APPROPRIATE FOR TRUMP TO SUPPORT GOP CANDIDATE ACCUSED OF GROPING

 

…Multiply accused, GOP Nebraska governor candidate, Charles Herbster, meets with Donald Trump, who has also been previously accused.

 

Why are so many GOP candidates accused of sexual harassment?

A Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska, that like Trump, has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women.  He is on the ballot next Tuesday.  All this, as voters head to the polls in Nebraska and West Virginia for primaries that will pose the latest test of former president Donald Trump’s ability to influence the selection of his party’s nominees.

Charles Herbster, an agricultural executive backed by Trump, has been accused by eight women of touching them inappropriately.  Two women have spoken on the record to the Nebraska Examiner about Herbster doing so at a party fundraiser in 2019. Herbster, who of course, like Donald Trump, has denied the allegations.  He is running in a crowded field that includes a candidate backed by outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts (R).  Ricketts is leaving because he is term-limited.

The Nebraska primary is one of two closely watched races in which Trump is pitted against local Republican leaders. The former president is also backing Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who faces a primary against another questionable colleague, Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.)

The contests are two of several primaries this month that will show how much stock GOP primary voters put into Trump’s endorsements, at 16 months after he left office. Trump’s endorsed candidate in Ohio’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, venture capitalist, J.D. Vance, prevailed in last week’s primary, an early show of strength for the former president.  Some Republicans warned that Trump could face more challenging dynamics in the upcoming contests.

In Nebraska, a Republican state senator has also accused Herbster of reaching up her skirt at a local GOP fundraiser in 2019.  Another woman, who is a former aide to a state senator, said Herbster grabbed her buttocks after stopping to greet her table at the same event. Trump, who himself has denied multiple allegations, from sexual harassment to rape, over the past years.  Trump recently traveled to Nebraska to campaign for Herbster and defend his former agricultural policy adviser and campaign donor.

“He’s the most innocent human being,” Trump said, rallying with Herbster at a fairground in eastern Nebraska. “He’s the last person to do any of this stuff.”  Trump is not exactly the one that should be saying this stuff about another candidate, and anyway, how does Trump know Herbster is innocent?

Trump’s endorsement of Alex Mooney, who was drawn into a new district with McKinley after the state lost a House seat, was less personal.  I am surprised that Trump is supporting Mooney, but he is supporting Mooney because McKinley had voted for last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, and to create a congressional commission to investigate the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.  Last year, Mooney met with Trump for an hour, sharing a 15-page memo on his up-coming race with the former president, and Mooney came away with an endorsement.

“My opponent is a total RINO,” Mooney said at a rain-soaked western Pennsylvania rally with Trump on Friday, not far from West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. “In order for our party to be successful, we need to take these RINOs out in primaries,” he added, repeating the disparaging acronym RINO for “Republican in name only.”

Mooney, Is also under a serious investigation for his potential use of campaign funds for personal expenses by a congressional ethics panel.  Mooney has represented far less of the new district than McKinley has, and of course,  the Republican Gov. Jim Justice (R) supports McKinley.

Trump won West Virginia in a landslide in 2020, and national Democrats are not planning to target the seat in November.  As expected, the sometimes turn-coat, Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) offered his bipartisan support for the Republican McKinley last week by appearing in a TV ad to help him rebut false attack ads that conflated the infrastructure bill with a larger package of social spending.  A bill that the Democratic senator helped block last year, known as President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan.

“For Alex Mooney and his out-of-state supporters to suggest that David McKinley supported Build Back Better is an outright lie,” Democrat Manchin said. “David McKinley has always opposed reckless spending because it doesn’t make sense for West Virginia.”

McKinley has defended his infrastructure vote on the trail, backed by groups such as the state Chamber of Commerce, which also supported it. He has sought to distance his own vote for a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, from the work of the Democrats appointed to the panel.  Although ads from conservative groups such as the Club for Growth have used it to try to link him to the liberals.

“Who were the culprits here? What was the real genesis of this problem?” McKinley said in an interview, explaining why be believed a bipartisan committee was needed. “I’m not learning that through Nancy Pelosi’s select committee.”

Mooney and his allies have outspent McKinley, but internal polling for both candidates has found a close race. Party strategists will be playing close attention when polls close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.

The race for governor of Nebraska has been more expensive, and more divisive for Republicans, with Democrats hoping to take advantage in November. Trump endorsed Herbster six months ago, even though then Governor Ricketts advised against it, and in January, the same governor supported Jim Pillen (R) for governor.

“Nobody has run a grass-roots campaign like we have,” Pillen said in an interview. “Neighbors talking to neighbors, eyeball to eyeball, earning votes. That’s always mattered in Nebraska.”

The endorsements set up a bitter battle between Herbster and Ricketts. The governor’s own family members spent big opposing Trump during the 2016 presidential primary.

Governor Ricketts has sharply criticized Herbster, supporting ads from a political action committee called Conservative Nebraska that called the candidate a “Missouri millionaire.” Last month, when the Nebraska Examiner first reported on women who said that Herbster had groped them, the governor Ricketts said he believed the accusers.

Herbster swiftly denied the allegations, adopting a defiant posture similar to the one Trump has often taken.  He has compared himself to conservatives who he claimed had been smeared by false attacks, including Trump and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.

“They are trying to scare me out of this race and it’s not going to happen,” Herbster said at the May 1 rally with Trump. “We are going to take back Nebraska.”

Other candidates are trying to seize an advantage amid the attacks and counterattacks. Former state senator Theresa Thibodeau entered the race after a brief stint as Herbster’s running mate, concluding that the wealthy executive should not be governor.  State Sen. Brett Lindstrom, a conservative with some moderate views on issues such as medical marijuana legislation, hoped to benefit from the split, though Conservative Nebraska had gone after him, too.

“Early on, to be honest, we saw a pretty narrow path,” Lindstrom said in a recent interview after marching in front of Herbster and Pillen at Nebraska City’s annual Arbor Day Parade. “That path has widened because the other two camps are going at each other pretty hard. We were able to fly under the radar and do the necessary work.”

Nebraska is a heavily conservative state where Democrats have not held the governor’s office since the 1990s, but they say they see an opportunity in the messy Republican primary.  State Sen. Carol Blood (D), who has won in a district that Trump carried twice, had co-signed a bipartisan statement from female senators supporting Herbster’s accusers. If the GOP focused on national politics instead of Nebraska needs, she said, Democrats could win.

“I look at the Republican Party and I don’t recognize it anymore,” The state senator Blood said in an interview. “I’m not a sacrificial lamb. Nobody talked me into this. I don’t run for something unless I think I can win.”

Voters in eastern Nebraska will also pick nominees for Congress, with four Republicans vying to replace former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who resigned after being convicted on of lying to federal investigators about illegal campaign contributions. Republican state Sen. Mike Flood and Democratic state Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks are competing in both the primary and a June 28 special election to fill Fortenberry’s term.

In the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, one of a handful that reelected a Republican in 2020 while backing Joe Biden for president, two Democrats are competing to face Republican Rep. Don Bacon.  Bacon has a challenger, too: Steve Kuehl, a roofer who has criticized Bacon for supporting the infrastructure bill.

Trump has stayed out of the Bacon-Kuehl race, though he previously noted that Kuehl was in the crowd at a rally and called him a “nice guy.” At his West Virginia rally, he didn’t get into the details of the McKinley-Mooney race but said the stakes were high.

“Alex is in a big race,” Trump said. “That’s one of the races they keep saying, ‘Is Mooney going to win because Mooney is being backed by Trump?’ 

Having Donald Trump involved in these races is going to cause much confusion in many state races.  Hopefully, to the benefit of the Democrats or at least the moderate Republicans.

Copyright G. Ater 2022