Omaha is a blue dot in a sea of Nebraska red, which is precisely why Donald Trump and his allies are furiously fighting to change the state’s system of awarding electoral votes in presidential elections.
Even after the Nebraska Legislature closed the door on a pressure campaign intended to keep President Joe Biden from winning one of the state’s five electoral votes – as he did in 2020 by carrying the Omaha-anchored 2nd Congressional District – Trump loyalists are pledging to keep the effort alive.
“We are going to keep on pushing and keep on pushing and keep on pushing until Nebraska gets winner-take-all,” said conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who appeared alongside several state Republican officials here Tuesday to rally support for the change. “Nebraska could pick a president.”
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, said this week he was open to calling a special legislative session dedicated to making his state’s presidential contest a winner-take-all affair, all but assuring that Trump would collect the full lot of electoral votes. But Pillen said he would do so only “when there is sufficient support in the Legislature to pass it.”
Less than seven months before the November election, the Republican-led effort to change election law in Nebraska, which Democrats have vowed to block, underscores the remarkably close nature of a Biden-Trump rematch and the precarious path to winning a majority in the Electoral College, or 270 electoral votes.
“You have outsiders trying to change the rules – you can’t do that,” said Precious McKesson, the executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party who cast the state’s lone Electoral College vote for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020. “Republicans know that vote is very critical.”
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