SOUTH BEND — On Dec. 19, Joe Donnelly, then the senior U.S. senator from Indiana, cast what he thought would be his last congressional vote — joining his Senate colleagues to pass a $1.3 billion funding bill that would have avoided a federal government shutdown until at least February.

Before the vote, Donnelly had packed the remnants of his office into a U-Haul truck. He hopped behind the wheel at 5:30 a.m. the next day and started driving home. He was at the Ohio-Indiana state line when he heard rumblings that President Donald Trump had soured on the funding bill. Conservative pundits were criticizing Trump for backing down on his demand for money to pay for a border wall with Mexico.

Donnelly had just made it home and fixed himselfcollege, and to have a chance to serve in the House and the Senate — boy, that exceeded any dream I could ever have,” he said.

The former senator’s balancing act on divisive issues such as abortion and immigration sometimes meant he pleased neither liberal factions of his base nor the more conservative Indiana voters he had to woo. Nevertheless, he said Sunday, he remains proud of his bipartisan record. He still points out that the Lugar Center named him the fourth-most bipartisan senator to have served since 1993.

In the interview, Donnelly named hyper-partisanship as the biggest problem in Washington, while he said the best thing about the nation’s capital was that “so many of the people there care so much,” including staffers who would sometimes spend time at