The Nebraska state senator who Republicans hoped would help ease former President Donald J. Trump’s path to the White House by agreeing to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes said on Monday that he would not do sosmbet, ending a brief but intense lobbying effort from allies of Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The state legislator, Mike McDonnell, a Democrat turned Republican from Omaha, said that he would not agree to change Nebraska’s 32-year tradition of awarding three of the state’s five electoral votes by congressional district to a winner-take-all system based on the statewide popular vote, bucking calls from Nebraska’s governor and its congressional delegation to help Mr. Trump.
“In recent weeks, a conversation around whether to change how we allocate our Electoral College votes has returned to the forefront,” Mr. McDonnell said in a statement on Monday. “I respect the desire of some of my colleagues to have this discussion, and I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”
Mr. McDonnell said he had told the state’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, that “I will not change my long-held position and will oppose any attempted changes to our Electoral College system before the 2024 election.” He said he had proposed seeking a constitutional amendment next year, which would require a statewide vote to change how Nebraska allocates its electoral votes.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Nebraska Examiner earlier reported Mr. McDonnell’s statement.
Nebraska is a reliably red state, and, had the change taken effect, it would have affected only the electoral vote awarded from the congressional district that includes Omaha and its suburbs, which has gone to Democrats twice since the state established its by-district allocation system for the 1992 election. Barack Obama won it in 2008, and President Biden took it in 2020. In this year’s presidential election, both of the leading campaigns see situations in which a single electoral vote could prove decisive.
Mr. Pillen had said he would convene the state’s 49 legislators in a special session to change the state law once he had commitments from enough of them to overcome a promised filibuster from Nebraska Democrats. In the past week, when Mr. McDonnell, a former firefighter who is the president of the Omaha Federation of Labor, emerged as the key vote on the issue, he found himself being pressured by high-level allies of the Harris and Trump campaigns.
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