next year.

Hagel has said he’ll decide later this year whether to seek re-election, pursue the presidency or leave elective office at the end of 2008.

Raimondo, 67, joined Behlen in 1982.  Two years later, he led a management  buyout that returned Behlen to local ownership. The Columbus firm had been acquired by the Wickes Corp. in 1969.

A native New Yorker, Raimondo came to Nebraska in 1976.

Raimondo has close ties to Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, who was a Behlen director before his election to the Senate in 2000. Nelson said he moved to the company’s unpaid board of advisers when he became a senator.

In 2004, Nelson announced the White House was ready to name Raimondo to the new federal manufacturing czar position. But that appointment was never made after Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., criticized the Bush administration for considering an appointee who operates a manufacturing plant in China.

In the political context of a presidential election year, that sank the appointment.

Bush, indeed, had selected him, Raimondo said, and then decided to move up the appointment three weeks from the planned date.

“I was in China, on my way back,” Raimondo said, “when it leaked out to Senator Kerry,” who was on course to gain the Democratic presidential nomination.

“We only manufacture products in China for the China market,” Raimondo said. “Our plant in China is like Toyota being inside America.

“We export to 70 nations from the United States. But we never had a chance to counter that story.”

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