43 Days to Go: Tony Vargas

Sep 23, 2024

Who: Tony Vargas

Where: NE-02 (Omaha and western suburbs)

Why: Political pundits agree on at least one thing: This 2022 rematch between state legislator Tony Vargas and four-term incumbent Don Bacon is a toss-up. President Biden carried this district by 6.6 points in 2020 and it has been trending bluer since then. Polls show Vargas with a slight lead.

Vargas, the son of immigrants from Peru, is a first-generation college grad. He taught second-grade science and served on the Omaha school board before becoming a state senator. Both of his parents were factory shift workers, which is why he is passionate about protecting workers’ rights and helping working-class families.

Bacon is a retired Air Force brigadier general. In 2022, he co-sponsored a House bill that defines personhood as existing from the moment of conception, which would criminalize in vitro fertilization procedures. House Republicans reintroduced the bill this cycle but without Don Bacon as a sponsor.

This race is not the only reason why turnout in the Cornhusker State is important. There are two ballot measures affecting access to abortion: one would amend the state constitution to allow abortion until the fetus is viable, and the other would amend the constitution to incorporate the 12-week ban that the legislature passed in 2023. If both pass, then the one receiving the most votes will be enacted.

But that’s not all. Nebraska and Maine are the only states that award a portion of their electoral votes by congressional district. In Nebraska, two of its five electoral votes go to the statewide popular vote winner and one electoral vote goes to the popular vote winner in each of the three congressional districts.

The Harris/Walz ticket is expected to carry the second district, where Vargas is running, which would give Democrats a highly-prized electoral vote in a close election. As I write, Trump and Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina are pressuring the Republican-controlled state legislature to switch to a winner-take-all system before Nov. 5. In the statewide tally in 2020, Trump beat Biden by 19 percentage points.

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