Without Don Bacon, can Republicans win Nebraska’s ‘blue dot’?
Retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) has managed to keep Nebraska’s “blue dot” in Republican hands for a decade despite its leftward shift, but now, his…
Don Bacon didn’t just win elections. He spent a decade doing something harder in Omaha: making the “blue dot” feel like it belonged in the red column. The district has been drifting left for years, but Bacon outworked the trend.
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Retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) has managed to keep Nebraska’s “blue dot” in Republican hands for a decade despite its leftward shift, but now, his retirement is giving Democrats their clearest opening yet to flip the Omaha-area seat.
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District has been dubbed the state’s “blue dot,” with former Vice President Kamala Harris having won the district by roughly 4 points in 2024. Bacon, a centrist who hasn’t been afraid to break with President Donald Trump, managed to win it at the same time by just 6,000 votes.
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But now, with Bacon headed for the exit, Republicans could lose the seat. Recent polls have shown Democrat Denise Powell leading Omaha City Councilman Brinker Harding in the seat. Powell has tried to tie Harding to Trump amid the president’s low approval ratings, highlighting the president’s endorsement of his campaign, and saying he would “enable” the Trump administration if elected.
Harding, meanwhile, has been unafraid to publicly criticize the president as he looks to capture the same voters Bacon did in his successful campaigns. The Omaha city councilman, citing an Oscar Wilde quote that says, “Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken,” told the Washington Examiner that is how he is “going to be too.”
“If it’s good for the district, if it’s good for the state, if it’s good for the country, then I will support it,” Harding said. “But if it doesn’t meet those standards, then I will be in opposition to whatever the issue might be, and I’ll be vocal about that.”
Spending has slowed in the race, with the GOP and Democratic super PACs having pulled ad reservations earlier this week as the parties manage their resources ahead of Election Day. Republicans, specifically, cut more than $1.1 million in television ads from the seat, a significant spending slash as Harding lags behind Powell.
Harding, however, did not signal unease about the spending cut, telling the Washington Examiner in a brief phone interview that “it’s not money that we need.”
“We put our budget together a long time ago, and we are living by our budget,” Harding said. “We are living within our means, exactly the way I would legislate as well. We actually — we do it every year. We have a balanced budget at the City Council every year. So look, we we have a plan. We have funding for it. We are going to execute that.”
The Omaha city councilman is facing significant challenges in his bid to hold the seat, however, as the cost of living increases due to Trump’s tariff agenda and the Iran war.
Bacon has spoken out against both issues, having directly criticized Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and voting to curb Trump’s authority to impose tariffs. The retiring representative, who refers to himself as a “Reagan Republican,” told the Washington Examiner that he believes the district’s voters want to vote for Republicans that won’t be a “rubber stamp, and they want a check and balance on Trump.”
“I’m not saying all of them do, but there’s some hardcore Trump people in the district, but they’re the minority,” Bacon said.
Bacon’s retirement means Republicans are losing the incumbency advantage that representatives typically enjoy, putting the district’s swing voters up for grabs. Despite the district’s “blue dot” moniker, which Bacon called a “misnomer,” there are 13,000 more Republican voters registered than Democratic ones.
The issue for Republicans, however, is Trump’s unpopularity among the GOP voters, according to Bacon.
“A lot of the Republicans don’t like Trump, so they’re voting Democrat,” Bacon explained. “So a lot of people think it’s Democrats in the district voting for Democrat — a Democratic president, and I’ve been pulling them over. I actually think I’ve been holding on to the old Republicans.”
But even as polling shows Harding lagging behind Powell, Bacon stressed that surveys in the district have been unreliable. He added that in previous polling his campaign has done, Trump “comes off 5 points higher on Election Day.” MIKE JOHNSON REVEALS ONE OF HIS ‘TOP THREE’ BATTLEGROUND HOUSE RACES
“I don’t know why that is,” Bacon said. “It’s hard to get an accurate poll. And I think right now it’s all over the Republicans. I don’t — they’re not answering their phones. So I do think they’re, you know, I think we’re hitting some really big headwinds in the House and to a degree the Senate.”
He went on to say, “But I think the actual results may be a little better than what the polling’s showing right now. But still, may be hard nights. But I bet you can assume Republicans are going to come out a little higher than what all the polls are showing.”
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Don Bacon didn’t just win elections. He spent a decade doing something harder in Omaha: making the “blue dot” feel like it belonged in the red column. The district has been drifting left for years, but Bacon outworked the trend. He talked like a neighbor, not a partisan, and he never let the national mood define his local race. That’s why Democrats are licking their chops now that he’s retiring. They see the blue dot as a prize, and with the seat open, they think they finally have a shot.
The GOP’s problem is not the district itself. It’s the recruitment. Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District is still winnable for a conservative. But only for one who understands that Omaha is not the rest of the state. The next Republican has to talk about roads, schools, and jobs without getting dragged into cable news fights. Bacon managed that even when the left was pouring money into the district to flip it. If Republicans run a generic culture-war candidate who treats this seat like a safe red district, they’ll lose it. And losing it means handing Democrats another Electoral College vote, which is a big deal in a state that normally splits its votes.
We’re not going to pretend Bacon was perfect. He broke with the party sometimes, and that frustrated people. But those breaks were why he won. He earned the blue dot by being honest about its independence. That honesty is what kept it from turning blue. The national Democratic machine will spend whatever it takes to make this seat theirs. Republicans need a candidate who can take the punches and talk about Nebraska, not Trump, not Biden, not the latest Washington circus. It has to be someone who can look a union worker in the eye and say, “I’ll fight for your job,” and mean it.
The blue dot can stay red, but only if Republicans treat it as a district that has to be earned. Bacon isn’t walking through that door again. His retirement is the party’s chance to prove it learned something from his success. If they run a real candidate with local roots and a work ethic, Democrats will be crying in their Omaha coffee by election night. If they don’t, the blue dot goes blue, and Republicans will only have themselves to blame.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.