While Republicans have a firm hold on Nebraska’s state government, the state’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District has morphed into a swing district in the last 15 years and is the state’s only consistently competitive U.S. House seat.
It is currently held by Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general who is seeking his fourth term in the face of a challenge from Democrat Tony Vargas. Vargas is a state lawmaker from Omaha who has touted his experience as a former teacher and member of the Omaha Public Schools Board. Polls have shown the two locked in a tight race, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee named it one of its top competitive House districts that are either open or held by Republicans.
State Republicans have twice redrawn the district’s boundaries in an attempt to help their party’s candidates, in part because of embarrassment that under Nebraska’s unique Electoral College rules, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the 2nd District vote in 2008 and Democrat Joe Biden did the same in 2020.
Maine is the only other state that has eschewed a winner-take-all approach and allows its electoral votes to be split between candidates. Republicans were expected to have less trouble keeping control of Nebraska’s two other congressional districts.
Republicans maintain strong control of statewide offices in Nebraska, which hasn’t elected a Democrat as governor since 1994. But Democrats are hoping to retain enough legislative seats in the officially nonpartisan, one-house legislature to maintain filibuster pressure on the GOP’s agenda. That agenda includes a plan to pass a near total abortion ban, as other Republican-controlled states have done in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last June.
