Bizarro Nebraska

Remember the Seinfeld episode with "Bizarro Jerry"? The bizarro Jerry was Elaine's boyfriend who was the opposite of Jerry -- thoughtful, considerate, well read. There was a bizarro George, bizarro Kramer and a bizarro Newman -- who instead of a mailman was an efficient, FedEx carrier.

Well, Nebraska politics has hit the bizarro level full force. First there's a former Democrat (Johanns) as the juggernauted Republican Senate candidate. (OK, not that bizarre.) Then there's the Democratic party scouring the ranks of Republicans for candidates at all levels. (A little more bizarre.) Then the likely Democrat Senate candidate was a Republican just six weeks ago. (Pretty bizarre.)

And now for the cats and dogs living together point, our sources tell us that Pat Flynn -- the generally evangelical fringe GOP Senate candidate, who is basing his candidacy on his faith, and features churches and babies in the womb on his campaign website -- has canned his campaign manager and has picked up as his new manager...

... a Democratic.

Nothing like completely ostracizing your "base" there, Pat.

(Update: Yup, the original rumor was David Hahn, but the latest word is that that's not true. Looks like we'll have to wait for the offical word from Pat himself. OK Pat, you got us to look, but only for a moment.)

Has there been a more bizarre year in Nebraska politics?
Next thing you know they'll be talking about Ben Nelson for veep...

***

And it's never to early to start talking about...2009!

As reported in the OWH and other places, Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey ended his state of the city (city of the state?) address on Tuesday saying that he's looking forward to serving Omaha for a long time. Many assume this means he's leaning hard at a re-election campaign.

This is probably bad news for the many challengers who would like the third floor office to themselves. Councilmen Jims Vokal and Suttle would both like the gig (though, at least Vokal says he is unlikely to challenge Fahey; Suttle, not a great friend of Fahey's, maybe).

Then there's the elephant who's always in the room, Hal Daub.
Again, our sources say Daub is IN for the 2009 race.

Think the new CWS stadium won't be a political football?

***

And we missed it a few weeks back, but we here on Leavenworth Street had our second birthday back on January 17th. So, ya know, happy birthday to us and all that. And we sincerely thank you for continuing to read the stuff we write.

Raimondo "ready to file" for Senate

KMTV is reporting that Tony Raimondo is getting ready to file as a U.S. Senate candidate some time near February 5th (Super Tuesday). They say:

Raimondo, who switched from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party last month tells Action 3 News his Senate plans are "moving forward."

According to Raimondo: "I'm not ready to file yet, but I'm more enthused every day. I don't want to file on Super Tuesday (i.e. the news media will be pre-occupied with the Presidential race) but it'll be pretty close to it."

They go on to say:

Scott Kleeb's Senate fever may be fading away. Kleeb is apparently having trouble getting the financial backing needed to make a Senate run.

Tony Raimondo, the pride of the Nebraska Democrats.

(Yes, the same Tony Raimondo who gave the National Republican Senatorial Committee $2,500 just last June...)

Nebraska Caucus primer

With Super Tuesday shaping up as a non-decider for the Democrat Presidential nomination, the buzz down at Whole Foods is that the Nebraska Democrat Caucuses will actually matter! So as the Dems try to figure out where, how and why to caucus, we here on Leavenworth Street want to put in our two Lincoln Memorial medallions on the subject.

The Nebraska Democratic Party has made itself irrelevant. They have a Senator from their party who is the poorest Democrat in the body. One of the two leading candidates for the other Senate seat was a Republican a month ago. And they have yet to put up any candidates for any of the three House races.

So this caucus gimmick is their best idea to make them “relevant” on the national scene.

But let's get this out of the way: We're not big fans of the whole "caucus" concept.

First off, it's an Iowa thing. Nearly everyone else in the country is fine with going and punching a ballot -- like we do when we elect Presidents and Senators and city-councilmen. But for some reason, Iowa went and threw this goofy concept in.

And you know what? They can have it. They've got six on six girls’ basketball, college wrestling and covered bridges. Let’s let Iowa keep ‘em.

What about my secret ballot? P'shaw! Secret-schmecret.

And what's this about campaigning in the auditorium? Here's this line from the caucus instructions manual:

"Candidate support groups will select a spokesman who will state the case for their candidate."

You know what? If this person's sales pitch actually convinces you to switch after the past 12 months of campaigning by the candidates, your privilege to vote should be taken away.

And suppose you're there and a girl you like is a big Hillary person. You're an Obama guy. But you really want to ask out this girl, so, because of that, you go to her side. Now you've potentially altered the Presidential election because of a date. How Clintonian.

Unlike the Iowa Dems, the Nebraska Dems have added a wrinkle so you can vote by absentee ballot. Except that if your candidate doesn't get 15% you don't get to participate any more and your ballot will essentially be thrown away. But thanks for the letter.

Of course, part of this ploy is to get Hillary and Obama and Edwards to come in, talk about cows and ethanol and make some Nebraska football reference. But will any of the candidates show up? They've only got four days after Super Tuesday.

And did you know that the Washington-state caucuses and Louisiana primary are on February 9th as well? Where will Barack and Hillary look more like leaders of the people?
Touring post-Katrina New Orleans?
Speaking in front of Seattle's space needle?
Or talking sorghum prices in the middle of Carhenge?

With the lousy support Bubba got in Nebraska and Ben Nelson's endorsement of Obama, will Hillary bother to show up at all? Will she just give it to Obama? What was the point then?

All this does is emphasize the need for a federal commission to figure out a normal primary system, instead of the moronic free-for-all going on now. In the mean time, it looks like Nebraska Dems got their wish that someone will pay attention to their Presidential preference.

It's just too bad they chose a girls' six on six basketball game to be their method.

About your flair...

Second District Rep Lee Terry is taking Fred Thompson's retirement from the Presidential race in stride. On Terry's blog on the "The Hill", Terry noted:

I stayed loyal but obviously Fred’s campaign didn’t have the flair I had hoped it would.

Lee requires that everyone in his campaign wear a minimum of 15 pieces of flair at all events. Now, it's up to each person whether or not they want to just do the bare minimum. Well, like Brian, for example, has 37 pieces of flair. And a terrific smile.

(And if you didn't get this joke from Office Space, well then we can't help you.)

"Roll Call" also notes that Terry is holding a fundraiser next week where they'll have a viewing party of the American Idol tryouts filmed in Omaha. What's funny is that the the Dems were at those same tryouts trying to find someone to run against Lee...

***

Former Ranch-hand, Scott Kleeb was on NTV's Cawfee Tawk....er, "Good Life" on Tuesday, where the gals were absolutely giddy with Scott's response about running for Senate:

"I'm very seriously thinking about it."

(...with a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin...)

Of course it's interesting that Kleeb has been "thinking about it" since, at the bare minimum, October, but still can't make up his mind? We're looking forward to the gals' reaction in the Tony Raimondo interview.

(And we would also note that Kleeb is only wearing ONE piece of flair on his brown sports coat, over the Hanes t-shirt.)

***

Finally, we note that Adrian Smith also decided to run for re-election. Smith's first term has been noted for strong constituent services and voting like a conservative. We always get a kick out the Dems who find these things to be a liability.

Jon and Huck

Nebraskans are continuing to stay busy on the Presidential politics scene. As Don Walton reports in the LJS, Jon Bruning was trucking along on the Huckabee bandwagon in South Carolina. He's apparently going to do a few more ride-alongs in Florida as well.

Our angry comrades at Nebraska Blue also found this MSNBC story that shows Bruning up on stage with Huck in SC (above). We're not real sure what value the Huck camp found in having JB up on stage, but ya know, rock on.

Of course, Bruning's timing couldn't be worse as Huck is fading in the polls, and has now cut staff and travel expenses. Bruning may have looked more clairvoyant had he jumped on before Huck's rise in neighboring Iowa.

So why did JB jump on the Huck-mobile? Well, for one, they share the same consultant, Dresner Wickers. Conventional wisdom would have JB supporting McCain, who endorsed Bruning-backer Tom Osborne for Governor. But we assume McCain's amnesty (AMNESTY!) bill means JB had to take another path. Heineman takes Romney, so that leaves Thompson, Rudy or Huckabee. And that's where the consultant connection comes in. JB - have fun in Florida, and ask him to let you speak a bit!

***

The Kleeb camp said the Hot Ranch-hand will be traveling to Washington, DC to find out what the party-elders think about his election chances, and will finally announce something within the next two weeks. Or something. It's getting to be "drop the kids off at the pool" or get off the pot time for Kleeb.

We're sure Tony Raimondo is enjoying twiddling his thumbs in his Behlen lair, waiting for Kleeb to make up his mind.

***

And what do we here at Leavenworth Street think of the Presidential race these days? Well, here's our take (after much internal debating, mind you):

First, Thompson and Huckabee are done. Thompson got in too late and never showed enough fire for the average folks to jump onto his bandwagon. The CW was that he wasn't really interested in running, and he has reinforced that notion with his lackluster effort on the trail. Right on the issues, but no fire in the belly. (Update at 1:45pm: Note that this was posted BEFORE Thompson dropped out today...)

Huckabee came out of the gates as an interesting populist and was a funny and logical sounding guy. However, once he gained a little traction people expected him to start expanding on serious policy positions, and he never delivered. His foreign policy gaffs didn't help either. Then in Iowa he became the fundamentalist Christian candidate, and he's turned into something of a one trick pony. Now every time you hear him it's only about abortion, gay-marriage and God. Being the Christian Coalition candidate isn't going to give him the nom without having serious policy positions on matters of national security and the economy.

Giuliani has rapidly faded and may have to finally reap what he planted in Florida, which may have been too many resources. Some of us here on L St still think Rudy's the guy, but coming in last in all of the other primaries has hurt him. Can he take a win or strong showing and make the jump in Uber Tuesday? We're not so sure.

Romney still has the backing of many of the party conservatives (such as Rush), but the other GOP candidates generally hate him. Huckabee in particular sees it as his mission to take him down. Many think he's too much of a slick opportunist. An then there's the Mormon thing, which we're still not sure he's done with answering.

Finally there's McCain. He came in with the Bob Dole-esque backing of "he's next in line." As the fall-back candidate, he's become somewhat of a "I guess I could vote for him" kind of guy. This is mainly because he has emerged (arguably) as the candidate who can beat Hillary in November. Watch how strong his conservative speech becomes this week as Florida approaches.

After Florida, it'll be a two-man (maybe 2 and half-man) race, with McCain and Romney, or possibly Giuliani, going into Feb 5th National Primary.

As for the Dems? Barrack Obama will become the Hart, Tsongas, Bradley, Dean of 2008. A political footnote in the Hillary nomination annals.

But if 45% of the electorate will NOT vote for Hillary, and McCain is seen as too old or too mainstream, will that encourage a Bloomberg run? Only if he thinks he could actually win. It could be a weird year...

OK, let's hear it partisans!

Counting with Kleeb

You've heard of "VooDoo Economics"? "Fuzzy Math"?
Well there is a new type of calculus going on with the Democrats these days.
And your instructor is none other than Professor Scott Kleeb.

At the 6:07 mark of the YouTube video of his speech at the Truman dinner Kleeb says that in the 2006 3rd District Congressional election,

"I lost by 10,321 votes ...not that I counted."

Well, it's pretty clear that he didn't count. Because this is...FALSE!

Kleeb lost by 20,641 votes, according to the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Adrian Smith: 113,687
Scott Kleeb : 93,046

Here, let us set this out for you Scott:

113687
-93046
20641

Now Kleeb is going to try to huckster you into the idea that, well, IF 10,321 Smith voters changed, and instead voted for Kleeb, well then he would have won. Interesting theory.

But that isn't the way we count (here in America).

• If 10,321 NEW voters had jumped in and voted for Kleeb...Kleeb would have LOST by 10,321 votes.


• If 10,321 Smith voters had simply stayed home...Kleeb would have LOST by 10,321 votes.


• When you make a big pile of the ballots, you'll see that Kleeb has 20,641 fewer ballots than Smith.

Heck, if Bill Callahan had convinced Tom Osborne that he really only lost to Kansas by 19 points (instead of 37), he might have kept his job!

To try to sell the idea that 10,321 voters would LEAVE Smith and THEN cast their votes for Kleeb, well, that is an interesting sales technique.
How would we describe that technique...hmm...hmm.
Oh yeah...it's LYING.

***

Tony Raimondo also showed up at the same Democrat dinner as Trigonometry Professor Kleeb last week. Raimondo got up and told everyone how pumped he was to be a Democrats because "I've been partnering with labor all my life!" (Of course, some Dems have said that his partnership with the unions has been to keep his heel clamped on his partner's neck.)

This exhortation comes as a shock to the many Republicans who he was convincing a few months ago that he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

Nonetheless, we found some secret audio footage of the reception the Truman dinner Democrats gave Raimondo.
Click here to listen.

***

The 2007 Senate voting tabulations are in and, SURPRISE!, E. Ben Nelson is a Democrat! How about that? And back in 2006, he was such a good "conservative", voting with the President 75% of the time, right?. But in 2007? 49%.

And then there's Nelson's recent endorsement of...Huckabee? Romney? Giuliani? Those are the conservatives, just like Bennie, right? No, Nelson endorses Obama, a Senator who votes to the LEFT of Hillary.

(Wait...I...thought...Ben was...a...Republican? Right? Right?....)

***

And finally, you've played, or at least heard of Fantasy Football? Fantasy Baseball? Heck maybe even Fantasy NBA leagues?

But we've got something new for you this year: Fantasy Senate Campaigning!

That's right, first to start up the league was the GOP's own Pat Flynn.
Then the Green's Steve Larrick fired up his computer to give it a whirl.
And finally, we have a Democrat to join! It's some dude named Larry Marvin!

Larry is Fremont resident who last ran for the Unicameral ten years ago.
He's a veteran, longtime Dem, and probably also owns a computer.

To join the Fantasy Senate Campaign League, contact the Secretary of State's office.

(Are we being mean? Yeah, a little. But geez...)

I wanna be like Mike

Mike Johanns appeared on Saturday Night Live's "Coffee Talk" this morning and...wait.
It wasn't Coffee Talk?

Oh. Well, our bad.

As it turns out it was "NTV's Good Life", and believe it or not, Leslie and Peggy threw MJ some "tough" questions.

At least "tough" in the sense that they weren't totally softballs like, "tell us about yourself" or "what's your favorite breakfast cereal and why?"

He got, Why did you quit your other jobs and what will you do now? What will you do about health care? What's your energy policy?

(And he pretty much knocked each outta the park.)

Pretty basic stuff, but fairly in-depth for something that isn't exactly "Meet the Press".

(Click here to go the the Good Life page, then click on the video links. First one is short, second one is longer.)

Take a look, then tawk amongst yuh-selves.

Kleeb in the Balance

Last month, Pope Benedict warned of the global warming “Prophets of Doom” who are using scare tactics and phony science to gin up support for their political agenda.

Well Nebraska now has its own official prophet – none other than the Hot Ranch-Hand, Scott Kleeb!

Kleeb was up on his pulpit at the Nebraska Democrat’s Harry S Truman Dinner on Friday spewing forth about the evils that Nebraskans are ignoring.

We face the moral test of our lifetime in combating climate change and achieving true energy independence, not just from our enemies in the world, but from ourselves and our consuming habits.

(Domestic policies) tell us we can drill our way to energy independence and then bury our heads in those wells when it comes to global warming.

But nothing worth doing ever is easy.

(And when Democrats tell you that their “moral” plan won’t be “easy”, keep a firm grip on your wallet.)

So when Kleeb comes knocking at your door, asking for your vote (and your money), keep in mind that he will be among those that:

Want to control your thermostat.
Want to regulate the belchin’ and fartin’ cows in your feedlot.
Want to tax your minivan.
Want to take away your SUV.
And want to beatify Al Gore.

That’s the direction he’d be heading in office.
Whether he should get to the Senate, or the House or the Unicameral.

But Kleeb got one thing right in his little speech that made the Dems all dewy eyed:

We face a global threat of extremism and division…

Only thing is, while he may have meant terrorist, it can apply to the weather-nazis just as well.

Consider yourself warned.

Who's your POTUS?

There was surprisingly very little press out of Norman, Oklahoma after the big Moderates Summit. Apparently many tried to NOT make it a coronation for Mike Bloomberg, and they succeeded to an extent. Being overshadowed by the Presidential primaries didn't help. And the Obama surge probably took some of the wind out of Bloomberg's sails.

If Obama wins and McCain wins, there will be no room, or interest in a third party candidacy. The Hillary and Rudy leads probably stoke Bloomberg's interest the most -- considering that they're both New York pols whom Bloomberg figures he's head and shoulders above.

But if Hillary is in and say McCain or even Huckabee get the nod, what then?

And then there's the wobble-ation (it's a word) of Chuck Hagel these days. At the Stormin'Norman conference he implicitly talked about switching parties. Now, it's not clear if he was talking about going from R to I, or from R to D. But Hagel's name always seems to come up as the Dem's favorite Republican. Of course, the love is almost all about Iraq and hating the Bush Administration (and to a lesser extent immigration). Some have even whispered about an Obama-Hagel ticket to show true "Change!" at the top.

But, assuming an Obama nomination, if Hillary keeps the nom process close then there's no way Obabma could entertain thoughts of Hagel as veep. The party stalwarts wouldn't allow it -- with all of Hagel's conservative positions being brought out. (And how would he vote on ties in the Senate?) Of course he could always have a position in a Dem administration, like how GOP Senator Cohen was Clinton's Sec Def.

And then Obama aside, look who else brings Hagel to the forefront in an Iraq argument: Former President Bubba. Lame-duck Hagel is still having fun in the limelight!

***

Today, Nebraska's other Senator, Ben Nelson, said the Surge in Iraq isn't working -- on same day that McCain and Lieberman said it did work.

Nelson is clearly being pushed to lead the way for national Dems to say the Surge isn't really working (facts notwithstanding). Dems can point at the "conservative" Nelson and say, "well if NELSON thinks that it's not working, well then, gee, it must really not be working."

But Nelson points to the failure of the Iraqi government to form a coalition, etc, for the reason that the Surge hasn't worked. Which is stupid. The Surge is a military tactic, not a political one. Not to mention that it's comical that Nelson thinks that Iraqi factions that are still trying to literally kill each other will come together and hold hands just because the violence has diminished. It's going to take time. Heck, Republicans and Democrats can't get a simple bills passed in Congress and they've been working at it for 200+ years.

But ya know, interesting spin E. Ben.

***

And the other news hitting the blogs is that Jon Bruning has decided to back Mike Huckabee for Prez.

Now Nebraska Republicans are still all over the place for the primary. Lee Terry was an early Fred-head. Dave Heineman is pro-Mitt. Hal Daub and former Governor Charlie Thone are state co-chairs for Rudy Giuliani. McCain was a Tom Osborne guy back in the Gov's race (and considering how loyal T.O. is, you'd have to figure he'd return the favor if asked).

By supporting Huck, is Bruning trying to get the fundamentalist Christians, Huckabee's main supporters, on his side? Or is he doing it just to put his thumb in Heineman's eye? Or maybe just to try to get lucky picking the next Prez?

Because it's curious that Bruning chose to mention Huck's "law and order" credentials when Huck is the one candidate that has the inmate-pardon problems from his days as Arkansas Governor. Of all the things he could support Huck on, why not mention Pro-Life issues or other general conservative issues? Oh well.

***

And since everyone is talking about the Presidential stuff anyway, feel free to toss in your thoughts and support. (Just remember to use the Jim Rome rule: Have a take, and don't suck.)

...in with the New

Happy New Year, L St readers! Great to be back in this new even year. 2007 was a bit odd, no?

So here we go..

***

You may have seen that the Johanns camp has raised $1.5 million and has a mil COH now. The Flynn campaign will never know what hit them.

And MJ has a new intro video for his website and...it's a pleasant surprise. Shockingly, for a campaign, it actually looks like it was produced post 1985. There are no plants, and he's not even sporting a tie. Now, of course, it's a bit corny, and we think probably gives too much air time to Stephanie. But nonetheless, it comes across as upbeat, relaxed and modern. Not sure if this is a Schrock piece or not, but who ever put it together did a nice job.

***

On the "Dem" side, apparently Kleeb and Raimondo are going to make up their collective minds soon. Who really knows though, right?

As was reported last week, Paul Johnson is up from his Shreveport, Louisiana house to consult for Raimondo and probably put an easy $50K in the bank And Johnson went ahead and registered raimondo2008.com for Tony (according to the registration info). Nothing there yet...

***

On the Presidential front, you probably saw that Dave Heineman trooped off to Iowa for Romney. And just to make sure there were other Nebraskans there for the runners-up, Mike Fahey showed his support for Hillary.

Of course while Bob Kerrey wasn't shooting his mouth off about Obama being his kind of Muslim, he was telling KFAB that he's too old to be Vice President -- in case anyone came asking.

And then Chuck Hagel will be in Norman, Oklahoma with lots of middle-of-the-roaders who are itching to jump on the Mike Bloomberg bandwagon. Of course, Bloomberg toldnone other than Ryan Seacrest on New Year's Eve that he "will not" run for President. The NYT's did an analysis of the "Shermanesque" statement.

***

And then there are the young Nebraska Dems. If you read the blogs, the kids over at the NNN, have been duking it out as to whether the Nebraska Dems are doing their job by supporting a possible Raimondo run. The NNN leader, Kyle Michaelis, has been comically pro-Raimondo as soon as TR became a Democrat. (Had Raimondo run as a GOPer,Michaelis would have labeled him an anti-labor Fascist.)

So there are a few outspoken Dems, banging the anti-Raimondo drum. One, Brian T. Osborn, the Phelps County Dem Chair, has even threatened to sue the party for violating its own constitution for supporting Raimondo and "allowing" him to run as a Dem. (Our non-investigated analysis leads us to believe that the Nebraska statutes will allow TR to run as a Dem no matter what.)

Anywho, Michaelis took it upon himself to draft an essay to the Dem State Central Committee on why Osborn is bad for the party, etc. etc. And when we say "etc.", we mean ETC! Up on Daily Kos, you can see the small book Michaelis wrote hacking at Osborn. It's 1,600 words! Sixteen hundred! The Gettsyburg Address is only 278 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1,325! Heck, the Rosetta Stone only has 1,200 words, and it was in three different languages! So, the message there is clearly, "If you want to be a Democrat, adhere to the party line, or you're out of the club!"

***

Speaking of which, we've heard a rumor of ANOTHER Republican joining the Dems, this time to run against Lee Terry. But we're not going to propagate that one until we see some actual movements, and not just the standard head-fakes.

***

What say you L St readers?! It should be a fun year...