Douglas County GOP central committee flips endorsements to Dan Frei and John Glen Weaver

OMAHA — Newly elected leaders of the now-populist Douglas County Republican Party brushed aside questions about the legitimacy of hosting its April meeting Tuesday without the approval of its chairman and flipped the party’s federal endorsements.

Until this week, Douglas County had been the lone county GOP in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District to endorse Nebraska’s Republican incumbents in the House and Senate, including Rep. Don Bacon and Sens. Pete Ricketts and Deb Fischer.

Members of the group’s central committee who attended Tuesday’s meeting voted to withdraw endorsements of Bacon and Ricketts and voted by voice without an audible objection to endorse their opponents in the primary, Dan Frei and John Glen Weaver. Fischer kept her endorsement.

State GOP Chairman Eric Underwood and national committeewoman Fanchon Blythe basked in victory over a county party they and local organizers worked to change. Blythe said she helped register 100 delegates for the county convention.

For nearly two years since populists took over the state party, the Douglas County GOP fought to preserve a place within a more traditional party structure for the moderate Republicans who have won races in the more politically divided 2nd District. 

“I’m proud of what you’ve done,” Underwood said of the takeover. “But there are next steps…. More and more people are coming to this party because of the stability that you’re bringing.”

Censure vote rare

The group also censured Bacon. The Douglas County GOP last rebuked a member of the congressional delegation  — then-U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse — in 2021.

That Sasse censure vote fell short of passage when an organized group left the room, so it passed as a separate sense of the group, or rebuke.

The 2nd District primary winner will face Democratic State Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha, who lost to Bacon in 2022 by three percentage points.

State and local populists have faced pushback from current and former county party leaders who preferred a big-tent party and those who back Bacon and Ricketts. Both incumbents hold sizable leads in primary polling and are likely to win. 

One Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed concerns that an active and engaged local GOP chapter had turned against itself. He said new party leaders “are the dog who caught the car. Now what are they going to do with it?”

Bacon weighs in

Neither the Bacon nor Ricketts campaigns had any immediate comment on Tuesday. Both previously criticized some of the actions of the state party in pushing to flip local parties in a new direction, including in Sarpy County and more recently in Saunders County.

Bacon told KFAB’s Scott Voorhees on Wednesday that “toxic” divisions in the state and county GOPs will hurt the party in races and ways people won’t see until it’s too late. He said the populists represent “maybe 20% of the views” of GOP voters.

“My point is the party has gone off the rails,” Bacon said. “I think the party will have to ask themselves why they are not representing the vast majority of Republicans.”

Bacon announced more than 100 endorsements Monday from state and local Republican elected officials, many of whom said the party should be unifying around the GOP candidate who can win a general election in the Omaha area.

Ricketts, long a top donor for the state GOP, has stopped giving to the party since the new leaders ousted a team in 2022 that was loyal to him. None of Nebraska’s all-GOP congressional delegation sought the state party endorsement this year.

Douglas GOP Chairman Chris Routhe, reached on a “day of action” he organized Tuesday for local down-ballot Republicans, said he did not call the county GOP meeting, as required by the county party constitution. He called the gathering “unsanctioned.”

Routhe said late last week that he was waiting until after the primary election to hold the party’s next meeting, following the county party convention. His critics said he tried to cancel a long-planned meeting that included a reserved room at a hotel.

“While I and many others were out knocking on doors for … candidates across Douglas County, two NEGOP state party leaders organized an unconstitutional meeting,” Routhe said. “Therefore the results of tonight’s unofficial meeting are null and void.” 

‘MAGA patriots’

Those assertions mattered little in a Marriott Regency ballroom packed with people who called themselves “MAGA patriots” loyal to former President Donald Trump. Nor did they worry Mike Moran, the chair of the county GOP’s constitutional committee.

Moran argued that 85 of the county party’s 115 central committee members were present and that the party’s constitution allows them to call a meeting on their own. He said Routhe lacked the authority to independently cancel a regular meeting.

“We govern, not the chairman,” Moran said. “The decision of whether we are going to have this meeting lies with this group.”

The group elected former Douglas County GOP chair Jon Tucker to chair the meeting. Tucker and interim 2nd District chair Scott Petersen spoke at the meeting, evoking their similar roles in organizing a county party leadership change in 2012. 

Weaver told the group, “I came to this body before, and I was denied, so I’m persistent. I knew when the vessel-less cowards that are controlled by Pete Ricketts did not endorse me, I knew they were cowards.” 

Doing enough for Trump?

Weaver and other speakers complained that Nebraska’s congressional delegation wasn’t doing enough to support Trump. Weaver said if he were in the Senate today, he’d be in New York City, “going after the judges and crooked judicial systems that we’ve got” there.

Trump is on trial in New York on 34 felony counts, accused of conspiring with a tabloid publisher to conceal hush money paid to a porn star with whom Trump allegedly had an extramarital affair. Prosecutors allege he wanted to avoid a potentially negative campaign story during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Frei also was endorsed Tuesday by the Saunders County GOP, which changed leadership recently as well. The previous leaders had not endorsed in the 2nd District House race.

Frei, speaking at the Marriott, criticized Bacon’s support for aid to Ukraine, saying he would never “tell you one thing on the campaign trail and do something different in Washington.”

Several of those in attendance asked whether the county party could stop airing and sending radio advertisements and mailers proclaiming the county GOP’s endorsements of Bacon, Ricketts and Fischer, but were told they might be too late to stop.

The effort to remove Bacon’s endorsement received 76 votes, Tucker told the county party crowd. The push to rescind the Ricketts endorsement received 63 votes, after a handful of people left the meeting.

Underwood said the time for “transactional politics” was done. He said it was time to find “people that you want to validate.”

“Politically, this is changing our mindset,” he said.

Andy Allen, a Douglas County GOP volunteer who participated in Routhe’s call for helping local candidates, said he thinks Republicans pushing to flip the endorsements should have sought them when the incumbents did. Weaver and others said they tried.

Allen said both sets of candidates could have been endorsed. He said party members need to remember that Douglas County is diverse and requires appealing to more than just the support of people who are “my way or the highway.”

“Sometimes you have to be willing to listen,” he said. “We’ve got some people that don’t seem to understand that listening is an important part.”