Graphic: Intelligencer, Wikimedia Commons
The center of the political universe this month has been in Omaha, Nebraska.
It’s not that the blue-collar workers in Rust Belt Pennsylvania or soccer moms in suburban Georgia have lost any of their importance in what is shaping up to be a close election, but Omaha is the only place where control of both the White House and the House of Representatives could be decided on November 5. That’s because Nebraska is one of two states that apportions its electoral votes by congressional district (the other is Maine). One of the state’s five electoral votes belongs to its second district, which includes Omaha and its surrounding suburbs and is perhaps the archetypal swing area. There are the blue-collar Catholic Democrats who have recently swung to the right and the country-club Republicans who have swung to the left; majority-minority neighborhoods in North Omaha; farms outside the rural county seat of Wahoo; Offutt Air Force Base, one of the Air Force’s key installations; and major college campuses such as the University of Nebraska Omaha and Creighton University.
The district has swung back and forth in recent presidential elections, but this year its importance has become magnified. If Kamala Harris wins the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin but loses all the remaining swing states, she would be stuck at 269 electoral votes — one shy of victory. This means that the lone vote from the Omaha area could decide the presidency. Donald Trump’s allies in recent weeks tried to get the Nebraska legislature to change state law to return the state to rewarding electoral votes on a statewide basis in an attempt to deny Harris this likely vote. Trump himself angrily posted about the situation, and Lindsey Graham, of all people, traveled to Nebraska to try to woo lawmakers. It didn’t work.
The district’s single electoral vote had been trending toward Harris, according to both public and private polls, even before the failed effort to change the law. As Ian Russell, a veteran Democratic operative who has worked in Nebraska, described it, “The national trends of Democrats being a lot more competitive in suburbia and higher-educated areas are seen to a larger degree in Omaha. It has an educated population, and it has always had a more politically moderate and independent sensibility, and now it has really moved against Republicans.” The respective spending from the two presidential campaigns shows how the district has swung to the left. Nearly $15 million has been, or will be, spent on Omaha’s airwaves on behalf of the Democratic presidential ticket, while less than $200,000 has been spent or booked so far on Trump’s behalf.
The pro-Trump plot’s failure wasn’t all bad news for Republicans. One plugged-in Republican operative argued that the setback saved the district’s congressman, Don Bacon, from certain defeat. A moderate, he’s been a perpetual target for Democrats since he first won the seat in 2016 and has always managed to somehow hang on. Nothing would have done more to rile up Democrats and leave Republicans complacent than a last-minute switcheroo. National Republicans have also marveled that Bacon is the rare member of Congress who has his own political identity in his district and has taken pains to present himself as a centrist. However, that task has become slightly more difficult for the anti-abortion Bacon since the Dobbs decision. His Democratic opponent, State Senator Tony Vargas, has not hesitated to attack Bacon over the issue.
In a closely divided House, Bacon’s seat is considered a toss-up by outside analysts and has seen millions of dollars spent on television by both candidates as it is a top target from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He held on in 2020 thanks to ticket-splitting Biden-Bacon voters, and they’ll need to become Harris-Bacon voters in 2024 for him to survive.
J.L. Spray, one of the state’s RNC members, described the district as “a purple dot” in a state that no Democratic presidential nominee has won since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Although it might not necessarily be that purple anymore. One of the biggest trends among Omaha liberals in recent weeks is a simple yard sign with just a blue dot painted on, which is an effort to raise awareness of just how much the votes of local progressives matter — even if they do live in a red state.
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