WAHOO, Neb. – In his candidacy for governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Herbster makes the best of himself an imitation of former President Donald J. Trump.
His 90-minute speech was full of complaints about illegal immigrants, stories boasting of his business triumphs, a conspiracy theory linking China, the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election, and a denial of recent allegations that he groped women. political events.
He even swears to clean up the swamp – but he means Lincoln, the state capital.
Like his political role model – and a major supporter – Mr Herbster is proving to be the only political destroyer. In a state long known for its noble collaborative policies and one-party rule for the past 24 years, Mr Herbster’s candidacy has divided his party into three camps, with Trump supporters, establishment conservatives and business-minded moderates fighting for power. A major donor to conservative candidates for years, Mr Herbster has been abandoned by longtime political allies and has seen his candidate give up his ticket to run for governor alone. The accusations of groping come from fellow Republicans.
Behind the whole drama is a question of resonance far beyond Nebraska. Mr Trump’s support for Mr Herbster, a major donor to Mr Trump’s political career, is not only the highest quality candidate for the first time – it is the whole rationale for his campaign. Mr Trump’s name is on Mr Herbster’s inscriptions, advertisements and billboards. Mr Herbster spent Friday stumbling across West Nebraska with Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic adviser who is a minor celebrity at Trumpworld.
Mr Herbster is on track to see if Trump’s approval alone is enough to win a major Republican primary.
“It’s a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment in America against President Donald J.” Trump, “said in an interview Thursday, Mr. Herbster, who is fighting a white cowboy hat and black vest wearing his logo with cattle semen. . “Anyone the restaurant can’t control is afraid.”
Mr Herbster, a longtime ally of Trump who was with members of the Trump family during the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is competing against Jim Pylen, a regent at the University of Nebraska, backed by the powerful Ricketts state family. . machine and Brett Lindstrom, a young state senator who consolidated the support of other moderates and Democrats. More than 8,000 Democrats have changed parties in recent weeks to have some influence on the race for governor in the predominantly Republican state. Polls in the last days before Tuesday’s vote show the race is a three-way dead heat.
If the recent Ohio Senate primary is a landmark, the tripartite race works in Mr Herbster’s favor. Trump-backed Senate candidate JD Vance won in a crowded field with less than a third of the vote. (There is a precedent for this in Nebraska. Eight years ago, Gov. Pete Ricketts won the nomination with just over a quarter of the vote.)
But Mr Trump’s touch seems less gold in other states, especially in the two-way race for governor. In Georgia, former Senator David Purdue, elected by Trump, lags far behind Gov. Brian Kemp in opinion polls, prompting Mr. Trump to distance himself from the campaign. In Idaho, the former president backed the challenge of Lt. Gov. Janice McGitchin against Gov. Brad Little. Ms. McGitchin is struggling to gain popularity, and Mr. Trump did not mention her after his approval in November.
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Mr. Trump threw all his weight behind Mr. Herbster. On Sunday, he traveled to Nebraska for a rally and attended a conference call for Herbster supporters on Thursday night, calling Mr Herbster’s rivals “Republicans by name.”
“Charles was a tough MAGA champion,” Mr Trump said during the conversation. “When you vote for Charles in the primary, you can rebuke RINO and the sold-out and losers who do so poorly in your country.
Like Mr. Trump in the Republican presidential primary in 2016, Mr. Herbster has been accused of abusing women and trying to use that fact to gain support. . Two women, including a state senator, publicly accused him of touching them at a political event in 2019. Mr Herbster denied the allegations and aired a television commercial criticizing his accuser.
“Every statement that has been sent to me is 100 percent completely untrue,” he said in an interview.
He has repeatedly accused Mr Ricketts, a two-term Conservative president who cannot run again due to limitations. The Ricketts quarreled with Mr. Trump. He spent millions on a last-ditch effort to block Mr Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016; Then Trump said the family had better be careful.
Mr Ricketts, who tried to persuade Mr Trump not to support Mr Herbster last year, is outspoken about his opposition to Mr Herbster’s candidacy. He considers the palpable accusations disqualifying. If Mr Herbster wins the Republican nomination, Mr Ricketts will not support it unless he “apologizes to the women he did this to,” he said in an interview.
Mr Herbster faced criticism long before the allegations. Some Republicans shuddered at his focus on the kind of divisive cultural issues that don’t usually dominate the state’s political conservation. He campaigns to eliminate sex education in Nebraska public schools, suppress illegal immigration, and limit China’s influence.
In July, his candidate, former state senator Teresa Thibodeau, left the ticket and later joined the race on her own. She said Mr Herbster was not interested in anything other than trying to emulate Mr Trump.
“If you want to lead the country, you need to learn more about the policies that affect our country,” she said on Thursday. “He had no initiative or desire to do that.”
But Mr Herbster’s message resonated with Trump’s conservatives, and one of his rivals soon followed suit. Mr Pilen, a 66-year-old former Nebraska University football team defender, has vowed to ban critical racial theory at the University of Nebraska and ban transgender women from engaging in women’s sports or using women’s bathrooms.
“Pillen and Herbster’s campaigns focused on national issues over which they have little control and needed to be more focused on state issues,” said former Gov. Dave Heinemann, a Republican who was on Mr Herbster’s payroll after leaving office. . He has not yet made an approval.
Mr Pilen downplayed Mr Trump’s influence in the race.
“Nebraska people, we like to understand things and solve our own problems and think for ourselves,” he said.
Mr Lindstrom, a 41-year-old state senator who also plays football for Nebraska, is campaigning from the pre-Trump era. He emphasized cooperation with Democrats in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, and while he said he did not regret voting twice for Mr Trump, he said he would prefer a “new face” in 2024.
While Republican primary elections in Nebraska are usually decided by conservative rural voters who are deeply loyal to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lindstrom, an awkward financial adviser, is campaigning to attract urban professionals around Omaha – where Mr. Mr Trump loses one of the US Electoral College votes for President Biden.
“The style and brand that is happening in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Mr Lindstrom said. “It’s really not healthy.”
At a fundraiser for Mr Lindstrom on Wednesday at a prestigious Italian restaurant in Omaha, about half of the two dozen people interviewed said they voted for Mr Biden in 2020. A handful changed parties to vote for Mr Lindstrom. Lindstrom in the primary elections.
Alan Frederickson, chief executive of a healthcare company that became a Republican to vote for Mr Lindstrom, said the election of Mr Herbster would make it harder to recruit workers to Nebraska’s booming economy, which has the lowest level of employment. unemployment in the country.
“Trumpism will affect our internal and external image as a state,” he said. “We need Nebraska to be an attractive state from a business standpoint.
Mr Herbster has made little effort to appeal outside of Trump’s constituency. He began his speeches, whether to Trump-hated Wahoo supporters or bankers in suburban Omaha, offering “greetings from the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Like Mr Trump, Mr Herbster questions the legitimacy of the US election. In Wahoo, he put forward a strange theory about the loss of the former president.
“That’s the truth,” he told supporters. “The pandemic came from China. It was scheduled perfectly to make sure they could rig the election so that Mark Zuckerberg could invest $ 400 million in the fee for the last four months of the election. Because whether you like it or not, they didn’t want Donald J. That’s exactly what happened when Trump was president for two terms. “
Mr. Herbster is of little use or interest in the traditions of Nebraska politics. He called for an end to the state’s non-partisan election system, the abolition of the State Board of Education, and said on his first day in office he would ask the Tourism Bureau to change its strange slogan: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone. “
The question that Republican voters in Nebraska will address on Tuesday is whether any of this matters – or matters more than Mr Trump’s approval.
“That’s all,” said former Herbster supporter Lee Terry of Omaha. “There are a lot of Trump people in Nebraska.
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