OMAHA — Tony Vargas stood on a street corner here on Election Day trying to rally passing drivers to re-elect him as state senator. A few blocks away was a meatpacking plant where workers walked off the job earlier this year after fears their bosses weren’t being transparent about a rising number of Covid cases inside. In the other direction was a polling place where Black and Latino voters lined up to cast ballots.
On Wednesday, Nebraska awakened to the news that its Omaha-based Second Congressional District delivered a single, potentially pivotal electoral vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in a state that otherwise solidly tilted toward President Trump.
Neighborhoods in the district like the one where Mr. Vargas stood and waved signs are part of the reason.
“This same community voted in the past for Republicans and for Democrats, but with Biden they saw somebody who cares more about everybody,” said Mr. Vargas, who won his race Tuesday. “People are choosing the person over the politics.”
Unlike 48 other states, Nebraska splits its electoral votes by congressional district. (Maine does also.) Both campaigns invested in reaching voters here, believing that it was not impossible that the final tally could come down to Omaha. It was a lightning-striking scenario, though.
On Wednesday, as tense ballot counting droned on, it was apparent how important that solo electoral vote was in a district in the middle of the country.
Mr. Biden notched victories in Michigan and Wisconsin. Arizona and Nevada were still counting ballots, though Democrats projected confidence in their chances. Pennsylvania was likely to take longer. By late in the afternoon, doing the math, that single Nebraska vote seemed as if it would put Mr. Biden up to 270.
Much to the delight of Omaha’s Democrats, and the chagrin of the rest of the state.
Nebraska as a whole is overwhelmingly Republican, but Omaha has tilted slowly left in past years and in significant ways since 2008, when Barack Obama captured the Second District’s vote.
“This has been building for a while,” said Paul Landow, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Omaha, with about one million people in its metropolitan area, is the epicenter of what conservatives see as a threat: progressive activism pushing even the area’s largely centrist Democrats further left.
The state’s Democrats have seized on the shift in sometimes gloating ways. Early this year, Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, sent out a fund-raising pitch warning of the “creep of socialism” in Nebraska. The Nebraska Democratic Party responded by giving him a box of baby rattles.
And in announcing early Wednesday that Mr. Biden had won the district, Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman, rechristened her state’s biggest city as “Joe-maha.”
The notion of Nebraska as instrumental in a victory for a Democratic president might not be welcome in many areas of the state.
“It’s very red and takes Republican politics seriously, so I don’t think there would be a lot of joy in being the congressional district that put Biden over the top,” Mr. Landow said on Wednesday.
The Second District, which encompasses much of Omaha’s metropolitan area, in many ways is a miniature portrait of the nation.
The district incorporates a busy downtown that gives way to rolling waves of housing developments filled with boxy suburban homes, as well as farms outside the city limits.
Like much of the rest of Nebraska and the middle of country, the district is being hit hard by Covid-19, with cases climbing by the day. Similar to the situation in other swing states, winning over suburban female voters here was crucial to victory.
And as has occurred in many cities in America, protests broke out this summer over the death of George Floyd. In Omaha, protests turned violent when a white bar owner shot to death a Black man in June during one of the marches over racial injustice.
The city’s changing demographics, especially with its growing Latino population, mirror much of the rest of the country. Its increasingly younger minority population tilts Democratic, and its older white population leans Republican, much like the rest of the state.
Most politicians consider the district moderate, tilting left but not too left, a perception borne out by its congressional election results that show the Republican Don Bacon emerging as the winner against Kara Eastman, a progressive Democrat, whom he attacked as a “radical socialist” in television ads that dominated the airwaves in the run-up to the election.
At a rally in Omaha last week that drew thousands, as well as in a phone call last weekend, President Trump ordered Mr. Bacon to deliver the district for him. “I’ll tell you, you better get me on Omaha, you understand that?” Mr. Trump said at the rally. In the end, Mr. Bacon did not succeed.
Mr. Bacon has, in part, blamed Mr. Trump’s tone — his tweets in particular — for the president’s defeat in the district.
“People don’t like the name calling and the elbow throwing,” Mr. Bacon said in an interview Tuesday, adding that he saw himself as having worked with both parties to deliver for the district. Mr. Bacon also was endorsed by his predecessor and former rival, Brad Ashford, a Democrat.
Besides his recent rally, Mr. Trump sent campaign staff members and surrogates to Omaha. Mr. Biden’s campaign invested heavily in the district as well, ultimately sending a team of about 20 — and had surrogates who hammered home a message that he would be a president for all Nebraskans, not just Democrats.
“The way he handles himself and presents himself to voters appeals to a moderate district that for me is a snapshot of America,” said Ms. Kleeb, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman.
Ms. Kleeb, who has written a book outlining how the Democratic Party can win back Republican rural America, described Omaha’s voters as “moderate economically but progressive on moderate issues” and populated by “suburban moms who are bleeding hearts with a strong ecosystem of supporting nonprofits, housing inequality and fighting against racial injustice.”
Denise Powell, co-founder of Women Who Run Nebraska, a political action committee that recruits progressive women as political candidates, said Mr. Trump’s stances on policies that affected women as well as his position on scaling back the Affordable Care Act, especially during a pandemic, motivated more women in Omaha to vote in this election than in 2016 when it seemed certain to many of them that Hillary Clinton would win.
“I was really excited about Kamala Harris, too,” Ms. Powell said. “For me that was a big motivating piece.”
In South Omaha, where Mr. Vargas’s district is, voters were receptive to a candidate who preached unity, not division, he said.
“We need someone who cares about compassion and cares about science during a pandemic,” he said. “People opened up their hearts and minds to that message and it stuck.”
South Omaha, a diverse neighborhood with a sizable Latino population, had among the highest case counts of Covid-19 in the city, Mr. Vargas said. The area once drew European immigrants to its slaughterhouses, but the work force in the meatpacking plants in the area now is largely Latino and includes immigrants from African countries and elsewhere.
Meatpacking workers generally have accounted for about one in five Covid-19 cases in the state, Mr. Vargas said. Governor Ricketts at one point this year announced that individual plants didn’t need to report their cases, a move that Mr. Vargas said upset the meatpacking employees in his district and showed a lack of transparency.
“Information is how we make decisions in our community,” said Mr. Vargas, whose father died of Covid-19 in New York in the spring.
Mr. Vargas, a Democrat, is currently the only Latino lawmaker in the state’s nonpartisan, unicameral legislature. To get anything accomplished, he said he needed to work with people from different backgrounds. On Tuesday, he overwhelmingly was re-elected to a second term in office after promoting a message that in part focused on bipartisanship.
He hopes a similar message that pushed the Biden-Harris ticket to victory in the Second District will radiate to the rest of the country.
“People are clamoring for government that focuses on building bridges,” he said. “That rung true this election.”
"all" - Google News
November 05, 2020 at 06:36AM
https://ift.tt/3k749zr
What if It Does All Come Down to Omaha? - The New York Times
"all" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2vcMBhz
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "What if It Does All Come Down to Omaha? - The New York Times"
Post a Comment