Newly minted Donald Trump surrogates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, will be at the Hilton in downtown Omaha, Nebraska on Saturday in the duo’s latest campaign stop for the Republican presidential nominee. Just a short 25-minute drive away, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz will also be vying for Omahans’ votes, hosting a rally at SumTur Amphitheater in Papillion.
With just over two weeks until Election Day, the two camps are fighting for a small and politically unique slice of the Cornhusker State’s eastern border. Nebraska is one of two states, the other being Maine, that doesn’t do a winner-takes-all system with their electoral college votes. The area around Omaha, the state’s second congressional district, holds one electoral vote—and this election, according to an analysis by NBC News National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki, that one vote could decide the race.
“It’s especially important for democrats,” Kornaki began, “there’s an electoral map scenario for Kamala Harris that absolutely hinges on locking it down.” That scenario looks like this: Harris takes home Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada; Omaha, in this hypothetical, could get Harris to 270.
Since 1992, when Nebraska switched its electoral process to the one it has now, the district has gone blue twice—once in 2008 for Barack Obama and again for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. To show their support for the Harris-Walz ticket, local Omaha residents have put up campaign signs in their yards featuring a single blue dot.
In September, Republicans across the country, along with Trump himself, tried to interfere in Nebraska’s electoral college system, executing a last-ditch and ultimately unsuccessful lobbying campaign to overturn the decades-old law and lump together all of the districts in the state. The Harris campaign has exponentially outspent Trump in Nebraska, dedicating $5 million toward advertising in the state, compared to Trump’s $200,000, according to reporting from NPR based on data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Still, the Trump campaign’s choice to send RFK Jr. and Gabbard to Omaha points to a continued effort to turn the whole state red.
Kennedy—who once referred to Trump as a “terrible president” and a “bully”—and Gabbard—who opted for critiques like “corrupt” and “unfit to serve” in 2020—have both taken on prominent roles in the effort to elect the former president. Since ending his own bid for office in August, he’s been stumping for Trump. Though Kennedy—whose campaign included a sexual assault allegation first reported by Vanity Fair—paused his more forward-facing campaigning after news broke that he allegedly had an inappropriate relationship with New York magazine’s Washington, DC, correspondent Olivia Nuzzi.
As for Gabbard—who represented Hawaii in the US House from 2013 to 2021—she’s transitioned in the past four years from a Democratic presidential candidate to a mouthpiece for Donald Trump.
“Biden’s out, Kamala is in. Don’t be fooled: policies won’t change. Just like Biden wasn’t the one calling the shots, Kamala Harris won’t be either,” Gabbard posted on X in July. “She is the new figurehead for the deep state and the maidservant of Hillary Clinton, queen of the cabal of warmongers. They will continue their efforts to engulf the world in war and taking away our liberty.”
Saturday’s rally will be the second campaign visit to Omaha for Minnesota governor Walz, who is a Nebraska native. In early October, Gwen, his wife, also hosted an Omaha event for a bus tour that’s been visiting swing states and districts to campaign on access to abortion and reproductive rights.
Walz previously visited another suburb of the city on the weekend after being named Harris’s VP pick. During that rally, the midwestern governor questioned whether or not Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, would feel at home in Nebraska.
“Do you think that guy could understand the pure joy of pregaming at Sidetracks before a Huskers-Sooners game?” Walz asked of Trump. “Do you think JD Vance knows one damn thing about Nebraska?” he continued later on in the address. “You think he’s ever had a runza? That guy would call it a Hot Pocket.”
“A damn Hot Pocket.”
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