Subterms
The Republican primary is a three-way dead heat between Charles W. Herbster, a businessman backed by former President Donald J. Trump; Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent supported by outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts; and Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who appeals to the party’s moderate wing. The race has been roiled by allegations that […] More
LINCOLN, Neb. — In the old days, Charles W. Herbster, a cattle baron and bull semen tycoon who used his fortune and influence to get into Donald Trump’s good graces, almost certainly would have been forced to pull out of Nebraska’s Republican primary for governor by now. In recent weeks, eight women, including a state senator, have come forward to allege that Mr. Herbster groped them at various Republican events or at beauty pageants at which he was a judge.But this is post-shame, post-“Access Hollywood” America, so Mr. Trump traveled to Nebraska last week for a rally at the I-80 Speedway between Lincoln and Omaha to show his continued support for Mr. Herbster. “He is innocent of these despicable charges,” Mr. Trump said. And Mr. Herbster, in true Trump fashion, has not only denied the allegations but also filed a defamation suit against one of his accusers and started running a television ad suggesting that the claims are part of a political conspiracy.Mr. Herbster sees conspiracies everywhere — conspiracies to destroy him, conspiracies to undermine Mr. Trump, conspiracies to unravel the very fabric of the nation. “This country is in a war within the borders of the country,” he told the crowd at the Starlite Event Center in Wahoo on Thursday, a few days before Tuesday’s primary election. Over more than an hour, Mr. Herbster, dressed in his trademark cowboy hat and vest, unspooled a complex and meandering tale of the threat to America, interspersed with labyrinthine personal yarns and long diatribes about taxes.It was convoluted but (as best I can understand) goes something like this: The coronavirus was manufactured in a lab in China and released into the United States in early 2020 by “illegals” from Mexico who were also smuggling Chinese-made fentanyl across the border. One of the smugglers, he said, had enough fentanyl in a single backpack to kill the entire population of Nebraska and South Dakota. The goal of this two-pronged attack, he explained, was to create a panic, stoked by Facebook and $400 million of Mark Zuckerberg’s money, to justify allowing voting by mail. Then, through unspecified means, the Chinese government used those mail-in ballots to steal the election — though Mr. Herbster hates that word. “They didn’t ‘steal’ it,” he told the crowd, his finger raised. “Do not use that terminology. They did not ‘steal’ it. They rigged it.”To state the obvious: This is not what political speech in Nebraska used to sound like.Mr. Herbster is challenging the allegations of eight women that he groped them.Mary Anne AndreiFor half a century, from 1959 to the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in 2009, my home state, the state near the geographical middle of the country, prided itself on being politically centrist as well. Over that span, it elected four Democrats and three Republicans to the U.S. Senate. We had six Republican governors and five Democratic. The congressional delegations were predominately Republican, but Omaha and Lincoln elected Democrats as their mayors more often than not. The Nebraska Legislature remains officially nonpartisan, and as the country’s only unicameral legislature, it forced lawmakers for many years to engage in a politics of pragmatism.Now, Nebraska is so unfailingly Republican that the party’s primaries most often determine the outcomes of statewide races. How did the state become so right wing and devoted to Mr. Trump?Part of the answer is that Nebraska’s Democrats of a generation ago were never very liberal. They were usually socially moderate, pro-business, pro-military white guys, making them all but indistinguishable from old-line, Chamber of Commerce Republicans from the coasts. Senator Edward Zorinsky aggressively advocated military aid for Nicaragua during the Carter years. Senator Bob Kerrey voted for NAFTA. Senator Ben Nelson cast his vote in favor of Obamacare only after Senator Harry Reid promised him tens of millions in federal funding for Nebraska that came to be known as the Cornhusker Kickback.But it wasn’t just the Democrats who were middle of the road. Even our Republican senators were sometimes so moderate that you could barely distinguish them from centrist Democrats. Chuck Hagel, for example, was a two-term Republican senator during Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s presidencies but later was Mr. Obama’s secretary of defense. Likewise, our Republican governors were fiscally and socially conservative, but they generally avoided the culture wars.Mr. Herbster told the crowd in Wahoo that that era is over. “This isn’t the good-old Dave Heineman days. This isn’t the good-old Charles Thone days. This isn’t the good-old Exon days,” he said, invoking the names of three centrist Nebraska governors, including J. James Exon, a Democrat who won over many Republicans by opposing tax increases and gay rights during the Carter administration.For half a century, Nebraska was politically centrist. According to Mr. Herbster, that era is over.Mary Anne AndreiIn Nebraska — as in the rest of the country — the polarization seemed to hasten about the time that Mr. Obama won the presidency. To be sure, much of the hardening against the Democratic Party specifically and ideals of tolerance and diversity more generally can be attributed to an unholy stew of angry commentary on Fox News, algorithmic political siloing on Facebook and the subsuming of Nebraska’s independent newspapers and television stations by Lee Enterprises and the Sinclair Broadcast Group.But Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, also attributes the extreme partisan vitriol to the Democratic National Committee’s decision to shift its resources away from rural red states like Nebraska, which was in part because Mr. Obama had slashed the committee’s resources.“Obama hated the D.N.C.,” Ms. Kleeb told me, “because he feels like they stabbed him in the back” by supporting Hillary Clinton over his upstart campaign in the 2008 presidential primary. Distrustful of the Democratic machine — and the party brand — Mr. Obama turned fund-raising efforts away from the D.N.C. and focused on building “progressive” organizations like Organizing for America, she said. But that created two problems.First, now cash-poor, the committee began to spend more selectively. In Nebraska, the monthly allotment went from $25,000 to $2,500. That 90 percent cut in party funding, Ms. Kleeb said, meant that Republican talking points often went unchallenged. “You’re not doing any organizing,” she said, “not because you don’t want to, not because you don’t know how to organize or create good messages, but because you don’t have the money to do it.”Second, Democrats were forced to push hard for bipartisan support on key issues, which often further muddled their messaging. Left-leaning state senators in Nebraska, for example, joined with conservative senators to ban the death penalty in 2015. (A subsequent ballot measure restored it.) In 2016 and 2017, the progressive environmentalist and pro-small-farm group Nebraska Communities United fought against the construction of a massive poultry-processing plant on the flood plain of the Lower Platte River by partnering with a local group that was afraid the plant would be staffed by Black Muslim immigrants from Somalia. Ms. Kleeb herself, when she was the director of Bold Nebraska, one of those progressive groups, helped to block the Keystone XL pipeline not by talking about its climate impact but by joining with conservative ranchers who were outraged that the power of eminent domain had been granted to a foreign corporation. The problem with that strategy over time, Ms. Kleeb acknowledges now, is that voters often walked away confused. “They don’t even know where the Democratic Party stands,” she said.Without a Democratic counterbalance, Republican primaries now determine most state races in Nebraska, so candidates are pulled further and further to the right in order to appease and appeal to an increasingly radical and angry base. In this year’s governor’s race, for example, Mr. Herbster’s top competitor, Jim Pillen, would seem to check all of the appropriate boxes for a Republican nominee in Nebraska. He’s endorsed by the current governor, Pete Ricketts. He is one of the largest hog producers in the country. He even played football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers during the glory years under Tom Osborne, who later represented Nebraska’s Third Congressional District.But as Mr. Herbster’s poll numbers have surged, Mr. Pillen has veered to the right, attacking “liberal professor groups” (though he is a member and former chair of the University of Nebraska’s Board of Regents) and running TV ads with an endorsement from the comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Last week, he posted on Twitter that he was the “only candidate to take action against CRT,” the “only candidate willing to fight the radical transgender agenda” and the “only candidate willing to call abortion what it is — murder.” (A third major candidate, Brett Lindstrom, has struck a less strident tone but holds many of the same beliefs.)Donald Trump praised Mr. Herbster at a rally in Greenwood, Neb., on May 1.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesThe crowd where Mr. Trump spoke.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesEven with that hard-line rhetoric, it will be hard for Mr. Pillen to beat Mr. Herbster’s direct endorsement from Mr. Trump. Thursday night, after the tables and chairs had been put away at the Starlite Event Center, the Herbster campaign hosted a call-in “telerally” with Mr. Trump, in which Mr. Trump praised the businessman as “a die-hard MAGA champ” and guaranteed that Mr. Herbster would “never bend to the RINOs” — Republicans in name only — like “Little Ben Sasse,” Nebraska’s junior senator, and Representative Don Bacon, whom Mr. Trump derided as “another beauty.” During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Sasse voted with him 85 percent of the time. Mr. Bacon voted with him 89 percent of the time. But Mr. Trump has considered both to be insufficiently loyal to him personally, and their political futures may be in jeopardy as a result. If so, they will be replaced by politicians who are more brazen in their contempt for the Democratic Party and for democratic ideals. That’s why the outcome of Nebraska’s Republican governor’s primary is almost immaterial.Yes, whoever emerges with the nomination will most likely become the next governor. And it would appear that Mr. Herbster retains the inside track, thanks to Mr. Trump — just as the former president has buoyed Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker to the top of their primary Senate races in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lifted J.D. Vance from a packed Republican field in the Senate primary in Ohio. But it doesn’t matter whether these candidates actually win or not, because their conspiratorial and inflammatory rhetoric has overtaken the discourse, pushing all Republican candidates further and further toward the fringe. Regardless of how the final balloting turns out in Nebraska on Tuesday, the real victor will be Donald Trump.Republican primaries now determine most state races in Nebraska.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesTed Genoways (@TedGenoways) is the author, most recently, of “This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm.” Starting this fall, he will be a president’s professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
Republican voters in the two states will choose nominees for governor and the House in races that pit Trump-backed candidates against rivals supported by each state’s governor.Two states are holding primary elections on Tuesday. In one, Joe Biden couldn’t crack 40 percent of the vote in 2020; in the other, he couldn’t even get to 30 percent.You guessed it: Most of the action is on the Republican side.In West Virginia, two Republican incumbents are battling for a newly drawn congressional district. In Nebraska, the Republican primary for governor has become a dead heat among three candidates.Across the aisle in Nebraska, Democrats are preparing to take another crack at an Omaha-based House seat — one with particular national relevance, considering it’s the one congressional district in the state that gave Joe Biden an Electoral College vote in 2020.Here’s what we’re watching.Trump’s endorsement battles with sitting G.O.P. governors Because Nebraska and West Virginia are so deeply Republican, the winners of Tuesday’s Republican primaries will be heavily favored to win in the November general election. The results will probably decide whether acolytes of Donald Trump will be elected to Congress and state executive offices.“That’s why all the attention is on the primary,” said Sam Fischer, a Republican strategist in Nebraska.Trump notched a victory in Ohio last week when J.D. Vance surged to the top of a crowded Republican primary after being endorsed by the former president. On Tuesday, the power of a Trump endorsement will be put to the test again.But in Nebraska and West Virginia, two of the candidates who lack support from Trump have a different asset: an endorsement from the state’s current governor.Unlike in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine declined to endorse a Senate candidate as he faced a primary challenge of his own, the Republican governors of Nebraska and West Virginia appear to have had few qualms about endorsing candidates overlooked by Trump. In fact, both leaders — Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia — have publicly criticized Trump’s endorsement decisions in their respective states.In Nebraska, Trump backed Charles Herbster, a wealthy owner of an agriculture company. Ricketts, the departing governor, is term-limited, and has not only thrown his support behind a different candidate — Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent — but also publicly disparaged Herbster.In West Virginia, Governor Justice threw his support to Representative David McKinley in the state’s House race after Trump had endorsed Representative Alex Mooney. Justice recently said he thought Trump had made a mistake.Which is more important in G.O.P. races: The messenger or the message?In both West Virginia and Nebraska, the candidates endorsed by the governor have accused Trump’s picks of being outsiders.McKinley calls his Trump-backed opponent “Maryland Mooney,” drawing attention to the congressman’s past in the Maryland Legislature and in the Maryland Republican Party. Keeping with the “M” theme, Pillen has criticized his rival as “Missouri Millionaire Charles Herbster,” citing reports that Herbster has a residence in Missouri.But if the messenger is more important than the message, the candidates endorsed by Trump have the edge.Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has worked with Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush, said that with high Republican enthusiasm this year, he expected strong turnout, meaning that some voters who would normally turn out only during a presidential race — that is, when Trump is on the ticket — are likely to vote in the midterms.Those voters are some of Trump’s most loyal followers — and some of the most wary of any other politician, Jennings said.“These are the new Trump Republicans who came into the party with him, and these are the people least likely to care what an establishment or incumbent politician would say,” he said.Two Republican candidates for governor in Nebraska, Brett Lindstrom, left, and Jim Pillen, at an election forum in Lincoln.Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressIn Nebraska, the feud between Herbster and Pillen might have an unintended consequence. While they compete to be the Trumpiest and most authentically local candidates, voters could tire of the political sniping and throw their support behind Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who is the third main contender.“The main question is, are Nebraska primary voters going to ignore the negative attacks by Herbster and Pillen?” said Fischer, the Republican strategist in the state. “And will Lindstrom benefit from that?”There would be precedent. In a Republican primary for Senate in Nebraska in 2012, Deb Fischer won a narrow race after a bitter battle between two other candidates. And in another G.O.P. Senate primary in Indiana in 2018, two of the state’s congressmen engaged in a prolonged feud stemming from college decades earlier. Exhausted voters went with the little-known Mike Braun, now the state’s junior senator.How much do sexual misconduct allegations matter in Republican primaries? While Herbster has the most prized asset in the primary — Trump’s endorsement — he also faces the most serious questions about his personal history. Two women, including a Republican state senator, have publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019.Herbster has taken an approach long embraced by Trump, denying the allegations and calling them a political hit job by his detractors.How voters respond to the allegations could signal — at least in Nebraska — where the G.O.P. base stands in tolerating candidates accused of mistreating women.“If you can win with these allegations in Nebraska, you can probably win anywhere,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist. But if Herbster loses, DuHaime said, Trump can point to the allegations against him as the culprit, rather than the waning power of his endorsement.Later this year in Georgia, another Trump-endorsed candidate who has faced allegations of domestic violence, Herschel Walker, is running for Senate, though he does not face a competitive primary.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More
“This is a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment in America against President Donald J. Trump.”CHARLES W. HERBSTER, a Trump ally whose candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Nebraska has shaken the party. More
Charles W. Herbster’s bid for governor has set off a bitter fight for power in a state once known for its genteel politics.WAHOO, Neb. — In his run for governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Herbster is doing his best imitation of former President Donald J. Trump.His 90-minute stump speech is packed with complaints about illegal immigrants, stories boasting of his business triumphs, a conspiracy theory connecting China, the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election, and denials of the recent accusations that he’s groped women at political events.He even vows to clean up the “swamp” — but he means Lincoln, the state capital.Like his political role model — and chief backer — Mr. Herbster is proving to be a one-man political wrecking ball. In a state long known for genteel, collaborative politics and, for the last 24 years, one-party rule, Mr. Herbster’s bid has cracked his party into three camps, with Trump supporters, establishment conservatives and business-friendly moderates battling for power. A major donor for years to conservative candidates, Mr. Herbster has been abandoned by longtime political allies and seen his running mate quit his ticket to run for governor herself. The allegations of groping are coming from fellow Republicans.Behind all the drama is a question with resonance far beyond Nebraska. Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Herbster, a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political career, isn’t just the first-time candidate’s top credential — it is his campaign’s entire rationale. Mr. Trump’s name is on Mr. Herbster’s lawn signs, ads and billboards. Mr. Herbster spent Friday stumping across western Nebraska with Steven Moore, the former Trump economic adviser who is a minor Trumpworld celebrity.Mr. Herbster is about to find out if a Trump endorsement alone is enough to win a major Republican primary.“This is a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment in America against President Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Herbster, who campaigns wearing a white cowboy hat and a black vest bearing the logo of his cattle semen business, said in an interview Thursday. “Anybody who the establishment cannot control, they are fearful of.”Mr. Herbster, a longtime Trump ally who was with members of the Trump family during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is running against Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who is backed by the state’s powerful Ricketts family political machine, and Brett Lindstrom, a youthful state senator who has consolidated support from the party’s remaining moderates and Democrats. More than 8,000 Democrats have switched parties in recent weeks to have some influence on a governor’s contest in an overwhelmingly Republican state. Polling in the final days before Tuesday’s vote shows the race is a three-way dead heat.One of Mr. Herbster’s rivals, Jim Pillen, is backed by Nebraska’s powerful Ricketts family political machine.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesIf Ohio’s recent Senate primary is a guide, the three-way race is working in Mr. Herbster’s favor. The Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate, J.D. Vance, won in a crowded field, taking less than one-third of the vote. (There’s precedent for this in Nebraska. Eight years ago, Gov. Pete Ricketts won the nomination with just over a quarter of the vote.)But Mr. Trump’s touch is looking less golden in other states, particularly in two-way contests for governor. In Georgia, former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s choice, is lagging far behind Gov. Brian Kemp in polling, leading Mr. Trump to distance himself from that campaign. In Idaho, the former president has backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s challenge against Gov. Brad Little. Ms. McGeachin has struggled to gain traction, and Mr. Trump hasn’t mentioned her since his endorsement in November.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster. On Sunday, he traveled to Nebraska for a rally and appeared on a conference call for Herbster supporters Thursday night, where he cast Mr. Herbster’s rivals as “Republicans in name only.”“Charles was a die-hard MAGA champion,” Mr. Trump said on the call. “When you vote for Charles in the primary, you can give a stinging rebuke to the RINOs and sellouts and the losers who are so poorly representing your state.”Like Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Mr. Herbster is facing accusations that he has mistreated women and tried to use that fact to gain support. . Two women, including a state senator, publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019. Mr. Herbster has denied the claims and broadcast a TV ad slamming his accuser.“Any allegation that was sent my way is 100 percent totally false,” he said in an interview.He has repeatedly blamed the accusations on Mr. Ricketts, a conservative two-term incumbent who cannot run again because of term limits. The Ricketts family has feuded with Mr. Trump. It spent millions on a last-ditch effort to block Mr. Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016; Trump then said the family better “be careful.”Mr. Ricketts, who tried talking Mr. Trump out of endorsing Mr. Herbster last year, is blunt about his opposition to Mr. Herbster’s bid. He considers the groping allegations disqualifying. Should Mr. Herbster win the Republican nomination, Mr. Ricketts will not endorse him unless he “apologizes to the women he’s done this to,” he said in an interview.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster, traveling to Nebraska for a rally on Sunday. He has called the candidate’s rivals “Republicans in name only.”Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster was facing criticism well before the allegations. Some Republicans bristled at his focus on the sort of divisive cultural issues that don’t typically dominate the political conservation in the state. He campaigns on eliminating sex education in Nebraska’s public schools, cracking down on illegal immigration and curbing China’s influence.In July, his running mate, the former state senator Theresa Thibodeau, quit the ticket and later jumped into the race herself. She said Mr. Herbster had little interest in anything other than trying to emulate Mr. Trump.“If you want to lead the state, you should get your knowledge up on policies that affect our state,” she said on Thursday. “He had no initiative or willingness to do that.”But Mr. Herbster’s message resonated with Trump conservatives, and soon one of his rivals followed suit. Mr. Pillen, a 66-year-old former defensive back for the University of Nebraska’s football team with a grandfatherly demeanor, promised to ban critical race theory at the University of Nebraska and bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports or using women’s bathrooms.“Both the Pillen and the Herbster campaigns have focused on national issues of which they have little control over and they should have been more focused on state issues,” said former Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican who was on Mr. Herbster’s payroll after leaving office. He hasn’t yet made an endorsement.Mr. Pillen downplayed Mr. Trump’s influence in the race.“Nebraskans, we like to figure things out and solve our own problems and think for ourselves,” he said.Mr. Lindstrom, a 41-year-old state senator who also played football for Nebraska, is running a campaign transported from the pre-Trump era. He highlights cooperation with Democrats in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature and, while he said he had no regrets about voting twice for Mr. Trump, said he’d prefer “a new face” in 2024.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Brett Lindstrom said of the Trump era.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesWhile Nebraska’s Republican primaries are typically decided by conservative rural voters who are deeply loyal to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lindstrom, a wonky financial adviser, is betting his campaign on appealing to urban professionals around Omaha — where Mr. Trump lost one of the state’s Electoral College votes to President Biden.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “That isn’t really healthy.”At a Wednesday fund-raiser for Mr. Lindstrom at an upscale Italian restaurant in Omaha, about half of the two dozen people interviewed said they voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. A handful had switched parties to vote for Mr. Lindstrom in the primary.Allen Frederickson, the chief executive of a health care company who became a Republican to vote for Mr. Lindstrom, said electing Mr. Herbster would make it hard to recruit workers to Nebraska’s booming economy, which has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate.“Trumpism would impact our internal and external image as a state,” he said. “We need Nebraska to be an appealing state from a business perspective.”Mr. Herbster makes little effort to appeal outside of the Trump constituency. He begins his speeches, whether to Trump-hatted supporters in Wahoo or bankers in the Omaha suburbs, by offering “greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.”Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Herbster casts doubt on the legitimacy of American elections. In Wahoo, he posited an outlandish theory about the former president’s loss.“This is the truth,” he told supporters. “The pandemic came from China. It was timed perfectly to make sure that they could rig the elections so Mark Zuckerberg could put $400 million into the toll the last four months of the election. Because whether you like it or not, they didn’t want Donald J. Trump to be president for two terms, that’s exactly what happened.”Mr. Herbster has little use for or interest in the traditions of Nebraska politics. He called for ending the state’s system of nonpartisan elections, eliminating the state board of education and said that, on his first day in office, he’d demand the tourism bureau change its quirky slogan: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”The question Nebraska’s Republican primary voters will settle on Tuesday is whether any of that matters — or matters more than Mr. Trump’s stamp of approval.“It’s everything,” said former Representative Lee Terry of Omaha, a Herbster supporter. “There’s a lot of Trump people in Nebraska.” More
Charles W. Herbster, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump for Nebraska governor, was accused of groping a second woman at a 2019 Republican fund-raising event. He denies both allegations.A second woman has publicly accused Charles W. Herbster, the Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, of groping her at a 2019 Republican fund-raising dinner.Elizabeth Todsen said Mr. Herbster grabbed her at the dinner in Omaha and said details of the incident reported earlier this month by the Nebraska Examiner were correct.“For years I have struggled with an experience I had with Charles W. Herbster,” she said in a statement issued by her lawyer. “At a political event in 2019, Herbster sexually groped me while greeting my table.”The allegations against Mr. Herbster, a millionaire agribusiness executive who is largely self-funding his campaign, have roiled the often polite world of Nebraska politics ahead of the state’s May 10 primary. The longtime Trump ally has adopted the former president’s playbook in responding to the allegations, forcefully denying them, suing his first public accuser, a state senator, and tying her to his political rivals.A spokeswoman for Mr. Herbster’s campaign, Emily Novotny, said Mr. Herbster “absolutely and unequivocally denies all allegations.” She said he “will be taking legal action” against Ms. Todsen. Mr. Herbster is a bitter political rival of Gov. Pete Ricketts, a term-limited Republican who like Mr. Herbster has long been a major donor to Nebraska Republicans. Mr. Ricketts is supporting Jim Pillen, a member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Limited public polling of the race shows Mr. Herbster and Mr. Pillen locked in a virtual three-way tie with Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who has attracted support from moderate Republicans and from some Democrats who have changed their party affiliation to vote in the primary.The account from Ms. Todsen follows an accusation earlier this month from Julie Slama, a Nebraska state senator who said Mr. Herbster also grabbed her at the same event.Ms. Todsen, 26, is a former political aide to Nebraska state legislators who now works for a fund-raising company in Washington. She did not respond to messages on Saturday and her lawyer, Tara Tesmer Paulson of Lincoln, Neb., said she would make no additional comments.Mr. Herbster denied Ms. Slama’s account and has since aired television ads tying her to his political rivals in the governor’s race while comparing himself to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, who both faced charges of improper behavior during their confirmation hearings. Mr. Herbster’s TV ad claims Ms. Slama kept in contact with him after the incident and “even invited Herbster to her destination wedding.”Ms. Slama said on Twitter on Saturday that she was “grateful for Elizabeth’s bravery in coming forward.”Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump are scheduled to appear together at a rally on Sunday in Greenwood, Neb. The event was originally planned for Friday night but Mr. Trump moved it, he said, because of storms forecast for the area.Kirsten Noyes More
The state senator, Julie Slama, confirmed a news report saying that Charles Herbster, a leading candidate for governor, had touched her inappropriately in 2019. He denied the allegations.A Republican state senator in Nebraska said on Thursday that she had been groped three years ago by a fellow Republican who is now a leading candidate in the party’s primary election for governor next month.The candidate, Charles Herbster, denied the allegations from the state senator, Julie Slama, calling them “100 percent false.”Ms. Slama issued her statement after The Nebraska Examiner published an article about the alleged incident, which she said had occurred at a Douglas County Republican Party dinner in April 2019.“Today’s Nebraska Examiner report about Charles Herbster sexually assaulting me in 2019, when I was 22 years old, is true,” Ms. Slama said, adding that she had “prayed I would never have to relive this trauma.”She said that when the news outlet asked her about what had happened, “I was not going to deny the truth.” Ms. Slama’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In February, she referred to the alleged assault during a speech on the floor of the Legislature, though she did not name Mr. Herbster at the time.Mr. Herbster, who owns a large agricultural company and was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump ahead of the May 10 primary election, said in a statement that the allegations were “a ridiculous, unfounded dirty political trick” being carried out by his political opponents in the state, including Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican.“For over 30 years, I’ve employed hundreds of people,” Mr. Herbster said. “I’ve respected and empowered women to run my company, my farm and now my campaign. Not once has my integrity EVER been challenged in this manner.” Later, he told a local radio station: “They did it with Brett Kavanaugh. They certainly did it with Donald J. Trump and now they’re trying to do it with Charles W. Herbster.”Mr. Herbster’s campaign manager, Ellen Keast, issued a separate statement that “unequivocally” denied the allegations and accused Mr. Ricketts at greater length of being behind the story. Ms. Keast noted that Mr. Ricketts and Ms. Slama had political ties; she worked as press secretary on his 2018 campaign for governor before he appointed her to the Legislature the next year.Asked to respond, Mr. Ricketts said in an interview: “Well, I would read the article. I have rarely seen an article on this topic that is so extensively corroborated by witnesses.” Referring to Ms. Slama’s decision to speak publicly about the alleged incident, he said, “It’s probably one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen.”Mr. Ricketts said that Mr. Herbster “should seek help and he should resign from his campaign.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Ricketts later said that the governor had learned of the accusations only when the article was published.Mr. Herbster and the Douglas County Republican Party did not immediately respond to messages on Thursday.State Senator Julie Slama in 2019, the year she said the incident occurred.Nati Harnik/Associated PressAccording to the article, Ms. Slama, who was appointed to the Legislature in January 2019, was in a crowded ballroom at the Douglas County Republican Party’s annual Elephant Remembers dinner that April when she walked by Mr. Herbster. The news outlet reported that he then “reached up her skirt, without her consent, and touched her inappropriately.”On Thursday afternoon, after one prominent supporter of Mr. Herbster was quoted on social media asking what Ms. Slama was wearing the night of the Republican dinner, she posted a photograph on Twitter with the message, “This dress is what I was wearing when I was sexually assaulted.”In her February speech, Ms. Slama said, “Early on, when I got into politics at age 22 in Nebraska, I was groped at a political event by someone who was not a member of this body and not a current or former officeholder.”Mentioning other instances of being touched or spoken to inappropriately, Ms. Slama said she often did not speak out about such experiences because “as a young female, you worry that it is going to be the thing that defines you.”The Examiner reported that in addition to Ms. Slama, six other women said Mr. Herbster had touched them inappropriately at various events dating to 2017, and a seventh said he had kissed her forcibly. The women were not identified in the article, and The New York Times could not contact them to independently corroborate their allegations.The Nebraska Examiner, which was formed in January, describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom and as part of a national group bolstering local reporting.Mr. Herbster is among nine Republicans looking to replace Mr. Ricketts, who is term-limited. Mr. Herbster’s campaign has spent more than $4 million so far, the most of any candidate, though Jim Pillen, a veterinarian who owns a large family farm and was endorsed by Mr. Ricketts and Ms. Slama, has a similar sum in his campaign war chest.Mr. Herbster’s campaign has spent $4.8 million on advertising so far, compared with nearly $3.7 million spent by Mr. Pillen’s campaign, according to Ad Impact, a media tracking firm.During the 2016 election, Mr. Trump’s campaign named Mr. Herbster, the chief executive of the Conklin Company, to its agricultural and rural advisory committee along with dozens of other supporters. After Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Herbster for governor, Mr. Ricketts acknowledged that he had asked the former president to “stay out of the race.”Kirsten Noyes More
Representative Tom O’Halleran of Arizona is seeking re-election as his district leans further toward Trump. His strategy? Don’t change. “I am,” he says, “who I am.”Arizona has a history of producing lightning-rod members of Congress, like Representative Paul Gosar. But the Arizona politician you should be paying attention to — and who can potentially tell us a great deal about Democrats’ hopes of avoiding a 2022 wipeout in the House — probably isn’t on your radar.That would be Representative Tom O’Halleran, a Democrat who has been in office since 2017 and who started out his political career as something few Democrats can claim — a Republican.O’Halleran’s district was redrawn in 2020 and became tougher and Trumpier. Many say he’s doomed to fail, but O’Halleran is unfazed. Despite all the challenges Democrats face in the midterms this year — President Biden’s low approval ratings, historical precedent for the party in power, overheating inflation — O’Halleran believes old-fashioned retail politics will come through for him. His approach is an example of the stubborn yet necessary hope that Democrats can both localize and personalize their races in order to overcome a punishing national environment.“I’m not somebody that stokes the fire,” O’Halleran, 76, said in an interview last week. “I’m somebody that tries to keep it in the area where it’s contained so that we can continue to use it effectively.”Even before it was redrawn, O’Halleran’s district, which includes most of eastern Arizona, was highly competitive. Donald Trump carried it in 2016, the year O’Halleran won his seat. He has held it since then thanks in part to recruiting problems by Republicans, who have put forward an array of over-the-top and underwhelming candidates.This year, the Republican primary field includes a former contender on the reality TV show “Shark Tank” and a QAnon conspiracy theorist.But now the district is even friendlier to Republicans: Trump won 53 percent of its voters in 2020. Some Republicans argue that in this political environment, any conservative candidate who wins the primary will win the general election, so it’s less important for the party than it has been in the past to find a superstar candidate.“There’s a limit to how far you can outrun your party before political gravity eventually catches up with you, especially in a year like this,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC.O’Halleran has only so much control over his electoral fate, with the political world anticipating a Republican wave that flips the House. Some Democrats merely hope that O’Halleran and a few of the party’s other candidates in tough races can hold on and deny Republicans an overwhelming majority.In that scenario, O’Halleran is at the front lines of Democrats’ defense, defying the partisanship of his district as he has done multiple times before. And the way the Republican primary is shaking out, it’s very possible that O’Halleran could end up with another weak opponent in the general election.He feels confident either way.“I was a Republican, remember?” he said. “I’m the same person then as I am now. And so I think people will remember that.”‘I am who I am’You won’t find O’Halleran talking about progressive policies on cable news or criticizing his Republican colleagues in the newspaper. It’s all part of his political strategy.A former police officer in Chicago, he was first elected to the Arizona Legislature as a Republican in 2000, and served in both chambers through 2009. After losing his State Senate seat to a more conservative candidate, he unsuccessfully ran to return to the state Legislature as an independent, then ran for the U.S. House as a Democrat in 2016.He claims to do more town hall events than anybody else in Arizona. And while he acknowledges that fame allows some members of Congress to fill their campaign coffers and help build enthusiasm, he says that’s not for him.When asked how he’d respond to concerns from voters about gas prices and inflation, he launched into an explanation that included a description of a chart presented at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, sprinkled with mentions of supply and demand. When asked how he’d fit that message into a 30-second ad, he responded, “What will be in the 30-second campaign ad is my sincerity.”He said this race would come down to how much his constituents trust him, the same as in past races. That’s one reason he’s not changing his approach, even though he now has new constituents.“I am who I am,” he said, adding, “If I start changing because of that, that’s going to say to them I’m willing to make changes based on my ability to get elected versus my ability to help lead.”The competition across the aisleO’Halleran also dismisses the idea that he’s been lucky with his Republican competition over the years.In 2016, he was challenged by a former sheriff who had stepped down from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after being accused of threatening to deport his ex-boyfriend. In 2018, O’Halleran faced an Air Force veteran who had already lost a few House contests. In 2020, a challenger who struggled with fund-raising in 2018 struggled once again.This year, the crowded Republican primary includes Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous QAnon posts. Republicans doubt that Watkins will make it far. He last reported having raised just over $50,000, behind three other Republicans who have made federal campaign filings.But even the candidate perceived to be most appealing to the establishment — Eli Crane, the top Republican fund-raiser — has positions that would be tough to defend with moderates. He’s a former member of the Navy SEALs, former contender on “Shark Tank” and has boasted that he supported decertifying the 2020 election. His top competition for the nomination might be State Representative Walt Blackman, a decorated veteran who once praised the Proud Boys.When asked about the primary field, Republican strategists did not express much excitement, but they were also confident their party would win the seat anyway. And even if a candidate who is underwhelming at fund-raising wins the nomination, they expect outside groups to help out.The expensive Phoenix media market might not have seemed worth the investment in previous years, but with such a promising national environment and the district’s new partisan composition, Republicans expect it’ll be worth the effort this time.“Candidates and campaigns always matter,” said Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican consultant. “Having said that, with the redraw of that congressional district and a hyper-favorable environment for Republicans, I’d say that race is going to be the Republicans’ race to lose in November.”But O’Halleran’s team remains optimistic. Rodd McLeod, a Democratic consultant who is working with O’Halleran, maintains that the congressman’s relationships with constituents run deeper than partisanship.“He could be the guy,” McLeod said, “who outlasted the wave.”What to read Donald Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Trip Gabriel reports.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is split on whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater report.The Biden administration has long been torn over how to handle Trump-era immigration policies, report Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan.Fiona Hill, who advised Trump and his predecessors on Russia, connects the Jan. 6 attack to the invasion of Ukraine, in an article by Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine.at issue“What we have going for us,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska’s Democratic Party chairwoman, “is that we are small — small but mighty.”Walker Pickering for The New York TimesNebraska wants to be the next IowaFor the last 50 years, Nebraska’s role in presidential primaries has largely been as a place with a good airport for traveling to western Iowa.Now, with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation spot in grave peril after the last two Democratic caucuses were flubbed, Nebraska is ready to enter the contest to knock its neighbor off the beginning of the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.“Nebraska is going to go for it,” Jane Kleeb, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, told me.She will lobby her fellow Democratic National Committee members to back Nebraska in jumping to the front of the nominating line, she said. Republicans, meanwhile, remain committed so far to keeping Iowa first.Among the Democrats, Nebraska will have competition. New Jersey offered itself last month to the D.N.C., and Michigan’s Democratic officials are also lobbying to go first.Both are big states dominated by urban areas in expensive media markets. The appeal of the traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — is that they in theory are small enough to build grass-roots campaigns that aren’t just television productions.Kleeb’s pitch is that Nebraska has inexpensive media markets in Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island; a recent record, unlike Iowa, of sending one of its electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidates; a mix of urban, suburban and rural voters; a significant Latino population at 11 percent; and plenty of Fortune 500 companies — and Warren Buffett — to help underwrite party-building in the state.“We know that we will be going up against a big Midwest state like Michigan,” she said. “What we have going for us is that we are small — small but mighty.”A shift from Iowa to Nebraska would keep rural issues front and center for an increasingly urban Democratic Party. Candidates would have to become fluent in pipeline and eminent domain politics, where Kleeb got her political start, and learn to embrace the runza, the unofficial state sandwich of Nebraska.— Leah (Blake is on vacation)Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More
