Kerrey's delay a hint he will skip Senate race?
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
The official version is that Democrat Bob Kerrey is back in Nebraska to meet with family before deciding to get into the race for his old U.S. Senate seat.
This writer, however, is operating on a different assumption, namely that, family visits aside, the key meeting will be with Kerrey’s pollsters.
And that their message might not be encouraging.
If Kerrey goes for it, and one connected Omaha Democrat tells me he will “for sure,” he can count on the political fight of his life.
In his 25 years in politics, Kerrey has never faced as tough, seasoned, and smart an opponent as either Mike Johanns or Hal Daub, the two favorites in the race for the Republican nomination for 2008.
Both men know state issues well. Both are famous for their energy on the campaign trail. Both have strong, determined wives, adept campaigners themselves.
And if Johanns and Daub observe Ronald Reagan’s “Eleventh Commandment” – “Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican” – it could be a tag team effort that would wear down Kerrey before he even gets to the general election.
Equally appalling for Kerrey’s chances has to be the new set of political cross-currents particular to this Senate race.
Until now, Kerrey has been like the kid in a schoolyard fight who could always depend on his burly best friend to step in as needed – the “friend” here being NU fraternity brother from the 1960s, John Gottschalk, publisher of the region’s dominant newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald.
All that help – endless front page stories and picture coverage of every bird that falls where Kerrey is concerned, endless muting of behavior that is unethical at best, endless preemptive strikes against embarrassing issues or aimed at opposition press releases – will have to be toned down.
As Lincoln mayor, Nebraska governor and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Johanns is said to have good relations with Gottschalk. The same goes for Johanns’ friendship with Chuck Hagel, who got cranked into the World-Herald circle by virtue of being a boyhood neighbor of Gottschalk’s in Rushville and later as a business associate in Omaha.
Johanns enjoys close relations with David Heineman, the former lieutenant governor who moved to the governor’s chair when Johanns was called to Washington by President Bush.
What this web amounts to is that the World-Herald cannot load up on Johanns with impunity in the service of Kerrey. Certainly not to the degree that it did in 1988 and 1994 against Republicans David Karnes and Jan Stoney, respectively.
Daub and Gottschalk have had their feuds. The bitterness came to a head late in Daub’s term as Omaha mayor when he insisted that the Qwest Center have priority over the Holland Center, Gottschalk’s baby.
But, Daub benefits from the same circle of allegiances as Johanns.
He is also armed, as is Johanns and most senior Nebraska political figures, with 25 years of opposition research on the often-erring Kerrey, dating to college days when Kerrey misappropriated some student council funds.
Should the World-Herald rough Daub up too much, he might just come out swinging.
Nebraska registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 210,000 voters. That was no problem for Kerrey against Karnes and Mrs. Stoney. It’s hard to figure how he peels away even a fraction of 210,000 extra GOP votes from Johanns or Daub.
Kerrey hasn’t lived in Nebraska for seven years, so there is the “carpetbagger” issue.
Where he has lived is New York City, operating as president of the former venerable socialist New School for Social Research, rechristened just as Kerrey was arriving “New School University.” It might take some doing by apologists to square the qualifications that the New School board members saw in Kerrey with what conservative Nebraska voters are looking for as their representative in the U.S. Senate.
Also, Kerrey hasn’t run for office in the state since 1994. In this century, in fact, more Nebraskans have probably heard “Kerry” over the airwaves as in John Kerry rather than “Kerrey” as in Bob Kerrey. Nothing that Kerrey’s publicists can’t handle, but a chore.
Kerrey is linked with the $22 million hiker-biker bridge over the Missouri River at Omaha, a “gift” by fellow U.S. senators in 2000 to their departing colleague.
Coupled with everything else, whether this turns out to be a bridge too far for Bob Kerrey’s political ambitions in a generally frugal, conservative state will be determined later.
September 2007
