Nebraska has 93 counties and 91 of them voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2021. Trump beat Hillary 495,961 (58.7%) to 284,494 (33.7%) and then beat Biden 556,846 (58.5%) to 374,583 (39.4%). Five counties gave Trump over 90% of their vote. Can you imagine that? Just imagine living someplace like that... with neighbor like that!
Grant- 93.3% (21% fully vaccinated)
Hayes- 92.2% (26% fully vaccinated)
Arthur- 91.2% (20% fully vaccinated)
McPherson- 91.1% Trump (15% fully vaccinated)
Logan- 90.4% Trump (22% fully vaccinated)
Would you say that these 5 counties-- and several dozen like them-- are cancers growing and spreading inside the U.S.? I would. Watchful waiting? Too advanced for that. Chemo? Impossible. Radiation? Impossible. Surgery? Impossible. Charles W. Herbster? That might be it! Something so horrible that even Grant, Hayes, Arthur, McPerson and Logan counties might be cured after a dose! But probably not.
Herbster is a proudly ignorant college drop-out who inherited the family farm and is best known as one of the biggest proponents of non-sustainable farming, a veritable over-fertilizering and deep plowing destroy-the-earth advocate. Aside from being stupid, self-absorbed and selfish, he's rich, entitled, reactionary and incredibly bigoted. Herbster, a Trump rural advisor, was one of the coup planners and directors and should be in prison. Instead he's running for governor of Nebraska with Trump's endorsement. On January 5 he participated in the coup planning session at Trump's hotel down the street from the White House with the other major plotters: Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, David Bossie, Corey Lewandowski, Peter Navarro, Adam Piper. He was at the pre-insurrection rally and then pointedly flew to Mar-A-Lago with Trump Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle as the deadly attack they planned on the Capitol began.
A life-long sex predator and pedophile, Herbster is running the most divisive gubernatorial campaign in Nebraska's history, based largely on his full-throated racism and attacks predicated around every ugly issue Trump has ever dredged up. This morning, Reid Epstein reported that Herbster's campaign is basically: TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! Epstein wrote that "Like his political role model-- and chief backer-- 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, 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, 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. Trump’s endorsement of Herbster, a major donor to Trump’s political career, isn’t just the first-time candidate’s top credential-- it is his campaign’s entire rationale. Trump’s name is on Herbster’s lawn signs, ads and billboards. Herbster spent Friday stumping across western Nebraska with Steven Moore, the former Trump economic adviser who is a minor Trumpworld celebrity. 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,” 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.”
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.
...Trump has thrown his full weight behind Herbster. On Sunday, he traveled to Nebraska for a rally and appeared on a conference call for Herbster supporters Thursday night, where he cast Herbster’s rivals as “Republicans in name only.”
“Charles was a die-hard MAGA champion,” 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.”
...[Gov] Ricketts, who tried talking Trump out of endorsing Herbster last year, is blunt about his opposition to Herbster’s bid. He considers the groping allegations disqualifying. Should Herbster win the Republican nomination, Ricketts will not endorse him unless he “apologizes to the women he’s done this to,” he said in an interview.
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 Herbster had little interest in anything other than trying to emulate 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 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 Herbster’s payroll after leaving office. He hasn’t yet made an endorsement.
Pillen downplayed Trump’s influence in the race.
“Nebraskans, we like to figure things out and solve our own problems and think for ourselves,” he said.
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 Trump, said he’d prefer “a new face” in 2024.
While Nebraska’s Republican primaries are typically decided by conservative rural voters who are deeply loyal to Trump, Lindstrom, a wonky financial adviser, is betting his campaign on appealing to urban professionals around Omaha-- where 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,” Lindstrom said. “That isn’t really healthy.”
...Like Trump, 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.”
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 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.”
There are no legitimate polls available by all the Republican polling firms in the field show a tight race. The 2 most recent polls are by WPA Intelligence, a GOP firm working for Pillen and both show Pillen in the lead and gaining traction. The poll released last week:
Pillen- 31% (up from 24%)
Herbster- 26% (up from 23%)
Lindstrom- 16% (down from 20%)
There is no good choice in Nebraska, just degrees of evil. You can pick between hard core fascism or conservatism.
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