Democrats boosted by fierce competition in Republican-friendly Nebraska

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Lincoln, Nebraska (AP) — A special election in Nebraska should have been an easy victory for Republicans. Instead, it’s the toughest competition in decades in Republican-controlled districts among Democrats who want to invigorate voters by taking advantage of the public’s anger at the US Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Increased trust.

Republican Still won As expected, the seats were vacant, but even some Democrats who had become accustomed to biased, demoralizing defeats were surprised at the margins.

Republican Mike Flood defeated Democratic Patty Pansing Brooks with a 53.2% vote in a special election on Tuesday, according to informal results. Pansing Brooks scored 46.8% and the total number of votes cast by the candidates was less than 7,200. The victory was the narrowest in decades, with many Republicans, mostly in the rural 1890s, and no Democrats in the House of Representatives since 1964.

“It was a thrilling result,” said Daniel Conrad, a former Democrat of Lincoln. “Patty far surpassed her traditional knowledge. I don’t think anyone expected her to do this well in such a tough district,” he said.

Floods and Pansing Brooks were competing to replace the shameful former U.S. Congressman Jeff Faux Tenbury, a Republican who routinely claimed at least 60% of the votes in his district. Before he was convicted In March on suspicion that he lied to an FBI agent about an illegal campaign donation.

Fortenberry Resignation Immediately after the jury pleaded guilty to him Sentenced on probation Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles. His departure left vacant seats that needed to be filled before the November general elections.

On the final day of the campaign, Pansing Brooks had an abortion in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the 1973 groundbreaking Roe v. Wade case that prevented the state from banning the procedure. Emphasized her support for rights.

Blasting the court movement as an attack on privacy, she appeared on a crowded abortion rally and on the street corner, where her supporters put up a sign saying, “Ask for choice and vote for Patty.”

In a recent campaign speech, she declared the election to be “the first day in the country to fight back in a ballot box.”

Meanwhile, the flood promised to fight inflation on the last day of his campaign, and the Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives and cast the race as important to thwart the Biden administration’s policy agenda.

Floods and Pansing Brooks will meet again in November to determine who will serve their full term from January 2023. Next contest.

“We are ecstatic to be where we are,” Triebsch said. “Obviously, this gives us a very good roadmap for identifying areas where we can invest and improve for November.”

Adrian Elrod, a Democratic political strategist who worked for the Democratic Parliamentary Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said Nebraska’s race is Supreme Court decision last week.

Pansing Brooks was “a very strong candidate and she really took advantage of that moment,” Elrod said, revealing that she would fight for the right to abortion in Congress.

Democratic groups across the country see race as a sign of momentum and need to consider investing in places that they usually don’t see as good prospects, Elrod said.

“I think they see this in a very positive way, like a bell,” she said.

On Tuesday night, Flood steamed Pansing Brooks in all the district counties in the district.

But in Lancaster County, including Lincoln, which is more progressive, Pansing Brooks beat him by a healthy margin. Lancaster County provided nearly 75% of her total votes. The race was also tight in parts of the suburbs, including Omaha, where the floods were slightly won.

After the state parliamentarians rewrote the parliamentary district of Nebraska, the 1st parliamentary district had a slight decrease in Republicans in 2021, but the GOP still retains its high advantage. According to Secretary of State Nebraska, the area has nearly 68,000 more Republicans than Democrats. And the strength of Lincoln’s democracy is generally offset by dozens of smaller conservative towns that oppose abortion.

The result also surprised the Democrats of the people. Tim Persico, Managing Director of the Democratic Parliamentary Campaign Committee, said the Nebraska race was “not on the list” because it was not considered competitive. He said it was “very rare” to lose slightly in a district where Pansing Brooks is still a solid Republican and has better fares than Biden did in 2020.

“I think she deserves a lot of praise,” Persico said. “I also think that it is the data points that are changing the environment.”

Persico said he would evaluate whether the DCCC would participate in the general election, but Nebraska’s results were not sufficient to encourage a review of current strategies.

“I think we’re pretty focused on the map we have now,” he said. “But this is a very interesting data point when people are actually voting, especially in the post-low.”

The flood, which lives 120 miles north of Lincoln in Norfolk, near the Republican Party, said he was grateful for winning in the district. An ardent opponent of abortion, he said he would be a conservative defender of the area, but acknowledged that he needed to step up support around Lincoln and the outskirts of Omaha.

“I know I have something to do,” he said.

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Price reported from New York.

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Follow Grant Schulte on Twitter. https://twitter.com/GrantSchulte



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