OMAHA, Nebraska (Nebraska Examiner) – After a tumultuous month in which voters experienced the first debate, an assassination attempt and a new candidate, national and local polls have tightened in the presidential race.
All this turmoil has refocused the race, and it’s now almost neck and neck. This could add to the importance of Nebraska’s 2nd District, as the state allocates its Electoral College votes based on specific criteria. Nebraska and Maine award some votes to the statewide winner and one vote each to the winners in each of their congressional districts.
References to the role of the Omaha region as a swing district keep cropping up. Two examples: Former President Donald Trump’s campaign opened an office in Omaha, and Vice President Kamala Harris’ team took over the campaign staff that President Joe Biden had on site.
Harris upped the ante and increased the likelihood of bipartisan visits to the 2nd District by choosing a Nebraskan as her running mate: West Point-born Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. His roots make it more likely that both candidates will come, as Trump did in 2020.
Even third-party candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., whose candidacy has been marked by controversy over a discarded bear carcass, rumors of brain worms and recorded phone conversations with Trump, has announced that he plans to visit the Omaha area in the coming weeks.
The fight for everything and everyone could revive
Then there’s the drama in Lincoln, which was drowned out for a while by the noise of a special session called by Governor Jim Pillen this summer to seek property tax relief. Trump and his campaign are determined to turn the Cornhusker State into a winner-take-all state.
They want Nebraska, where Republicans have a 2-1 lead over Democrats in registrations, to be in the same camp as 48 other states where all Electoral College votes are awarded to the winner of the nationwide presidential election. Pillen wants that too.
Nebraska Republican Party Chairman Eric Underwood confirmed what state senators had told the Examiner in confidence: The issue was not settled for 2024, and Pillen and Republicans in the legislature were waiting for the right moment to bring it up.
Underwood made the remarks Saturday during a rally with about 100 Republicans to mark the opening of Trump’s campaign office in a beige strip mall near 120th and Center Streets. He told attendees, including Trump volunteers, that Republicans need their help.
“It’s a delicate matter,” Underwood said. “When we’re ready, I’ll reach out to the Trump Force team. I’ll reach out to Turning Point Action. … When that opportunity presents itself, we need to be the support network for these individuals because this is going to be a national shift.”
Trump and his campaign have been putting pressure on Nebraska lawmakers this year to not comply with the bill. Trump has already intervened, calling a state lawmaker during the last session to tell him the bill did not have enough votes to pass. Trump later denied making that call.
State lawmakers, including Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, who floated the idea last session, said Pillen would call another special session if he could show the governor he had 33 votes to overcome a promised filibuster tactic.
“Not at the moment,” Lippincott said recently. “But I know we’re all still working.”
Democrats see efforts to avoid risk of loss
Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb said Trump and the state’s Republicans only wanted to change the rules because they knew they were behind in a district that her party celebrates on T-shirts and posters as “the blue dot.”
It is closer to purple and has become a district that fluctuates with the whims of presidential politics, swinging back and forth between blue and red. Biden won the 2nd District in 2020. Trump won in 2016. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah won in 2012. Former President Barack Obama won in 2008.
Kleeb said you can practically smell the desperation of Republicans as they watch Trump hold “half-empty rallies” and Harris “fill arenas.” She said this election, like most, depends on turnout, not on one party changing the rules mid-game.
“The Republican Party and Trump himself can make as many threats as they want, but the 17 Democrats, independents and Republicans in the coalition are standing firm to maintain a fair electoral system,” Kleeb said of the group supporting a filibuster. “No matter how big the threats … they just don’t have the votes.”
National political pundits have once again turned the spotlight on the 2nd District, repeatedly raising the possibility that the Electoral College vote could end in a 269-269 tie that the Republican-led House would decide, or that the Omaha-based district could break the tie and end in a 270-268 victory.
Local political observers once thought that was a far-fetched possibility, but some poll watchers are considering the idea that a district – consisting of Douglas, Saunders and part of Sarpy County – could decide who goes to the White House.
Randall Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, calls the idea unlikely but possible. His former UN colleague Paul Landow said the state legislators would come under enormous pressure to give in to the winner-take-all principle.
Landow said Trump faces a balancing act: trying to change the law to benefit his campaign while also running in the 2nd District if everything stays the same. He also doesn’t want to increase Democratic turnout by trying to do so.
Stronger presence of the Trump-Harris campaigns
Both major presidential campaigns have increased their presence in the Omaha area in recent months. Biden was the first to announce hirings. The Republican National Committee and Trump increased their presence in May. Everyone is knocking on doors.
A statement from the Harris campaign on Saturday said Biden and now Harris have been on the ground in NE-02 for months, led by Doug Gray, a state director, and two senior advisers, Precious McKesson and Meg Mandy, and that ads are also underway.
The first major surrogate of the cycle was Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband. He visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in March to meet with doctors and reproductive health advocates and returned in July to meet with young voters and small business owners.
“The rights and fundamental freedoms of Nebraskans are at stake this November, and the Harris team is not taking a single vote for granted in its quest to build a broad coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans to win NE-02 again,” the statement said.
What was at stake was clear at the grand opening of Trump’s office on Saturday. Joe Hagerty, the RNC and Trump campaign’s joint field director in Nebraska, who is in charge of door-to-door canvassing and more, asked the crowd to volunteer, telling them the 2nd District “could make the difference in the election.”
“We want President Trump elected, and so we don’t want this one electoral vote that we are responsible for to be the deciding factor in him not winning,” Hagerty said, adding that the RNC and the Trump campaign have only just begun their investments.
GOP shows signs of reunification
Underwood and Nebraska and county Republican leaders, who had been at odds with U.S. Rep. Don Bacon and his campaign team during the primary, had Bacon’s campaign manager, Matthew Zacher, speak during the rally.
Zacher welcomed the opportunity. Republicans win when they work together, he said. And 90 percent of Republicans who support Bacon against Democratic Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha also support Trump, and the same goes for Trump voters and Bacon voters.
Underwood called it “unity in our principles.” He said the party is better off being led by the grassroots rather than by a few people at the top. It is healthier and admittedly a little more unpredictable than before, but better prepared to focus energy for elections.
The new RNC-Trump office is right next to Bacon’s campaign team. The RNC and the Nebraska GOP took over the office lease from the Douglas County GOP after the county’s party funds ran dry during a leadership transition to the new, more populist and pro-Trump wing.
“The Trump team has been tremendously helpful,” Zacher said. “In the last election cycle in 2022, we did not have a major RNC presence at the national level in this district.”
In a statement, the Vargas team criticized Zacher and Bacon for their support of Trump, whom Bacon had already supported three times. Bacon and Trump were a threat to abortion rights, Social Security and Medicare and would improve, they said.
“Bacon does not even hide the fact that he needs Trump’s help to keep his seat and stay in Washington,” it says. “That is why he will never stand up to his extreme agenda.”
Beyond the presidential campaign, much of Saturday’s rally centered on the race for the State Board of Education, a board that Underwood’s Republican Party has stressed is critical to making the transition from the current control of a politically diverse group to a more conservative one.
The group also heard from Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and received a letter from Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska. Fischer is likely running against union leader and nonpartisan candidate Dan Osborn of Omaha, who is filing his signatures for his candidacy this month. Flood is running against Democratic Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue.
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