Nebraska GOP plan to deny Biden an electoral vote picks up momentum

Nebraska Republicans mobilized to change how their state awards electoral votes on Wednesday, with key legislators in Lincoln endorsing the plan and Democrats scrambling to stop it.

As the end of the legislative session approached, Republicans were looking for a way to pass LB764, which would assign all five Nebraska electors to the winner of the statewide vote. Republican Sen. Julie Slama said on Wednesday that she’d add “winner-take-all” to a bill already headed to the floor, before Friday’s deadline for moving it. Democrats said that they still had the votes, and time, to block that.

“The amount of chaos that Trump and his online cronies have created in the last few days of the legislative session where serious bills are being debated is a perfect snapshot of his bullying leadership,” Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb told Semafor. “The bill to remove a fair electoral vote process didn’t have the votes two months ago, two days ago or today. Nebraskans like our unique unicameral, public power and split electoral vote system.”

Lippincott’s bill, which had not moved through committee after it was introduced last year, got new life after Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk endorsed it. In a Tuesday episode of his podcast, and in a post on X, Kirk urged listeners to call key Republicans in the state senate and pressure them to move the bill before the deadline.

Within hours, Gov. Jim Pillen and Donald Trump both endorsed the legislation. On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Ray Aguilar, who Kirk had told listeners could get the idea out of committee, put out a statement supporting it.

“This gives Donald Trump a much bigger and better path to the presidency,” Kirk told Steve Bannon on the Wednesday episode of his War Room podcast. “It’s a no brainer.”

Since 1991, Nebraska has awarded two electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote, and one vote for the winner of each congressional district. In 2008 and 2020, Democrats won the Omaha-based 2nd District, while losing the rest of the state by double digits.

That electoral vote could be especially crucial this cycle, because Biden has a highly plausible path to a 270-268 electoral victory if he wins Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania again, while losing Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. Under a Nebraska “winner-take-all” system, that scenario would produce a 269-269 tie that sends the results to the incoming House of Representatives’ state delegations.

“My staff and I are doing everything we can to seek options for getting this to the finish line,” state Sen. Loren Lippincott, the bill’s Republican sponsor, told Semafor in a statement. “The harsh reality of a 2-day time frame is limiting. I stand in support of this bill and will continue to fight for this in the Nebraska Legislature.”

Democrats were initially dismissive of this campaign yesterday, counting their votes and predicting that Republicans wouldn’t be able to pass it. Even after state Sen. Mike McDonnell left the party on Wednesday, explaining that his Christian beliefs aligned more with the GOP, he told Kleeb that he would oppose the electoral vote change, as well as procedural steps to advance it.

The conservative pressure campaign has shaken that confidence, and Democrats are now talking about ways they could stop the bill. They could filibuster it; if it passes, they could exercise the People’s Right to Referendum, a statute that stops a law from going into effect if 5% of registered voters sign a petition in favor of suspending it.

Eric Underwood, the chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party, told Semafor that he had been lobbying for months for conservatives to get behind the bill, even meeting with then-Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel in November 2023. She did not want the national organization involved in a state issue, he recalled; Underwood had previously opposed her bid for a fourth term leading the committee.

“I have a state I’m trying to protect, and I have a party I want to represent,” said Underwood. “This is in our state platform. My goal was to get this done.”

Everything changed on Tuesday morning, when Underwood got a text from Tyler Bowyer, the COO of Turning Point Action, checking that the legislature was still in session. He talked to Kirk, who urged listeners to “melt the phones” in the state capitol. Kirk and the state GOP are planning to team up for a rally in Omaha this coming Tuesday, which Kirk said would either put pressure on Republicans to move or celebrate a surprise victory that would neuter the Biden campaign in the state.

“If Democrats can hold onto that electoral vote, money can keep flowing into the Nebraska Democratic Party,” said Underwood. “If the state switches to winner take all, why would anybody outside Nebraska donate to them?”

• In Politico, Elena Schneider, Madison Fernandez and Jonathan Lemire report that the Biden campaign has reached out privately to Nebraska Democrats about the Republican effort, while declining to comment on it — evidence that it’s “begun to take more seriously the possibility of the legislation” passing.