OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — In one of the most closely watched congressional races this year, U.S. Rep. Dom Bacon of Nebraska is trying to defeat a fellow Republican in Tuesday’s primary election in his quest for re-election. He will have to do so without the support of the state Republican Party, which supported his main opponent.
Bacon, whose district includes the state’s largest city, Omaha, isn’t the only one being snubbed. The Nebraska Republican Party, which was taken over by those loyal to the former President Donald Trump during a controversial state convention in 2022, refused to endorse any of the Republican incumbents who hold all five of the state’s congressional seats.
The state party has endorsed primary challengers Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Adrian Smith, who represents the state’s vast, rural 3rd Congressional District. And he refused to issue endorsements in the primary election for U.S. senator. Deb Fischer and Rep. Mike Flood, who represents the 1st Congressional District that includes the state capital of Lincoln. Both Fischer and Flood face primary challengers who entered those races after the Nebraska Republican Party announced its endorsement decision in January.
It’s an oddity that exposes the bitter divide between the Trump loyalists who control the Nebraska Republican Party, as well as several county Republican parties, and the more establishment Republicans who were previously in charge, said John Hibbing, a longtime veteran date from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln Professor of Political Science.
“It’s not a good look,” Hibbing said. “You would like the faces of your party, who your elected representatives would be, and the state party leaders to be on the same page.”
It’s even more disconcerting when you consider incumbents’ voting records and campaign rhetoric, he said.
“I think they’re probably wondering, ‘What else can we do?’” Hibbing said. “These are solidly conservative individuals.”
Nowhere is the state party’s rejection more likely to leave a mark than in Bacon’s race. The incumbent faces a challenge from Dan Frei, who calls himself to the right of Bacon. Frei already ran for the position in 2014 and came close to defeating the then deputy. Lee Terry in the Republican primary.
Bacon is one of 16 Republican members of Congress representing districts that Democrat Joe Biden won in 2020.
More than 30 years ago, Nebraska avoided a winner-take-all system for allocating presidential electoral votes and instead allowed its electoral votes tied to its three congressional districts to be split. Bacon’s district has seen its electoral vote go to a Democratic presidential candidate twice – to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Biden in 2020.
After the state Republican Party endorsed Frei, Bacon defended his record as “a common-sense conservative who is able to reach across the aisle and find areas of consensus.”
Bacon said “it’s sad to see the division in the party,” Danielle Jensen, Bacon’s campaign communications director, said Monday. “I can tell you, he doesn’t think this will negatively affect the campaign.”
The Fischer, Flood, Ricketts and Smith campaigns did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The state party said in an email Monday that it did not support any of the Republican incumbents because they did not ask. Opponents who won the party’s endorsement asked for it, and a vote of the more than 160 elected members of the party’s governing body gave them that endorsement, said Todd Watson, political director for the state Republican Party.
Watson denied the measure was just about Trump, but said most Nebraska Republicans are fed up with what they see as attacks on Trump, the state party’s new direction and “our way of life.”
“We believe in the Constitution, conservative principles and God,” he said.
A former state Republican Party official, Kerry Winterer, criticized the state party in an op-ed published in the Nebraska Examiner last week, saying the party’s primary goal is to elect Republicans but that it has instead become tied to exclusively to Trump.
“A political party tied to one candidate cannot fulfill its purpose of electing candidates who share a common political philosophy,” Winterer wrote.
Watson responded that “the old leadership” of the state Republican Party got it wrong.
“The party’s goals are achieved in our minds when we elect constitutional Republicans and promote the platform for office,” he said. “Electing Republicans who are not committed to the party’s goal… of defending the Constitution and promoting our principles, as stated in our platform and written plans, has been a real problem for this party and country.”
