Politico: '08 energy puts Omaha seat in play?

Zachary Abrahamson, Politico
July 7, 2009

It's been eight months since the 2008 presidential election, but Barack Obama's win is still the talk of Omaha politics.

It's not his historic national victory, however, that has Nebraska Democrats and Republicans chattering. Rather, it's his local victory, specifically in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, that's driving the conversation and sparking a debate over what it means for the future of Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.).

Democrats are convinced that Obama's narrow win in the 2nd — the only one of the state's three congressional districts that he carried — is an indicator of things to come, a sign that the seat is far more vulnerable to takeover than is widely thought. If Obama can win there, the thinking goes, so can any Democratic congressional challenger.

Republicans, however, see it as a fluke, a one-time political aberration driven more by Obama's historic candidacy and his campaign's extraordinary effort to win the district. Because Nebraska is one of only two states (the other is Maine) that splits its electoral votes by congressional district, the Obama campaign targeted the district, which ranks as the least Republican of the state's three seats.

"Here you've got a lot of conservative Democrats and independents that got captivated by a national mood of change, captivated by the emotion and a couple million dollars that were poured in to capture this electoral vote," said former Rep. Hal Daub, a Republican who held the seat from 1981 to 1989 and later served as mayor of Omaha from 1995 to 2001. "To think that this is going to create a sea change in the district is the most far-fetched, dramatic interpretation by Democrats in the state of Nebraska that I have seen in my lifetime."

Both sides agree that the Democratic bid to capture the district's electoral vote was unprecedented. The Obama campaign opened multiple offices in Omaha and, together with registration drives organized during the run-up to Nebraska's first-ever presidential caucuses, helped Omaha's Douglas County Democrats turn a 12,000-voter registration deficit into a 4,100-vote advantage heading into the November election.

As of early June, that lead grew to just over 5,500 — and the results of a May municipal election augur well for Democrats: The party took back control of the city council for the first time since the 1980s and held the mayor's office.

But those numbers don't tell the whole story, because the battle for Terry's seat must also be fought outside the Omaha city limits, where Democrats have typically fared worse. Republicans hold a 10,000-voter registration edge in Sarpy County, home to Offutt Air Force Base and a large community of conservative-leaning military veterans.

The Sarpy County portion of the seat delivered 57 percent for Sen. John McCain to Obama's 43 percent, and it handed an even more lopsided victory to Terry over second-time challenger Jim Esch.

"I still consider this a swing district where I have to work my rear off to be elected every year," Terry told POLITICO. "Between 1994 and 2008, it was so solidly Republican that people kind of got used to it."

Obama's victory, Omaha Republicans contend, came about only because voters did not know the nature of Obama's sweeping legislative agenda. Former state GOP Chairman David Kramer said "a number of things" the Obama White House has pushed don't match up with the "what the district wanted."

Daub maintains that "the pendulum is swinging back the other way" because of how Obama's administration has overhauled the financial sector, bailed out auto giants and aggressively sought health care reform — an issue with particular salience in health care — in insurance industry-dependent Omaha.

"Mr. Obama's the best thing we've got going for us right now," Daub said. "If [Democrats] think they're on a roll, the roll has ended."

For Democrats to knock off Terry in a midterm election, they will have to mobilize the network of first-time voters Obama tapped into — an uncertain prospect.

Between late September and Election Day 2008, the Obama campaign recruited nearly 2,300 volunteers for phone banks and neighborhood canvasses, said John Berge, Obama's Nebraska state director, who is now White House liaison for the Department of Agriculture.

Well over half of those were first-time volunteers, said Justin Hatmaker, the former Nebraska field director for Obama's Campaign for Change, and many worked local campaigns this spring or remain active in Organizing for America, the president's Democratic National Committee-based grass-roots organizing group.

Democrats fielded "at least a couple hundred" volunteers on Election Day in May's municipal races, said Jim Rogers, the state party's executive director. Rogers said he thinks that's more than he's ever seen pitch in for an off-year mayoral race — but it's a far cry from November.

Berge acknowledged that fewer volunteers show up for midterm elections but said that a Democratic challenger could still "easily get the number of volunteers and dollars" necessary, so long as the candidate is "good, credible and well-funded."

Democrats think they've found such a candidate — state Sen. Tom White, who announced Monday that he's forming an exploratory committee.

Omaha Democrats cast White as a heavyweight challenger who is their strongest candidate in years. Unlike Esch, a political neophyte who nevertheless ran two solid races, White is an elected officeholder who comes from a Nebraska political family — his father served as chief justice of the state's Supreme Court.

"[Nebraska] is such a red state that the only successes [Democrats] have had come from outstanding candidates in and of themselves," former Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey said, pointing to former Sen. Bob Kerrey and Sen. Ben Nelson, both Democrats. "In the past, we have not had a candidate like Tom White, who has already proven his leadership skills in the legislature and been an active party leader."

A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion rights, White could have appeal to the district's swing voters — independents and moderate Catholic Democrats in Omaha's southern precincts. But to deny Terry a seventh term, he'd have to match or nearly match Obama's pace in north Omaha, where heavily black precincts handed Obama nine of every 10 votes in November.

Republicans say White won't come close to replicating Obama's performance.

"2008 was about Barack Obama and the energy of electing the first black president in the nation's history," Nebraska state GOP Chairman Mark Fahleson said. "That doesn't translate into electing a very divisive, partisan trial lawyer who's in the state Legislature for his first term."