NEBRASKA- The former president stepped into a Nebraska political battle when he endorsed Charles Herbster against Gov. Pete Ricketts' wishes.
Pete Ricketts, the governor of Nebraska and scion of one of the most powerful megadonor families in the Republican Party, had a pressing request for Donald Trump: Please stay out of my home-state politics.
In a phone call earlier this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussion, Ricketts tried to dissuade Trump from anointing a political adversary, cattle-breeding executive, and Trump ally Charles Herbster, in the race to succeed Ricketts as governor in 2022. The two agreed to stay in touch about it — but they didn’t, and the pitch didn’t work. Trump leaped into the Nebraska battle last week, defying Ricketts’ wishes and endorsing Herbster in a show of force for a longtime ally.
The monthslong saga of Herbster’s rise — and Ricketts’ efforts to halt it — represents the latest unusual twist in a complicated relationship at the center of Republican politics: The ties between the former president and the billionaire, Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family. Most of all, the episode illustrates Trump’s primacy in the GOP and his willingness to spurn the party hierarchy, rebuffing a prominent governor in his own state to elevate one of Trump’s original political backers, a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist who was at both Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign launch and the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the deadly riot at the Capitol.
Tensions quickly boiled over as the 2022 governor’s race got underway. After Herbster launched his campaign this spring, the term-limited governor publicly came out in opposition. Meanwhile, a top Ricketts political adviser, Jessica Flanagain, took a job with a Herbster primary opponent, Jim Pillen, leading to speculation that the governor was picking sides in the primary.
A Ricketts spokesperson, Corben Waldron, said that the governor “has no personal issue at all” with Herbster, but acknowledged that Ricketts “in an honest and pointed conversation did outline multiple reasons why he believes Herbster is ill-suited to be governor of Nebraska.” Ricketts has accused Herbster of, among other things, shipping jobs out of state through his company, a charge Herbster has denied.
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