I think it’s fair comment to say that State Senator Deb Fischer’s surprising defeat of Attorney General Jon Bruning and State Treasurer Don Stenberg in Tuesday’s Nebraska primary election was a sort of “victory by default.”
Many voters—enough to give Fischer her upset 10,000 vote victory margin over Bruning—didn’t know much of anything about Fischer but they knew they didn’t want to vote for Burning or Stenberg.
The eleventh-hour inflow of cash for Fischer’s money-short campaign caught Bruning and Stenberg by surprise with no time to mount effective responses to Fischer’s late hits.
Ironically, the most effective contribution to Fischer’s late surge came not from Fischer or anyone else in Nebraska but from outside the state: $250,000 from a Wyoming resident, multi-millionaire, former Omahan Joe Ricketts. The money financed an effective eleventh-hour TV ad blitz promoting Fischer, with emphasis on her as a rancher, always a popular image in Nebraska.
The ads depicted Fischer not on a horse or in blue jeans but in outdoor garb in settings which presumably were intended to represent ranchland.
The facts:
The Fischer family owns a ranch in Cherry County, yet Fischer and her husband now live in a residence in Valentine, Nebraska, also in Cherry County.
Bruning supporters felt their candidate had suffered from excessive (and unfair, in their opinion) media concentration on the wealth which Bruning had accumulated from investments during his tenure as a state senator and attorney general.
One Bruning supporter sent me this e-mail question Wednesday: “Did Jon lose or did the media beat him?”
I understand my reader’s question, but The World-Herald, responsible for a good deal of the media concentration on Bruning’s wealth accumulation, editorially endorsed Bruning for the Republican nomination.
The challenge facing Democratic nominee Bob Kerrey, both in his own campaign and his support of the re-election of President Obama, is indicated by the numbers:
The votes cast for Obama in Nebraska’s Democratic presidential preference balloting: 62,226.
The votes cast by Nebraskans for Mitt Romney in a four-person GOP presidential preference primary balloting Tuesday: 129,500.
Some Sidelights From The Tuesday Balloting
–Why in the world didn’t the news media concentrate some attention on Joe Ricketts’ son, Pete Ricketts of Omaha, Nebraska’s member of the Republican National Committee?
Did Pete’s father consult him about the father’s plan to put $250,000 into the Fischer campaign? If so, what did Pete tell his father?
Or did Pete Ricketts keep the proper distance from any involvement in the campaign, since the representative of all Nebraska Republicans on the National Republican Committee should be expected to maintain neutrality among competing primary candidates?
–Age will be an interesting element in the Fischer/Kerrey contest. Fischer at 61 and Kerrey at 69 are both older than any Nebraska senatorial nominee who has successfully sought election in a span of 60 years going back to Kenneth Wherry’s election in 1952. (I think it fair to regard Bob Kerrey’s campaign in 2012 as an effort to start a new senatorial career.)
And Fischer, if successful, would be the first woman elected to a full senate term in Nebraska history.
A news report said she would be the second Nebraska woman elected to the Senate. But this is misleading, in my opinion, because it implies that Hazel Abel’s election to a unique two-month “short-term” in 1954 deserves equal status as an election to a six-year term.
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Biden Blunders Obama Campaign Into Threat
Of ‘Gay Marriage’ Damage Among Blacks
A New York Times top-of-the-front-page story this week carried this headline: “On Marriage, Obama Tries To Limit Risk.” And this subhead: “Calls To Black Pastors After Gay Support.”
The Times story said that most of the black pastors whom Obama called said that, regardless of their views on the issue, they would “work aggressively” on behalf of the president’s campaign. But not every one of the pastors agreed. The Times story continued:
“The damage-control effort underscored the anxiety among Mr. Obama’s advisors about the consequences of the president’s revised position just months before what is expected to be a tight re-election vote.”
The story said that liberals and gay rights leaders called it an historic breakthrough. Obama recognized that much of the country remains uncomfortable with or opposed to same-sex marriages.
Obama’s concern about the potential political damage underscores the price he pays for having picked Biden, not the brightest bulb on the national political scene, as his running mate.
The gay marriage issue was something of a political sleeping dog and might very well have remained so if Biden—quite unintentionally, he maintains—made it something of a hot-button issue, all the more ironic because Biden well knows—or should have known—that gay marriage is not a federal government issue at all.
Traditionally and legally, marriage relationships are established under the laws of each state. And some 30 states have enacted statues or constitutional amendments defining marriage as only a relationship between a man and a woman.
In 2000, by a margin of more than 200,000 votes, Nebraskans adopted a state constitutional amendment outlawing any legal definition of marriage except as a relationship between a man and a woman.
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What Next? Spanish Interpreters At The Polls?
Research Indicates ‘Gays’ About 1.7% Of Adults
Another serving of smorgasbord, again with the hope that you find items to your taste:
–I believe that a substantial number of people will be pleased by the recognition of the size of America’s Hispanic population (legal or illegal) but a good many more will be turned off by the news that President Obama and Mitt Romney have decided to use television commercials appealing to voters in Spanish.
Presumably—but don’t bet the family farm on it—all Spanish-language-only voters will have to establish that they are legal residents in order to vote.
But the fact that Hispanic voters have to be appealed to in the Spanish language underscores the fact that we have in this country still an estimated 10 million or more illegal immigrants, with no sign of a solution in sight except possibly—or probably—an easy path to citizenship. Perhaps with no requirement that they show true proficiency in English, which used to be recognized as our national language.
–Almost totally overlooked in the flap over President Obama’s statement of his personal endorsement of “gay” marriage is the fact that the issue legally involves only a very small percentage of the American people.
Given very little news media attention was a recent report by Gary Gates, demographer-in-residence at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy based at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Gates’ best estimate, derived from five studies that have asked subjects about their sexual orientation, is that the nation has about four million adults who identify themselves as “gay” or lesbian, representing 1.7% of the nation’s 18-and-over population. This is a significantly lower figure than the 3 to 5% that has been “the conventional wisdom in the last two decades,” according to a news report of the Gates studies.
Another news report, again not given prominent play: Many Americans, not familiar with the careful research which has been done on the subject, have responded with figures as high as 25% or more when asked for their estimate of the nation’s “gay” population.
–President Obama’s handling of the Afghanistan issue is being met with increasing skepticism if not outright opposition, despite the president’s optimistic recent statement that “the tide has turned” and “we broke the Taliban’s momentum.”
Two news stories on inside pages in The World-Herald told a different story.
One headline read: “Senators: Taliban stronger.” The story reported that a pessimistic appraisal had come from Sen. Diane Feinstein, California Democrat, and Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, after a recent fact-finding visit to Afghanistan. Feinstein told CNN:
“I think we would both say is what we’ve found is that the Taliban is stronger.”
On another inside page, an Associated Press story appeared under this headline: “Poll puts Afghan War support at new low, 27%.”
Two very different reports from the Obama’s optimistic appraisal a few days earlier.
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‘The Rest Of The Story’ As To Why
Homestead Act ‘Birthday Party’ Is In Nebraska
There was a time not too many decades ago when a very popular radio commentator named Paul Harvey ended his broadcast with a very popular feature which he introduced something like this: “Now here’s the rest of the story.”
Well here today is “the rest of the story” in regard to the reason why the original Homestead Act is currently on display at the Homestead National Monument west of Beatrice, Nebraska:
A major World-Herald story reported that the original copy of the Homestead Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln, would for the first time be on display outside its home in the national archives in Washington.
But why on display this month in Nebraska on a site which has been designated the Homestead National Monument?
Here’s the rest of the story:
The site of the Homestead National Monument west of Beatrice, Nebraska, is on the original 160 acre homestead on which Daniel Freeman settled after serving in the Union Army in the Civil War.
Daniel Freeman Was An Early Filer
The story is that Freeman was on leave from Civil War military service when he came to Brownville, Nebraska to file a homestead claim when the filings began at midnight January 1, 1862.
Freeman’s application was filed at 10 minutes after midnight January 1, 1862. It has been pointed out that there could have been earlier filings in others of the many land offices at which filings were accepted starting midnight, January 1, 1862. But Daniel Freeman came to be recognized as the first, thus providing the basis for selection of the Freeman homestead site as the appropriate home for the Homestead National Monument, which, incidentally, is open to visitors all year.
The Homestead Act which attracted Daniel Freeman has been considered one of the most important governmental actions in the history of the United States, opening 270 million acres, or 10% of the area of the United States, to settlement by applicants willing to pledge to live on the 160 acres for at least five years, build some kind of dwelling and plant crops. The process was called “proving up” on the homestead claim.
A great many farms operating today in the western part of the United States include acres originally claimed by homesteaders.
Don’t Leave Out Moses Kincaid
When Daniel Freeman returned from the civil War he and his wife developed the 160 Nebraska acres in a variety of ways—the original residence plus at least one other residence, a school house for a time and fields cultivated for crops. There were also orchards of apple and peach trees.
The reason for spotlighting the original Freeman site and the Homestead National Monument this year is, of course, that 2012 marks the 150th anniversary of the year Abraham Lincoln signed the original Homestead Act.
Freeman’s original homestead west of Beatrice became the site of the Homestead National Monument of America when President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 signed a bill creating the monument as “an appropriate monument to retain for posterity a proper memorial…of the hardships in the pioneer life through which the early settlers passed in the settlement, cultivation and civilization of the Great West.”
U.S. Park Service staff members welcome visitors to visit the monument to learn more details about the Homestead Act’s fundamentally-important role in the settlement of Nebraska and other western states.
There is even more to the “rest of the story,” specifically the story of the Kinkaid Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Moses P. Kinkaid, a lawyer from O’Neil in 1904. The Kinkaid Act allowed homesteaders to claim up to 640 acres of government land in the cattle-range country of northern and western Nebraska.
A number of homesteaders had tried 160-acre claims in the Sand Hills cattle country, but that small a patch was not enough for survival for many farmers or ranchers in the Sand Hills. But “Kinkaiders” settled on the 640 acre homesteads, a good number of which became part of ranches still in operation in Nebraska’s ranch country.
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Gene Budig Still A ‘Midlands Voice’?
How long will The World-Herald continue to run regular contributions from Gene Budig—a friend of mine who hasn’t lived in his native Nebraska for several decades—under the “Midlands Voices” label?
Budig is a former chancellor or president of three major state universities and was at one time president of the American baseball league and has lived for years in New York City. (I’m talking about Gene Budig, not Bob Kerrey.)
I think it is pretty well established that Gene likes to see his words in print. He has found cooperative allies in editors at The World-Herald. An occasional Public Pulse letter would be more appropriate.
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