Last night, Jim Pillen won Nebraska’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent and alumnus (he played for its storied football team) and hog farmer, prevailed in a close race with 33 percent of the vote. In second was Charles Herbster, a wealthy agribusiness executive supported by former president Donald Trump.
Herbster, a Trump donor, was present with Trump at a January 5, 2021, meeting in which Trump and other figures plotted how to increase pressure on members of Congress to reject the results of the 2020 election. He also attended Trump’s pre–Capitol Riot rally that day. Trump rewarded Herbster’s loyalty with his endorsement, even flying in to the state a few weeks ago to hold a rally on Herbster’s behalf. Herbster made the most of Trump’s endorsement and tried to nationalize the race. But his campaign was marred by, among other things, credible allegations of sexual assault.
Pillen, for his part, seemed to run a largely Nebraska-, and issue-centric campaign, running on his conservative credentials and enjoying the backing of the state’s well-regarded current governor, Republican Pete Ricketts, who is term-limited out of office. He was no anti-Trump voice. And though he appealed to Trump’s voters (a necessity in a red state), he did not actively court the support of Trump himself, as Trump was already backing another candidate. An article Pillen wrote for National Review last December on the Biden administration’s dishonest attempt to blame rising meat prices on meat companies and not on inflation provides a taste of his approach:
Make no mistake, the assault on farming and livestock production practices has never been more evident than it is now. The Biden administration’s far-left policies are hostile toward all production agriculture, and are increasing the cost of doing business for farming and ranching operations of every size.
It’s no surprise that Joe Biden and Jen Psaki, whose only meaningful experiences with agriculture probably come from weekly trips to Washington, D.C., farmers’ markets, don’t understand why food prices are rising. If we want food prices to be lower, we need an administration that understands agriculture, values fiscal responsibility, and wants to make it easier, not harder, for our farmers and ranchers to grow food without the federal government getting in the way.
Pillen will face Democrat Carol Blood in November.
Nebraska, to its credit, is far away from the Beltway, so the outcome of this race may not get much attention. (And Nebraskans probably won’t mind.) But in one respect, it seems significant: Herbster is the first Trump-backed candidate to lose a Republican primary this year.