The highly expected appointment of outgoing Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts to the seat of retiring Sen. Ben Sasse may lead to even further division in an already split Nebraska Republican Party as Ricketts faces accusations that he bought the seat.
Ricketts has clearly expressed interest in the seat, telling Omaha ABC affiliate KETV that serving in the Senate would allow him to “best serve the people of Nebraska and advance our conservative values.”
The Nebraska GOP nominated Ricketts for Senate in 2006, and the two-term governor set a state self-funding record in his 28-point loss to incumbent Democrat Ben Nelson. Ricketts put money behind incoming Gov. Jim Pillen, helping the candidate through a fractured GOP primary.
Pillen is now all but guaranteed to appoint Ricketts to serve in the 118th Congress when Sasse formally resigns to serve as president of the University of Florida. Pillen has created a formal process to replace Sasse with at least five people applying. His pick will serve two years ahead of a 2024 special election.
“I will be conducting a thorough process to review and select the best candidate for the U.S. Senate seat. I’ll be looking to appoint someone who embodies the commonsense, conservative values of Nebraska,” Pillen said in a statement.
Ricketts is personally worth more than $50 million, while his family is worth $4.5 billion as of 2015. Ricketts donated both directly to Pillen and to a political action committee supporting him. Pillen would go on to defeat businessman Charles Herbster by 9,400 votes in the May 2022 primary and beat Democrat Carol Blood by 23 points in November.
Herbster was endorsed by Trump in the primary, while Ricketts gave $100,000 directly to Pillen and $1,275,000 to the pro-Pillen political action committee Conservative Nebraska.
Many political operatives in Nebraska are now claiming that the donations serve as a quid pro quo that guaranteed Ricketts would fill the open seat.
“The application process is just a formality. The appointment of Gov. Ricketts has been a foregone conclusion,” said GOP consultant and former Herbster deputy campaign manager Rod Edwards. “Gov. Ricketts spent millions of dollars to make sure that Jim Pillen was elected.”
While at least four other candidates have reportedly submitted applications, Edwards and public relations specialist Dan Parsons believes they will likely have to wait until 2024 to run for a realistic shot at the seat.
Both also commented that Ricketts will almost certainly face a primary challenge, stemming from hard feelings over the appointment process. They believe the Ricketts controversy is representative of a larger battle within the national GOP, between supporters of former President Donald Trump and those who hope to see a new leader emerge.
“The Republican Party nationally is not united either. Those interests will have an impact on the Senate race,” Parsons said.
It is “likely, maybe probable that [Ricketts] receives a challenge,” Edwards added.
“This has the feeling of the fix being in so that they don’t have to really face the voters. It seems that they’re avoiding, as much as possible, a fair fight,” political consultant Ryan Horn told the Associated Press.
Parsons believes that Ricketts’ appointment “probably won’t lead to Democrats winning because there is no Ben Nelson or Bob Kerrey waiting in the wings, but anything could happen if they find a moderate,” adding, “Nebraskans just don’t like that element of money and influence in the state.”
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