Nebraska State Sen. Deb Fischer

Nebraska held their pri­maries Tues­day, and there was a major upset: a little-​​known rancher and State Sen­a­tor in Nebraska’s uni­cam­eral leg­is­la­ture won out over two estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can candidates.

State Sen­a­tor Deb Fis­cher (R-​​Valentine, NE) eas­ily won a three-​​way con­test, with 41 per­cent of the vote. For­mer front-​​runner Attor­ney Gen­eral Jon Brun­ing was sec­ond with 36 per­cent, and State Trea­surer Don Sten­berg was third with 19 percent.

Brun­ing staked out a posi­tion far to the right of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. For exam­ple, he pub­licly attacked the sup­posed “Uncon­sti­tu­tional Assault on Reli­gious Lib­erty” rep­re­sented by a 12-​​year-​​old rule based on a 33-​​year-​​old law sup­pos­edly “requir­ing” reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to cover con­tra­cep­tion. I’ve writ­ten before (here and here) about the cor­rupt and cyn­i­cal posi­tion taken by major Repub­li­can law­mak­ers on this issue.

Appar­ently, Brun­ing was still too much of a social­ist run­ning dog for Sen­a­tor Jim DeMint (R-​​SC) and the Club for Growth, both of whom poured a huge amount of money into Stenberg’s cam­paign. Accord­ing to them, Sten­berg, who served as State Attor­ney Gen­eral for 12 years, is a “gen­uine, life­long con­ser­v­a­tive” who is con­cerned that we need to “Take Back Amer­ica” [sic] from social­ist run­ning dog Sen­a­tor Ben Nel­son (D-​​NE). Nel­son is appar­ently even more social­ist, a faster run­ner, and more canine than social­ist run­ning dogs like Bruning.

Despite an endorse­ment from Sen­a­tor Rand Paul (R-​​KY) and buck­ets of spend­ing cash, Sten­berg stum­bled badly. He received $1.4 mil­lion from the Sen­ate Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund PAC (con­trolled by DeMint) and $722,000 from the Club for Growth — huge amounts of money in a state with just a few, inex­pen­sive media mar­kets. In spite of this — or per­haps because of it — Stenberg’s gen­uine, life­long con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage failed to res­onate with vot­ers in a deeply con­ser­v­a­tive state.

Nebraska has a Cook Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index (PVI) of R+13, tying it (with Alabama and Alaska) for fifth place among the most Repub­li­can states. (Utah and Wyoming are R+20; Okla­homa and Idaho are R+17.) It would seem that Nebraska would be a fer­tile ground for a Tea Party– and Club for Growth-​​supported can­di­date like Stenberg.

DeMint’s ulti­mately fruit­less spend­ing spree pro­duced a rare and espe­cially bit­ter rebuke from his col­league, Sen­a­tor Mike Johanns (R-​​NE):

The ques­tion I’d get asked as I get around the state: ‘Who is this guy [DeMint] and why he is spend­ing this money to elect peo­ple in our state?’ … I just think it was a poor choice of strat­egy. I don’t think they under­stood the state. Peo­ple hate that kind of stuff in our state, and so they recoiled, they looked for an alternative.

DeMint was unapolo­getic as he turned the attack on the social­ist run­ning dog RINO Brun­ing, who appar­ently is a “bad” con­ser­v­a­tive, not a “good” conservative:

The whole estab­lish­ment here was for Brun­ing. If we were going to get a good con­ser­v­a­tive out of Nebraska, we had to get involved. If we hadn’t, Brun­ing would be the nominee.

I’ve writ­ten about über-​​conservative over­reach in red­dest Utah. Two states don’t make a trend, but it is inter­est­ing that both Utah and Nebraska seem to be trend­ing toward unher­alded female out­sider can­di­dates in Repub­li­can cau­cuses and pri­maries. One could put South Car­olina Gov­er­nor Nikki Haley, elected in 2010, in the same cat­e­gory. (Haley has only a 38 per­cent approval rat­ing among South Car­olini­ans, but the state leg­is­la­ture has an even lower approval. Sound famil­iar?) Both Fis­cher and Haley were endorsed by Sarah Palin.

Still, Politico’s Manu Raju quoted Nebraska polit­i­cal observers as say­ing Brun­ing was the most mod­er­ate of the three Repub­li­cans in the race, an obser­va­tion which seems to be sup­ported by their pub­lic posi­tions on the issues.

Bob Ker­rey

Now the Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date, for­mer Sen­a­tor, for­mer Gov­er­nor, and for­mer third-​​tier Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bob Ker­rey, has a real fight on his hands. Vot­ers thus far seem to be reject­ing his image as a pro­fes­sional politi­cian choos­ing Bruning’s rel­a­tive inex­pe­ri­ence over Kerrey’s thick résumé. The only recent polling from the Bruning-​​Kerrey race since Tues­day is from Ras­mussen Reports, who puts Fis­cher at 56 per­cent and Ker­rey at 38 per­cent, an 18-​​point advan­tage for the insur­gent. Older Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling and Ras­mussen polls have Fis­cher at ten or 12 points over Ker­rey, so she may be get­ting a bump from her pri­mary win. Even account­ing for Rasmussen’s house bias, that’s a sub­stan­tial lead for a rel­a­tive unknown and indi­cates that Kerrey’s unfa­vor­ables may be too strong for him to overcome.

Fis­cher, on the other hand, is well-​​respected. Valen­tine, where she owns and man­ages a ranch, is in rural north cen­tral Nebraska, near the South Dakota bor­der. She has a sense of humor, as evinced by her endorse­ment of an unof­fi­cial pri­mary cam­paign slogan:

More fun than Don, safer than Jon — vote Deb Fis­cher for Senate.

Even Democ­rats take her seri­ously. For exam­ple, Demo­c­ra­tic leader (and Valen­tine neigh­bor) Bud Pet­ti­grew says of her:

She’s smart, she’s tough. She can work, she’ll work it hard. She gets her bills through, she’s respected. She’s tea party, but she won’t say dumb things. I don’t think she’s always the nicest per­son, but she’s tough. I respect her.

Bar­ring a strong Ker­rey come­back, expect a Repub­li­can pickup of this seat. The Democ­rats’ already tough path to hold­ing on to Sen­ate con­trol just got a lit­tle tougher.

 

Note: Fis­cher was mis-​​identified as “Brun­ing” in both the photo cap­tion and the Palin endorse­ment. I have fixed those now. Sorry for the errors.

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