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.
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.”
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“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.”