Civility Rates High in Tight Congressional Race In and Around Omaha

A perennially close Congressional seat covering what’s called “the blue dot” in one of the reddest states in the country, Nebraska, looks like it’ll be tight again in the November elections.

Incumbent Republican Don Bacon, representing Nebraska’s second district since 2016, seeks to hold his seat against state legislator Tony Vargas, the Democratic nominee.

As drawn since redistricting, including the city of Omaha and various environs, the district voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020 by six points. Real Clear Politics rates it “Leans Republican,” but two other forecasters, Larry J. Sabato and Nathan L. Gonzalez, now rate it a toss-up. And that’s despite a redistricting that removed some of the more Democratic urban areas and added a large, more rural outlying county.

The Republicans don’t appear to be taking the election for granted. Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, has raised $2.7 million as of June 30 and has more than $800,000 in outside support. Vargas, a state senator and former public school teacher, is holding his own with $1.6 million but hadn’t drawn any outside support as of the June 30 campaign finance filings.

Don Bacon during his Air Force career commanded a wing at Offutt Air Force Base outside Omaha. Here, two Air Force personnel look at a flooded portion of the base in Bellevue, Neb., on March 17, 2015. (Z Long/Omaha World-Herald via AP)

This isn’t the only race among Nebraska’s three Congressional seats that observers elsewhere are watching. Next door, in District 1, Republican Mike Flood squeaked by Patty Pansing Brooks by little more than 6,000 votes in a special election on June 28—four days after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade and sending abortion policy back to the states. Brooks’ relatively strong showing was seen as reflecting Democratic

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