Yesterday Nebraska’s Republican governor, Dave Heineman, said he would not run for the Senate seat currently held by Ben Nelson (D.). But it didn’t take long for the vacuum to fill. Today, Republican state attorney general Jon Bruning announced he would form an exploratory committee to take on Nelson.
Bruning won a landslide reelection bid on Tuesday, and is said to have over $600k left in his campaign war chest from an aborted 2007 challenge to succeed then-Sen. Chuck Hagel (R.).
Politico’s Ben Smith tweets a good point about all this. The popularity of Nebraska Republicans like Bruning and Heineman is precisely why Ben Nelson is unlikely to switch parties. He’d get Spectered in a primary.