Terry Sanders stood among dozens of voters who showed up to pick up campaign signs at a Democratic event in north Omaha Tuesday afternoon.
“I haven’t seen access like this in a long time,” said the 67-year-old CEO of an African-American newspaper. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ‘ campaign organizing in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha. “Not since Obama.”
The sound of car horns and loud music is just a small measure of the energy Harris and Democrats are putting forth to win even a single Electoral College vote, thanks to a bizarre formula that allocates Nebraska’s five electoral votes based on the votes in different congressional districts in the otherwise reliably Republican state.
In a national race that looks extremely close by all current parameters, a small electoral vote can provide the margin of victory. So Democrats have planted a big flag.
Harris and Democratic groups have spent more than $5 million in the district since entering the race on July 23, and have reserved more than $6 million worth of ad time through Election Day on Nov. 5, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. Former President Donald TrumpOn the other hand, Key’s campaign had spent only $95,000 on advertising in the state and had about $6,800 in reserves as of November 5.
Trump and Republican allies had sought another path to victory: persuading the Republican-dominated legislature to rewrite the state’s rules and make Nebraska a winner-take-all contest rather than awarding Electoral College votes by congressional district. Maine is the only other state that awards its votes this way. (Trump won the Nebraska district in 2016, but Joe Biden won it in 2020.)
A Republican state senator from Nebraska abandoned that option on Monday when he refused to bow to pressure from Trump and other Republicans to change the rules. November 5 elections,
Lacking the votes in Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said Tuesday he would not call a special session to attempt the change.
In addition to television advertising, Harris’s team has 25 paid staffers and three offices dedicated to organizing a district that has a population roughly equal to that of Las Vegas and is larger than Rhode Island but smaller than Delaware.
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said such events show that Harris is applying her fundraising advantage not just to ads but also to neighborhood-level outreach in the district as well as in the seven target states.
“The fact that he has the resources to compete in that district tells you something about A, his focus and B, his abilities. In a close race, it could really matter,” Axelrod said. “We’re looking at marginal races in seven states and in some of them, it could be decisive.”
The district is a typical Midwestern microbattleground, whose Democrat-heavy urban center is the place where the Union Pacific Railroad was born. To the south are politically mixed inner-ring suburbs, with working-class neighborhoods and several meatpacking plants, while to the west are politically mixed suburbs.
To break a tie in the race for a majority of 270 electoral college votes in Nebraska’s 2nd District, Trump must win all Republican-leaning states, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. He must also win Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which he won in 2020, while losing the state overall.
Harris would need to win all of the Democratic-leaning states, including Maine, as well as three northern battlegrounds, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, to move ahead of Nebraska to take second place.
It’s unclear what is working for Trump in Nebraska’s 2nd District, other than a small amount of TV spending and a failed effort to sway Omaha’s main Republican senator, Mike McDonnell, to the side of majority Republicans.
Trump campaign aides said they had a Nebraska campaign director and election integrity director, staff, volunteers and offices. However, they declined to say how many people were working specifically in the 2nd District.
Campaign aides could say only that Nebraska voters generally responded to Trump volunteers over the phone, door-to-door and at public events, and that volunteers from across the state had called the 2nd District to offer help.
The activity of the candidates has been light.
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance chaired a Trump fundraiser in Omaha on Aug. 21, about four days after Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz chaired a Harris campaign rally in the city. The second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, visited Omaha for a small business campaign event in July.
On the advice of veteran Obama organizer Mitch Stewart, the Harris campaign prominently located one of its three district offices on Omaha’s 24th Street, the main north-south route into North Omaha, the heart of the city’s black voter base.
Sanders was collecting signatures at a Democratic Party event on Tuesday, where volunteers painted blue circles on white signs – the simple symbols seen across Omaha that represent Democratic-voting households in a state dominated by Republican red.
“Well, Kamala’s not acting like she has any control over this,” Sanders, the CEO of the Omaha Star (Nebraska’s oldest African-American newspaper), paused before heading to her car.
“She really is playing to win,” he said, shaking his head. “Really.”