Jim Pillen: Explaining Nebraska Victory

The state of Nebraska is right in the middle of what the Washington Beltway media class often calls “Flyover Country.” So our politics don’t get a lot of national coverage outside of presidential years, when Democrats have a chance to win an Electoral College vote from Omaha. We don’t mind a lack of coverage (we prefer it, even). But we do disdain biased coverage, and the coverage of Nebraska’s primaries last week has grossly missed the mark. More than anything else, the Washington Beltway class needs to learn one important lesson: Not every election is a referendum on Donald Trump.

Last Tuesday, University of Nebraska Regent and former Husker football player Jim Pillen won a bitterly contested Republican gubernatorial primary, defeating Donald Trump–backed candidate Charles W. Herbster, state senator Brett Lindstrom, and six other candidates with 34 percent of the vote, handing the former president his first primary defeat of this cycle. Pillen, a hog farmer endorsed and heavily supported by incumbent conservative governor Pete Ricketts, won a majority of Nebraska’s counties and two of the state’s three congressional districts despite a late Trump visit to the state to rally for Herbster.

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Ian M. Swanson

Ian M. Swanson is the afternoon host on News Radio 1110 KFAB in Omaha, Neb.

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The state of Nebraska is right in the middle of what the Washington Beltway media class often calls “Flyover Country.” So our politics don’t get a lot of national coverage outside of presidential years, when Democrats have a chance to win an Electoral College vote from Omaha. We don’t mind a lack of coverage (we prefer it, even). But we do disdain biased coverage, and the coverage of Nebraska’s primaries last week has grossly missed the mark. More than anything else, the Washington Beltway class needs to learn one important lesson: Not every election is a referendum on Donald Trump.

Last Tuesday, University of Nebraska Regent and former Husker football player Jim Pillen won a bitterly contested Republican gubernatorial primary, defeating Donald Trump–backed candidate Charles W. Herbster, state senator Brett Lindstrom, and six other candidates with 34 percent of the vote, handing the former president his first primary defeat of this cycle. Pillen, a hog farmer endorsed and heavily supported by incumbent conservative governor Pete Ricketts, won a majority of Nebraska’s counties and two of the state’s three congressional districts despite a late Trump visit to the state to rally for Herbster.