Fischer knocks off Bruning; Ewing beats Howard

[OmahaBlueDog]

Source: Omaha World Herald/Omaha.com

The Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning had held the vote lead throughout the evening. But Fischer, a state senator who had a late campaign push, steadily cut into Bruning's lead.

Earlier in the night, Bruning took a big jump when new results came out of Douglas County. He was leading Fischer by 4,223 votes as of an 8:50 p.m. update.

That led The World-Herald's Robynn Tysver to tweet: “First applause of the night in Bruning's camp as latest results put him up at 41 percent; compared with Fischer's 32 percent.”

Since then, the lead has been dwindling. As of 10:15 p.m., Fischer pushed to a 5,749-vote lead.



Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20120515/NEWS01/120519745#fischer-knocks-off-bruning-ewing-beats-howard

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The real story here is the one that is not mentioned. $200K in superpac money came in late to knock Bruning out of the race.


Deb Fischer will face Bob Kerrey.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Does Kerrey have a better chance against Fischer?

[OmahaBlueDog]

2. Hard to say

Last edited Wed May 16, 2012, 05:21 PM - Edit history (1)

While it had become clear his opponents were gaining ground, Bruning getting knocked out was something of a surprise.

Ficher is a rancher from Western Nebraska. She was endorsed by Sarah Palin. She's served in the state legislature and on school boards. She's going to run on a what-DC-needs-is-a -tough minded-Nebraskan campaign.

Kerrey is running on a campaign, so far, trying to appeal to the same centrists who voted for Nelson and Hagel. His campaign is very much "Democrats have good ideas, Republicans have good ideas, but we need to end the partisan gridlock." Kerrey's hope rests on bringing Dems to the polls in Lincoln and Omaha in large numbers, and convincing independents that Fischer is too conservative.

[DallasNE]

3. I Know Nothing About Fisher Except Her Tea Party Support

When I watched her victory speech last night she was bland and didn't inspire but that is just one speech. I don't know anything about her work in the Legislature and the kind of issues that she was out front on. It seemed she was term limited and wanted to run for something so she choose the US Senate.

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. She's popular in the West (Valentine, Scottsbluff, etc. )

As near as I can tell, she benefitted from a combination of the negative push by pro-Stenberg forces against Bruning combined with the Palin endorsement.

She's not a thrilling speaker. She may make a convincing "Washington Outsider." I'm not counting my chickens, but Bob Kerry has to be thrilled by this. His opponent is further t the right (if that's possible) than Bruning, and is even less likely to identify well with the folks in Omaha and Lincoln. Bruning had big money behind him, and had been in the grooming process since 2010 when he ran a lot of ads, depite running unopposed for AG.

I'm betting Dave Heinneman wishes he'd run at this point.