Phạm Trường HàLINCOLN — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Thursday acknowledged the political reality facing Republicans’ decades-old push to award all five of the state’s Electoral College votes to the presidential winner of the statewide popular vote.
Pillen was one of several state GOP leaders who said or hinted that it was likely too late to make the change in time for the 2024 presidential election. Several said conservatives had not secured the 33 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
“That’s the key,” Pillen said. “We’ve got to find 33 votes. We don’t have them today.”
Echoing part of his stump speech while campaigning for office in 2022, Pillen said Republicans who want that kind of change are going to have to help him fill more seats with conservatives to overcome legislative resistance.
“Conservative Nebraskans have to get in the game and have their voice be heard,” Pillen said. “We can’t fix winner-take-all in 30 hours. It’s been a problem for 30 years.”
Questions about the proposal’s prospects persisted the day after a 36-9 procedural vote ended a push for a test vote on language from Legislative Bill 764, this year’s version of the winner-take-all proposal. Most lawmakers interviewed said they didn’t see a path forward.
State Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, said the bill remains in committee because the sponsor doesn’t have the votes.
“My job as chair is to make sure any legislation that hits the floor has met the criteria to be there, and that criteria includes a path to passage,” said Brewer, a Republican. “It doesn’t have a path.”
Nebraska and Maine stand alone
Pillen got the same information in a Thursday morning meeting with Brewer and Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen, who support the change to winner-take-all from Nebraska’s unusual way of awarding its electoral votes.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that award a single Electoral College vote to the winners of the presidential popular vote in each congressional district, in addition to the two electoral votes distributed to the statewide winner. Former President Donald Trump won four of Nebraska’s five votes in 2020. President Joe Biden won one vote, in the Omaha-based 2nd District.
Pillen helped fuel a final push for change in the waning days of the 2024 legislative session when he responded Tuesday to calls and emails from people prodded by conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk to contact Nebraska lawmakers and the governor to press for change.
Trump praised Pillen in a social media post on Tuesday. And State Sen. Mike McDonnell raised some hopes when he switched parties Wednesday and joined the GOP, but then said he was firmly opposed to winner-take-all.
Kirk tweeted Thursday that he was coming to Nebraska next week to rally conservatives to the cause. He took another shot at Republican Nebraska lawmakers, urging his followers to call and write to them. One senator Kirk targeted, State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, said he didn’t know “who the heck Kirk was.”
No clear path
Regardless of the pressure, the time for bills to advance from the first round of debate is essentially over in the Legislature. Only a small window remains in which proposals might be folded into other bills.
Speaker John Arch said Thursday he had not seen or heard of a new path for LB 764 to be attached to another bill. Brewer said he does not expect it to be attached to any bills headed out of the Government Committee.
State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, the sponsor of this year’s winner-take-all bill, said Wednesday he would try to amend his language into State Sen. John Lowe’s Legislative Bill 541, a bill on making public power board elections partisan.
Lowe, of Kearney, said Wednesday night he was open to adding the proposal. On Thursday, however, he said he was unlikely to fold the bill into his until it had a vote in committee. The Government Committee held its last executive session Thursday without addressing the bill.
Pillen and others expect many of the session’s remaining days to be focused on major proposals for property tax relief and bills that have already advanced out of the first round of debate.
Another factor that could limit the time for winner-take-all is the emergence of controversial legislation such as Legislative Bill 575, the sports and spaces bill from State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha that defines K-12 school bathrooms and sporting teams as male or female based on sex at birth.
Senators who support the current system of awarding electoral votes have filed unfriendly amendments on a number of bills that could chew up time and limit Lippincott’s options.
In a follow-up interview, Lippincott said, “The fat lady isn’t singing, but I can hear the instruments warming up.”
Nebraska Examiner Senior Reporter Paul Hammel contributed to this report.
