CQ: Nebraska Rep. Terry Faces Fight on Newly Shaky Ground

Emma Dumain, Congressional Quarterly
June 20, 2009

Six-term Nebraska Republican Lee Terry appears certain to be targeted by Democratic strategists in his 2010 House race, given his close escape in his 2008 general election rematch with Democrat Jim Esch in the state’s 2nd District.

That occurred as the district’s voters in Omaha and its suburbs gave Barack Obama one of his most surprising victories as the Democratic presidential nominee: He earned an electoral vote by narrowly carrying the 2nd, a district that for years had been a Republican presidential stronghold.

And while two-time challenger Esch, a lawyer and businessman, is unlikely to make a third try for the seat, the sudden burst of partisan competition in the 2nd District appears likely to produce a serious challenge to Terry by Democratic state Sen. Tom White, a member of Nebraska’s unique unicameral legislature since 2006.

White, who earlier was mulling a possible long-shot challenge in 2010 to popular Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, says he will make a decision about the House race within the next few months. His supporters describe him as having a lot in common with a House constituency that has many blue-collar Roman Catholics with historic ties to the Democratic Party — but whose social conservatism had turned them into Republican voters in most major contests.

The 52-year-old White is “a pro-life Irish Catholic with a fiscally conservative voting record,” according to his spokesman, Ian Russell. Jim Rogers, executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said the state party is urging White to run and touts his “record of public service and activism within the community.”

Kris J. Pierce, an Omaha-based Democratic political consultant, said that Esch’s relative inexperience was a shortcoming that won’t be a problem with White. “If Esch had been a sitting senator, it would have been a different story. Tom White is known in the political realm and in the private sector, and in that way he’ll be an even stronger candidate than Esch,” Pierce said.

Yet White, if he does run, will bear the burden of political proof that the 2nd District will remain competitive. There is no way of knowing whether voters there are ready to elect their first Democratic House member since three-term incumbent Peter Hoagland was defeated for re-election in 1994. And he will need to prove that the unusually close 2008 race wasn’t solely the result of a tough political environment for Terry’s Republican Party — and the unprecedented push by an Obama campaign in Omaha that, leading up to the election, had two busy field offices jam-packed with volunteers.

“Even when voters elected Democrats in the 2nd District, it has always been a ‘leans Republican’ district, which means that Terry is in a solid position to continue on for as long as he cares to,” said Paul Landow, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha who specializes in local politics.

A Changing Landscape

Not long ago, the idea of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District appearing on the Democrats’ target list would have seemed far-fetched. Terry, first elected to the House in 1998, won easily in his first four contests, with vote shares ranging from 61 percent to 66 percent, and district voters made a habit of favoring GOP presidential nominees by overwhelming margins. As recently as 2004, President George W. Bush pulled down 61 percent of the vote and had a 23 percentage-point margin of victory at the top of the Republican ticket.

But that was before Esch, who was 30 years old and had no previous political experience when he first ran, trimmed Terry’s victory margin from 25 percentage points in 2004 to 9 points in 2006, and then to 4 points in the 2008 rematch.

And that was also before Obama’s campaign put on that huge voter turnout push and succeeded in winning the 2nd District vote — peeling off one of the five electoral votes in Nebraska, one of the two states (Maine is the other) that is not statewide winner-take-all in presidential elections. It marked the first time that the Republicans didn’t sweep all of the state’s electoral votes since Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson carried Nebraska in his 1964 national landslide.

Even closer to the grass roots, Democrats recently won a majority on the Omaha City Council for the first time since the 1980s.

This actually marks something of a comeback for the Democratic Party in the 2nd District. Democrat John J. Cavanaugh, an Omaha lawyer, was just 31 when he was elected to represent the 2nd District in 1976 and held the seat from 1977 to 1981; Hoagland served from 1989 to 1995, stayed in Washington to practice law and died of a long illness in 2007.

“There was a feeling up through the mid-1990s that this was a competitive district, because there were intervals in which Democrats held the seat,” said Landow. “It certainly leaned Republican the whole time, but people at least thought a good candidate with a good campaign could win, despite the party.”

Democrats argue that they continue on the rise. “The makeup of the district has changed dramatically within the past two cycles, and it’s still changing,” said Rogers. “You can see the Democratic growth in the district with Obama’s election here, but also in the pretty major municipal election in Omaha.”

In Douglas County, which includes Omaha and the bulk of the district’s population, the big Democratic voter registration efforts in 2008 enabled the party — for the first time in 14 years — to exceed the number of registered Republicans. The GOP voter rolls actually diminished by nearly 9,700 over four years, according to the county election commission.

But Terry is no easy target. He now has a lengthy political history in the 2nd District, having served on the Omaha city council for the eight years prior to his 1998 House election and as its president for a year beginning in 1994.

Very low-key in manner, the 47-year-old incumbent may not have emblazoned his name on the minds of some district voters, but he also hasn’t given offense to many of them. And he has a seat on the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he has used to promote Nebraska interests such as the use of corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel and expansion of Internet service in the state’s sprawling rural areas.

Terry also has looked out for the district’s Offutt Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Stratgic Command, which employs more than 11,000 military and civilian employees. He even defended an unpopular cause in 2003, when he was one of only eight House members who voted against creating the federal “do not call” list for telemarketers because Omaha is a center for those commercial phone-banking operations.

Terry will have to ramp up his fundraising as he prepares for another potentially tough race in 2010. After spending more than $1.8 million on his 2008 campaign to $843,000 by Esch, Terry raised a very modest $97,000 in this year’s first quarter and reported $95,000 in cash on hand as of March 31.

But his political track record and that of district Republicans — at least prior to 2008 — likely will give Terry the early edge for 2010 even if he draws competition from Democrat White. “The last election against Esch was closer, but Terry still won, convincingly, both times, and against huge Democratic tides nationwide,” political scientist Landow said. “What more could you ask for from a congressman?”