As Nebraska's Democratic Party shrinks, some former party officials call for change

After another election cycle that brought few bright spots for Nebraska Democrats, some former party officials have escalated their criticism of the state party's leader, Jane Kleeb, calling on her to step aside.

In interviews with the Journal Star, two former chairs of the Nebraska Democratic Party — Vince Powers, who led the party from 2012 to 2016, and former U.S. Attorney for Nebraska Tom Monaghan, who was chair from 1985 to 1989 — called last week for Kleeb to step down from the post she has held since 2016.

The two former party leaders were joined in their calls for change by Bud Pettigrew, who served as the Nebraska Democratic Party's chair of chairs from 2008 to 2022, working alongside Kleeb for six years before resigning his position after that year's midterms punctuated his lack of confidence in the party's direction.

The calls for change come as the Democratic Party continues to shrink in Nebraska, where there are fewer registered Democrats now than there have been in any general election year since at least the 1960s. Republicans, meanwhile, have maintained their hold on statewide offices, all five of the state's congressional seats and captured a filibuster-proof majority in the Legislature.

"Some people need to be fired," said Pettigrew, who once chaired the Cherry County Democratic Party and now lives in Hastings. "Maybe Jane might need to step down. She may say, 'Hey, maybe it's time for fresh blood.' I know a lot of people are saying that. They are telling me that."

"The last few days, I've had phone calls from people as far west as Bayard, as far north as Valentine, people in Omaha and Lincoln, (saying), 'We've had enough. It's not working,'" Pettigrew said in a phone interview Tuesday. "And I agree. It's not working. It's time for fresh blood."

In an interview, Kleeb, an activist who rose to prominence in the 2010s as Nebraska's leading opponent to the Keystone XL Pipeline, largely dismissed criticism of her stewardship of the state's Democratic Party, which she has chaired as a volunteer since 2016 — winning reelection by votes at party conventions in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

She pointed to the state party's record fundraising this year, a substantial increase in elected Democrats in down-ballot races since she took over in 2016, key wins in tough legislative races this cycle and the delivery of the 2nd Congressional District's "Blue Dot" presidential electoral vote to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Kleeb, who said she still plans to finish out her current term as chair that runs until 2026, acknowledged that "more listening sessions have to happen" between Democrats and state voters and said she "welcome(s) fair criticism."

But Kleeb contended her most vocal critics like Powers, Monaghan and former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey — who did not call for Kleeb's resignation but did label the state party "a corrupt organization" under her leadership — are "people who've always hated me and always have an ax to grind against me and who (have) never, ever recognized the work that we've done."

"And as a woman, it's increasingly obvious," Kleeb said, adding: "That's how it is. And no matter how many conversations I've had to try to have with those critics, they don't want me to be successful."

Criticism of Kleeb is far from universal among Nebraska Democrats or former party leaders. Vic Covalt, who led the party from 2008 to 2012, said he doesn't "fault Nebraska's (party) leadership at all" for this year's disappointing election cycle, adding that Kleeb "does her best, but there isn't much to work with."

Randy Fair, the chair of the Keith County Democratic Party and the state party's 3rd Congressional District chair, said "some of the criticism of her is really misplaced."

A Democrat who unseated a GOP incumbent in 2010 to become the top prosecutor in a county where more than 68% of voters are Republicans, Fair said he had never heard from anyone at the state party until Kleeb came along in 2016, spurring him to become an active party member.

"I think that Jane Kleeb and the current Nebraska Democratic Party is much more focused on the blue-collar, the working class, making inroads with everybody in the state," said Fair, who is thought to be the only Democratic county attorney in Nebraska.

But critics point to high-profile instances of a divided state party — including the party's vote in March to censure Omaha Sen. Mike McDonnell over his votes in the Legislature for a stricter abortion ban and limits on gender-affirming care in a move that prompted McDonnell to switch parties a month after the censure — as evidence for their case.

The critics also point to the widening gulf between registered Republicans and Democrats in the state, where Democrats haven't won a statewide race since 2006 and haven't won federal office since 2014, repeatedly failing to unseat GOP Rep. Don Bacon in the 2nd Congressional District even as Democratic presidential candidates prevailed there in 2020 and again this month.

"The party is shrinking, and that just means that it's time for a change," said Powers. "I don't think anyone could say the status quo ... is good."

Democrats in decline

Twenty years ago, 396,764 voters in Nebraska were registered Democrats — the high watermark for the party in the state dating back to at least 1972, according to state voter registration archives.

Even in 2004, Democrats accounted for less than 35% of voters in Nebraska, but the party's candidates continued to compete with Republicans in statewide races. In 2006, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, the state's former governor, won his second term in the U.S. Senate, winning nearly 64% of the vote over wealthy Republican upstart Pete Ricketts, who poured $14.35 million into his own campaign.

Democrats haven't won a statewide election since. Ricketts, the state's former governor and Nebraska's junior U.S. Senator, has won three.

After the number of registered Democratic voters in Nebraska hovered between 370,000 and 400,000 from 1972 until 2020, the party has hemorrhaged voters in the years since.

There are now 337,289 registered Democrats in Nebraska, 33,205 fewer than there were four years ago. Republicans have added 16,470 voters since 2020 and now outnumber Democrats by more than 285,000 voters statewide.

Kleeb acknowledged the party has "to get a handle on what's happening with voter registration" but pinned the party's losses in part on Nebraska's Secretary of State's Office, which she said is purging Democrats from state voter rolls at a higher rate than Republicans. The Secretary of State's Office did not provide data on what kind of voters have been removed from state voter rolls in time for publication.

"We have documented that we've registered 16,000 new people this cycle, but you would not know that if you look at the raw numbers, because we're barely treading water with the amount of people that are either moving out of state or that are getting purged from voter files," Kleeb said, adding that the party would continue to invest in partisan voter registration moving forward — an initiative that Kleeb said donors had declined to fund in prior years.

The widening gulf between registered Republicans and Democrats has hardened the party's path to winning statewide races, but even in Nebraska's Democratic strongholds, success has been fleeting.

In the Lincoln-centric 1st Congressional District — where independent candidate Dan Osborn edged U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer this month by less than 1% in his closer-than-expected loss to the GOP incumbent statewide — Democratic challenger Carol Blood lost to Republican Rep. Mike Flood by more than 20 points.

Democrats delivered an electoral vote to Harris in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District through the state's unique presidential electoral system, but Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas again fell short of unseating Bacon, the district's Republican congressman who has staved off challenges from Vargas by narrow margins two election cycles in a row.

Trouble for Democrats in the 2nd District did not stop at the ballot box this election cycle.

In October, the Douglas County Democratic Party filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee to establish its own federal campaign account separate from the Nebraska Democratic Party's to boost federal candidates, a move that violates the state party's bylaws .

In response, Kleeb revoked the county party's access to the state party's VAN system, which is campaign software organizers use to track and inform door-to-door canvassing. The move left the county party in Democrats' biggest Nebraska stronghold without the technology for the last month of the campaign cycle.

CJ King, the Douglas County Democratic Party chair, deferred questions on the spat to Kleeb, but said the county party "got along just fine without" the system. Kleeb said the conflict was "purely technical" and the bylaws the county party violated are meant to ensure both parties don't violate shared FEC contributed limits placed on parties.

"We have to follow our bylaws," Kleeb said. "I can't just be like, 'Well, it's close to the election.' So what we did was we said, 'We want to solve this together. If we can't solve this together in the next 30 days, you know that there, of course, has to be repercussions, which means you won't have full VAN access.'"

An email obtained by the Journal Star that Kleeb sent King and others in early October suggests the revocation was more immediate. Kleeb told King the Douglas County party's VAN "access will be turned off until the DCDP is in compliance with the bylaws" in an email sent Oct. 9, the same day King filed paperwork to establish the county party's federal committee.

The state party has seen its own federal fundraising spike under Kleeb's leadership. In the 2016 election cycle, the Nebraska Democratic Party raised $2.61 million and spent $2.36 million, according to FEC data.

This time around, the party raised $4.24 million and spent $3.42 million through Oct. 16. Both figures are sure to increase when the party's campaign finance records for the last 20 days of the race become public.

The Blue Dot

For Kleeb and other Democratic Party leaders, Harris' victory in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District marked a bright spot in an otherwise grim election cycle for the party.

For critics, the Blue Dot's uncertain future is further evidence in the case against Kleeb.

Since 1992, Nebraska has had in place a unique presidential electoral system that awards a single presidential electoral vote to the winner of each of the state's three congressional districts — a system that allowed Democratic nominees to pick up one of the state's five electoral votes in 2008, 2020 and again this year.

Conservative state lawmakers in Nebraska's formally nonpartisan Legislature have tried to undo the system repeatedly in the decades since it was established, falling one vote shy of overcoming a filibuster in a close call in 2016.

Heading into this year's legislative session, progressive lawmakers maintained 16 seats in the Legislature — enough to kill legislation with a filibuster when the group voted in lockstep.

But in April, when McDonnell became a Republican a month after the Nebraska Democratic Party had censured him for his conservative social views, the Blue Dot's future seemed in peril. McDonnell was the subject of a national pressure campaign from Republicans urging him to back a switch to a winner-take-all system.

In the end, McDonnell refused to bow to the calls from national Republicans and Nebraska's unique system survived the Donald Trump-backed push for the change.

Kleeb said she was opposed to McDonnell's censuring that preceded his party switch but stood with the rank-and-file Democrats who called for it "because that's what I have to do as a chair."

"But it was always my advice that we are a big tent party," she said, adding that McDonnell's refusal to back the switch to winner-take-all was a testament to her close relationship with the Omaha lawmaker "and showed a lot of work and ability of me as a chair."

Critics cast the episode as an embarrassment for Democrats that served as a microcosm for the party's shrinking ranks.

"If you're going into the 3rd District and you behave that way, don't ever expect to win it," said Kerrey, a Democrat who represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 2001, adding: "You're never gonna get their attention if you start off by saying, 'I'm going to censure you if you're a committed Catholic.'"

"If you're going to try to have the Democratic Party succeed in Nebraska, you can't start off without facing this fact: if it weren't for a man you censured, we'd have a winner-take-all state," he added. "What do you make of that? It's not for me to decide. It's for the leadership of the Democratic Party in Nebraska to decide. What do you make of the fact that you were saved by the man you censured?"

The filibuster falls

If Democrats hope to retain Nebraska's unique presidential electoral system for another election cycle, they will once again have to turn to Republican state lawmakers for their rescue.

Democrats won tough legislative races this month, according to unofficial results, unseating conservative Sen. Ray Aguilar of Grand Island in District 35 while appearing to eke out a win in District 3, where Democrat Anthony Rountree leads conservative Felix Ungerman by less than 2%.

Democrats also won back the Omaha seat McDonnell vacated at the end of his second term — but Republicans captured the District 15 seat vacated by term-limited Democratic Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont and unseated Democratic Sen. Jen Day of Gretna, maintaining the filibuster-proof majority they first captured when McDonnell switched parties in April.

Progressives came within 1,000 votes of retaining Day's seat and flipping two others, including in District 39, where the Democrat-backed nonpartisan Allison Heimes lost by less than 5 points in her bid to replace term-limited Republican Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn.

In District 45, Democrat Sarah Centineo fell 870 votes short of unseating conservative Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue in a race where Centineo faced a massive fundraising gap with little support from the Nebraska Democratic Party. Sanders outraised Centineo by more than $70,000. The Democratic Party contributed $1,500 to the Democrat's campaign.

"I had a very close race, and I had very little support from the state party," Centineo said at a virtual meeting the party hosted Saturday to evaluate the election cycle. "It's not that y'all were talking to me. Nobody showed up at anything. (It) was very disappointing."

Kleeb acknowledged in the meeting that Centineo's race is one the state party is "kicking ourselves in."

"Sarah was one of our strongest recruits, our strongest candidates, and we did not invest enough resources into her race," Kleeb said.

The party's lack of support for Centineo was among other perplexing investments Democrats did and did not make in legislative races.

The state party contributed $32,238 to Rountree, who garnered the most support from the state party among legislative candidates this cycle en route to her narrow win in a district that leans conservative, according to campaign finance records.

But as the party gave less than $10,000 to the likes of Centineo, Heimes, Day and nonpartisan progressive Nicki Behmer Popp — all of whom squared off against conservatives in relatively close races — the party poured $29,139 into Democrat Ashlei Spivey's race against Nick Batter, a progressive nonpartisan backed by some Democrats like Kerrey, in District 13.

The party also contributed $27,858 to Michelle Smith, who lost to a conservative by nearly 35 points in District 33, a Republican fortress that includes Hastings, where Kleeb lives.

The state party also gave $19,144 to Dunixi Guereca, who prevailed in his District 7 race against another Democrat, Tim Pendrell, who recieved $1,000 from the party. Guereca also received $10,000 from Bold Alliance, the environmental nonprofit run by Kleeb.

Among legislative candidates, Bold Alliance contributed the most to Spivey and Omaha Sen. Terrell McKinney, an employee of the nonprofit who ultimately ran unopposed for reelection in District 11. The nonprofit contributed more than $15,000 to both campaigns.

In District 13, Kleeb said "it was very important for us to keep that seat for a Democrat, not an independent" and noted that Spivey, an Omaha nonprofit executive, is "a Black woman who is highly qualified to be in the Legislature."

"And, quite frankly, to see the racism and sexism of some donors (and) community leaders who would tell us that they didn't think Ashlei was qualified or ready to be a state senator was shocking, and pissed us off as a party," she said. "And so we wanted to make sure that Ashlei had the resources to win."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or . On Twitter Love Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.

State government reporter