Nebraska’ second district is once again a target on the electoral map, with Democrats hoping to peel off an electoral vote for Kamala Harris much like they did with Joe Biden four years ago.
At the Pachyderm Luncheon on Monday, Madeline Hart of the Republican National Committee confirmed that the Harris campaign was opening a field office in Omaha. Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff has met with Tony Vargas multiple times in Omaha. Vargas ran for Congress in District 2 (CD2) in 2020 and is running again in 2024. The Harris campaign also purchased a $676,000 ad buy for CD2, as well as in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Omaha has become its own battleground state.
In response, the Trump campaign is opening its own campaign office in Omaha, and it has recruited some key players among the “populist upstarts” who have reorganized the party at the state and county levels.
A Rocky Transition
The Douglas County Republican Party (DCRP) had a shake-up in its leadership in April this year. A new faction of MAGA-aligned populists took control at the county convention, and within a month of that convention, all but one member of the executive committee quit, followed by Chairman Chris Routhe.
“He left us with no money, and he left us with no plans,” said Mike Moran, the newly-elected chair of the DCRP, who took office in May. “We had rent due June 1 of roughly $1,700, so we closed our office. We’d not had an executive director since January of 2023 and felt we just couldn’t justify the expense.”
That office is now the Omaha office of “Trump Force 47,” the voter-engagement and voter integrity arm of the Trump campaign. It needed a little fixing-up before the new tenants moved in, however.
“It reminded me of my college fraternity house at the end of a long semester,” Moran recalled. “And the group yesterday that worked after the paint job did a fantastic job of making it look like a fantastic office.”
Tapped by the campaign
In mid-May, as the new DCRP was still finding its footing, the Trump team came to meet with chairman Mike Moran and co-chair Jon Tucker. “They felt good about the Sarpy County portion of CD2. They felt very good about Saunders County. The problem child was Douglas County,” Moran said. “The Trump campaign did not want to repeat 2020 where Joe Biden took the electoral vote, so they’re focusing on CD2.”
Part of that focus is on voter integrity. Madeline Hart held multiple workshops to recruit volunteers to become poll workers and poll watchers in 2024.
The other part is voter engagement. According to Moran, the Trump campaign found there were several thousand Republicans in Douglas County who had not voted in the last several elections. The campaign is now targeting these “low-propensity” voters with volunteers going door-to-door to exchange phone numbers for campaign signs in preparation of a get-out-the-vote effort during the election.
Joe Hagerty, a key player in the Sarpy GOP, was hired by the Trump campaign to be its Nebraska Field Coordinator and is leading this effort.
“We really need you to turn out to make sure we win this election and help them make a plan, whether that’s voting by mail, voting early, or even on election day,” Hagerty said. “And if you can get their phone number, that’s going to help us stay in contact with them. And then you can give them a yard sign in return.”
Strange alliances
In the next week, Omaha will be visited by both Vice-Presidential nominees, Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance. The latter will be the special guest of a high-dollar fundraiser hosted by several members of the Ricketts family, including Sen. Pete Ricketts.
Ricketts has often been the target of ire of the new, MAGA-aligned populist faction of the Nebraska GOP. Now as the stakes have been raised in CD2, the two have formed an uneasy alliance to help reelect Donald Trump.
On a personal note, I attended grand opening events for the campaign offices of the Trump campaign and the DCRP in 2024. Both of these were located just a few doors down from the current “Trump Force 47” office that opened on Saturday. Then-Governor Pete Ricketts brought guests Lara Trump, Pam Bondi, and Mercedes Schlapp to help attract attendees.
While the events both drew modest crowds, neither was as large as the one I saw Saturday morning. Now that the grassroots has brought a new focus on both voter engagement and voter integrity, their efforts could be a bulwark against a “blue dot” appearing again in 2024.
