Democrats pulled out an upset win in the race for Omaha mayor on Tuesday, ousting the three-term Republican incumbent in a race that ultimately wasn't close.
Democrat John Ewing defeated Mayor Jean Stothert 56% to 44%, according to unofficial results, giving Democrats the mayorship of Nebraska’s largest city for the first time in 12 years. Stothert’s decisive loss is a significant change from the mayoral election four years ago, when she took 64% of the vote.
Ewing, who will be the city's first Black mayor, won by tying Stothert to President Donald Trump, saying that reelecting her would bring Omaha the kind of chaos Trump has unleashed upon the rest of the country.
Stothert tried to blunt those attacks by turning to right-wing culture war issues, saying, "Ewing stands with radicals who want to allow boys in girls’ sports." Mailers in the race were also focused on that repulsive anti-LGBTQ+ message.
But the message fell flat, and she lost decisively.
Worse for Republicans, Stothert’s loss is terrible news for Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican whose district includes all of the city of Omaha as well as some suburbs.
In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris won Douglas County, where Omaha is located, with 54% of the vote, so the 56% Ewing won in the city is a slight overperformance. Meanwhile, Bacon barely won reelection last year, taking 50.9% to the Democratic nominee's 49.1%, so even a small swing toward Democrats would likely lead to his ouster in the 2026 midterm elections.
And Democrats are poised to see a swing in their direction in the midterms. Democrats have overperformed in almost every special election held since November, with an average overperformance of 12% compared with Harris’ results last year, according to data maintained by The Downballot.
If that holds, it will be higher than the average Democratic overperformance in the 2017-2018 election cycle, before Democrats rode a blue wave to retake control of the U.S. House in the 2018 midterms. Democrats overperformed in special elections those years by an average of 10.6% compared with the results of the 2016 presidential election, according to The Downballot.
Bacon seems to understand his vulnerability. Reuters reported in late April that he is considering retiring from Congress rather than run for reelection.
Losing Bacon—by retirement or election defeat—would be a major blow to Republicans, who are expected to have just a three-seat majority heading into the 2026 midterms. Without Bacon, Republicans’ chances at holding the House would be even more difficult.
However, it seems Republicans are taking the wrong message about Tuesday's results in Omaha. Rather than calling for moderation or even a nominal check on Trump, the state's Republican Gov. Jim Pillen instead blamed Republican voters, who, in his words, “just didn’t get the vote out.”
“This should not have happened,” Pillen said.
But that size of a swing toward Democrats from just four years ago isn’t primarily because Republicans failed to turn out. It was that voters in the city didn’t buy what Stothert was selling. And that’s a bad sign for the GOP next November.
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