CQ: Democrat Focusing on Challenge to Republican Terry in Nebraska 2

Congressional Quarterly
July 6, 2009

Democratic State Sen. Tom White of Nebraska has formed an exploratory committee, a significant step toward launching an official congressional campaign fand challenging six-term Republican Lee Terry in Nebraska's 2nd District.

Over the past several weeks, White has made clear his interest in seeking the seat in 2010. He is moving forward amid the emerging excitement surrounding his candidacy, said his spokesman, Ian Russell.

"He has literally been swamped with unsolicited e-mails and phone calls to his home, urging him to run," Russell said. "He's hoping to solidify things sometime in September, but in the meantime, he's fundraising like he's really running. When he jumps into something, he goes in head-first."

Apart from the enthusiasm for the candidate - a "pro-life Irish Catholic with a fiscally conservative voting record," according to Russell - there is a growing sense that the district could be ready for a Democratic takeover. Nebraska has not voted for a Democrat in a general election since Lyndon B. Johnson's national landslide victory in 1964, bur Barack Obama carried the 2nd in 2008, earning him an electoral vote via Nebraska's unique split-electoral system.

Terry's narrow margins of victory in 2006 and 2008 against Democrat Jim Esch, a little-known and underfunded local businessman and attorney, also suggested that voters might be moving away from their long-held Republican lean in the district. Toward the end of Esch's 2008 run, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began to take notice: Esch was added to the "Red to Blue" program, an initiative that offers increased strategic and financial support to candidates in particularly competitive races.

The DCCC is continuing to make Nebraska's 2nd District a target in the 2010 cycle. Last week, it began airing a radio ad in Omaha criticizing Terry's recent vote against a $106 billion emergency war bill to fund troops oversees.

Terry and the Nebraska Republican Party, meanwhile, remain on the offensive. In statements on the state party's Web site, Chairman Mark Fahleson took issue with White for not responding to or taking responsibility for the DCCC's attacks.

"White's intentions are clear; he intends to run for Congressman Terry's seat in 2010 and he's letting the DCCC act on his behalf," says Fahleson. "We think voters of the 2nd Congressional District are not going to take very kindly to a possible candidate who can throw stones, but is unwilling to live in a glass house."