Aaron Sanderford
LINCOLN — Months after winning Nebraska’s costliest governor’s race, Gov. Jim Pillen set a record in first-year fundraising for the state’s chief executive.
Pillen raised $2.1 million in 2023. That is more than double the next closest number raised by a first-year governor. That came when Gov. Dave Heineman raised $815,000 in 2005, after being elevated to the post from lieutenant governor when Gov. Mike Johanns was named U.S. agriculture secretary.
Heineman needed campaign cash because he faced a May 2006 Republican primary election that included then-U.S. Rep. Tom Osborne. Pillen’s situation is different: His next potential election isn’t until May 2026. So why the early funding push?
Depends on whom you ask.
Warning shot
Several Nebraska political consultants said they see Pillen’s early fundraising as a warning flag to the man he beat in the 2022 primary, multistate agribusinessman Charles Herbster.
Others say the effort might be the result of a weakened state Republican Party or policy disagreements between some longtime Republican allies.
One longtime Nebraska Republican political consultant, Chris Peterson, called Pillen’s $2.1 million “a stunning number.” That amount of money raised this early “doesn’t happen by accident,” he said.
“It’s clearly intended to both raise a war chest for 2026 and send a message to potential challengers that Governor Pillen isn’t taking his re-election for granted, even though the primary election is more than two years away,” Peterson said.
Herbster declined to comment Monday about his political intentions or Pillen’s haul. Herbster has previously expressed interest in a possible 2026 rematch for governor and has also flirted with running against U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb.
During the 2022 GOP governor’s primary, Ricketts was Pillen’s highest-profile supporter and surrogate. Herbster had former President Donald Trump’s endorsement but lost.
Stepping out of Ricketts’ shadow
Other political observers, including Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb, said the new governor’s funding push shows that Pillen wants to step out of Ricketts’ shadow and build his own political operation. She said the two men are competing to lead the GOP.
Ricketts last month publicly criticized Pillen’s proposal to raise the state sales tax rate by up to 2 cents and shift that money to offset local property taxes. Pillen has said the change is needed to rebalance the burden of Nebraska’s taxes.
Some Pillen supporters said he might be preparing for the possibility that Ricketts won’t back him in 2026. In 2022, Ricketts and his family spent over $3 million on third-party TV ads attacking Pillen’s top two GOP opponents. Ricketts did not donate any funds to Pillen in 2023, finance records show.
Pillen appointed Ricketts to the Senate in January 2023.
Pillen raised most of his current war chest after his first legislative session, which included income tax cuts, the down payment on $1 billion in state money to offset some public school costs and a tax break for donors to private school scholarships.
Much of the money was raised from the usual suspects: big-dollar donors in Omaha and Lincoln. Pillen, who runs a hog operation in Columbus, Neb., also brought in some new agricultural donors from rural Nebraska who had not given large amounts in recent years.
Nebraska GOP leadership changes
Kleeb and a handful of Republicans in Pillen’s orbit said the governor’s 2023 tally also shows the fundraising weakness of a fractured Nebraska Republican Party. Several said donors are looking for more effective places to put their money since a new, more populist team took over state party leadership from a group of Ricketts loyalists in mid-2022.
In recent weeks, the state GOP raised eyebrows when its central committee endorsed none of Nebraska’s five elected members of Congress — all Republicans — and when none of the five incumbents applied for or sought the state party’s endorsement.
“The Republican Party is no longer interested in the infrastructure of the party,” Kleeb said. “Instead individuals are raising a ton of money outside the party to control other politicians and control their own political future.”
Nebraska GOP chair Eric Underwood, in a recent interview, acknowledged his party’s struggles with big-dollar donors. Underwood said the GOP has been rebuilding county parties, organizing grassroots energy and improving its ties to small-dollar donors. He said the party has grown its booster clubs and hosted events.
The dropoff in fundraising is most pronounced in the year-end fundraising totals at the state level. The state GOP raised $70,000 in 2023. In the other most recent pre-election years, the party raised $120,000 in 2021, $138,000 in 2019 and $162,000 in 2017, state records show.
That’s part of why the state party has said, in emails from Underwood to party members and in statements and tweets that followed, it will no longer offer direct financial support to federal or state candidates, as the party has in the past.
State parties keep two separate accounts for fundraising, one for races and party support at the state level and another at the national level. The state GOP’s fundraising decline has been less sharp at the federal level, where it reported having $312,000. But $51,000 of that was from an insurance claim to repair damage at the state GOP headquarters building, Federal Election Commission records show.
The remaining $261,000 raised in 2023 compares to $196,000 in 2021, $314,000 in 2019 and $212,000 in 2017.
Democrats outraise state GOP, 2nd District focus
The Nebraska Democratic Party significantly outraised the Nebraska GOP at both levels last year. At the state level, Democrats raised $333,000 in 2023. They raised $1.2 million at the federal level.
Much of that was driven by money from the Democratic National Committee and President Joe Biden’s campaign. But the Democrats also run a lot of money for the 2nd District House race in the Omaha area through the state party.
The GOP has done so in the past, as well, but not for 2024. This year, the state GOP endorsed Omaha businessman Dan Frei in the primary, who is running against U.S. Rep. Don Bacon. Much of the money for that race that could have been funneled through the state party might be distributed instead through a federal PAC of the Douglas County Republican Party or outside groups.
Bacon, anticipating the possibility of a populist primary opponent, built his 2024 campaign so it could run independently of the state party. In this, he is following in the footsteps of former Republican U.S. Sens. Ben Sasse and Chuck Hagel, who funded successful campaigns in the same way.
Underwood also acknowledged some distance between the state party and its top elected officials. Pillen, for instance, has barely talked with party leaders since the takeover in the summer of 2022. Many of them had supported Herbster.
Pillen angered some in the state GOP last June by organizing a letter from state officeholders and the congressional delegation backing Sarpy County GOP chair Nora Sandine’s fight against a more populist candidate backed by the new state party leadership.
Underwood said the state GOP is now driven more by relationships and people than by money. He said his party’s purpose is to organize people around their “shared conservative values.” He said people who think the party’s job is to elect more Republicans are clinging to a paradigm from the past.
“Our grassroots local donors are up triple. The volume of people involved in local parties is up 8 to 10 times,” he said. “We can do more with more people. The Nebraska Republican Party has been living in a political bubble from how other states operate.”
Small-dollar donors were up in 2023 versus previous pre-election years, documents show, although the number of participants is difficult to verify independently. County party gatherings have drawn larger crowds than in recent years.
Filling in some funding gaps
The money Pillen raised could fill some of the gap left by the state GOP’s absence.
Three Pillen donors, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the governor told his inner circle of supporters he aims to use some of his campaign funds to help conservative candidates in this year’s legislative races.
Pillen did not directly answer when asked through a campaign spokeswoman if the money would be used on more races than his own. He said he needs a “strong coalition of support to be an effective Governor for the people of Nebraska, which also includes resources to win and get our message out.”
“We were focused in 2023 on activating Nebraskans who had never been in the game before and building a conservative coalition that will be in the game year after year,” Pillen said in a statement from his campaign. “These resources will be used to promote a transformative agenda based on kids, taxes, agriculture, and values.”
Local politicos already knew Pillen could raise money. He raised $11.5 million for the 2022 governor’s race. This total would have been a record amount if not for Herbster, who raised more than $13 million.
Former Omaha State Sen. Brett Lindstrom, the campaign’s third-place finisher in May 2022, raised $3 million, a more typical amount for a Nebraska gubernatorial frontrunner. Democratic State Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue raised $600,000 in the general election.
But one local political scientist, Randall Adkins of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, cautioned against reading too much into Pillen’s fundraising numbers.
He said people in Nebraska were insulated for years from seeing massive amounts of money being raised for races at the state level because as governor for eight years, Ricketts had access to massive amounts of his own money.
“This could just be a sign of the amount of money that’s out there and interested in political races,” he said.