OMAHA — Should the Omaha area replace Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon with a Democrat and help curb the worst impulses of the Trump administration?

You betcha, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said during the second stop of his national tour criticizing House Republicans for avoiding in-person town halls.

Walz, a Nebraska native, made Bacon a focus of his mid-morning Saturday speech at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha campus to more than 400 people.

He said he was “not here to personally attack the representative” or call him names. But he said Bacon needs to face his voters and their questions.

“Do the damn job and answer the questions,” Walz said.

The former running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Bacon for following national GOP advice and skipping an in-person town hall this year.

Bacon, who has hosted in-person and telephone town halls in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, is hosting a tele-town hall on March 25.

Bacon told the Examiner recently that he did not like the tone and tenor of recent town halls he had seen and that some people are afraid to attend.

“I’ve been at some of the in-person town halls,” Bacon said. “When you got moms and dads saying we can’t bring our kids to a town hall, there’s a problem.”

He also spent at least two nights this week responding to critics on Elon Musk’s X by saying he would be able to reach more voters on his tele-town hall.

Gov. Tim Walz says at Iowa town hall he is ‘soul-searching’ after 2024

Bacon ‘terrified’

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said Bacon is “terrified,” one of the “gutless Republicans who are afraid to see their voters.”

She told the standing-room crowd that Nebraska Democrats would create a book of comments from Saturday attendees and deliver it to Bacon.

“All they care about is that government is cut down to the bone,” Kleeb said of Republicans. “Democrats believe government is here to serve the people.”

Walz’s tour is aimed at reviving Democratic voter engagement in competitive House districts served by Republicans not hosting in-person town halls.

He spoke to more than 1,000 people in Des Moines on Friday, where he acknowledged how many Democrats and nonpartisans feel lost under President Donald Trump.

Walz said he understood the feeling of wanting Democratic and independent and non-Trump Republican leaders to “do something.”

He asked the standing room-only crowd to take the time to tell their elected leaders what they need to see them doing. He said Democrats would respond.

Several questioners asked Walz about how to fight feeling unsafe or threatened, from immigrants with legal status to workers worried about the ability to organize and to people with friends and relatives who are LGBTQ. Others expressed concerns about federal programs and grants becoming unpredictable.

“There’s a tendency … to check out,” Walz said. “You didn’t do that … because you love the country, and you know you need to do something about it.”

Maurice Jones, a Democratic candidate for Omaha City Council in North Omaha’s District 2, said Americans are learning with Trump’s “mass firings” that the federal government isn’t going to protect them.

Both Democrats running for mayor, Jasmine Harris and John Ewing, also addressed the crowd, saying cities would need to lead the way back.

State Sen. Ashlei Spivey of Omaha said during the Walz appearance that elected officials need help from the people to let state and federal leaders know that things are not OK.

She said leaders need to know people are not happy with how things are going, including in Nebraska, where she said the governor does Trump’s bidding.

“Our executive branch mirrors and does everything that the Trump administration says,” Spivey said.

Walz credited western Nebraskans for showing up to Gov. Jim Pillen’s town hall in Scottsbluff and pushing back on his effort to end the “blue dot.”

Videos of the appearance circulating online show that many in the crowd booed and said they don’t want to switch to winner-take-all.

“Maybe don’t ask a question if you don’t know the answer,” Walz said.

Nebraska Democrats go on offense with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s townhall

Bacon responds

Walz said he was proud of Harris winning the 2nd District’s “blue dot.” Nebraska awards some of its Electoral College votes by congressional district.

He said he pushes back on people who say he and Harris failed to win any swing states, because they won a stray electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd District.

“We did not,” he said. “We won Omaha. Not by luck. Not by chance. By organizing.”

Walz said people are paying attention to the chaos in Washington.

Veterans services workers being cut matter, he said. Federal grants for cancer research matter, he said. And access to reproductive care matters, too.

He said he believes Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, cares about veterans. But his voting record and fealty to Trump show something else.

“I believe Representative Bacon,” Walz said. “I’m not questioning his character. I’m questioning his judgment and decisions on the job.”

Bacon, in a statement during the Walz rally, called Walz the “most liberal governor in America” and said he didn’t watch or monitor his town hall.

He said recent House GOP town halls where representatives faced vocal opposition reflected political, manufactured anger, not real.

And he criticized Walz for inaccurately describing his own service in the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guard. Bacon invited him to call into his tele-town hall.

Said Bacon: “Whether it’s high taxes, broken borders, abortion … or biological men playing in female sports, Governor Walz is wrong on every major issue.”

Walz, during his speech, said GOP attacks on the handful of trans athletes participating nationally is an attack on every person’s rights, and Democrats need to call out the people peddling it.

Then, he said, they need to get away from social issues and pivot back to the assaults Republicans are making on core governing.

Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz, wrapping up the event, said the work did not stop because Harris and her husband lost. It got harder, she said, and needs more help.

LINCOLN — The first Nebraska Republican Party fundraiser of 2024 features former television reporter, U.S. Senate candidate and election denier Kari Lake of Arizona. She visits Omaha on Jan. 5, the eve of the third anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Omaha’s CHI Health Center, an arena and convention center, is shown. (Courtesy of Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority)

Lake, a Republican who lost her 2022 gubernatorial election to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona, is running a 2024 race against Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is running as well.

Like a man she calls her political muse, former President Donald Trump, Lake denies losing her race. Lake rose to national prominence by embracing Trump’s rejection of his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden. She sharply criticized Republicans who acknowledged his defeat.

She is visiting Nebraska during an Iowa campaign trip for Trump. Her event is the latest push to excite the base by new leadership of the Nebraska GOP, which in July 2022 ousted a team loyal to then-Gov. Pete Ricketts. The new team includes similarly Trump-focused Republicans.

Party spokeswoman Dawn Liphardt said Nebraska conservatives are interested in Republicans retaking the Senate and are interested in Arizona’s race. She called Lake “a strong speaker” who will “get Republicans excited” about the 2024 elections locally, which include two Senate races.

Lake is well-liked among some conservatives for aggressively critiquing members of the press and for her loyalty to Trump and his populist approach to politics. Like him, she emphasizes border security.

The Nebraska GOP announced the event by email, selling $50 general admission tickets, $25 tickets for booster club members, $600 for a book signing with Lake, and a $10,000-per-person VIP event before the candidate speaks at 7 p.m. at CHI Center Omaha.

‘Doubling down’

Nebraska Republican Party Chairman Eric Underwood speaks as former GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster and former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway listen in August 2023 in Norfolk, Neb. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner)

Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb said the Lake fundraiser shows the Nebraska GOP “doubling down with their election denying and reproductive rights denying strategy.”

That, Kleeb said, risks turning off voters and flipping more seats the Democrats’ way.

GOP-led Nebraska is no swing state. Trump won the state easily in 2020, beating Biden in two of the state’s three congressional districts. But Trump lost an Electoral College vote to Biden in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District.

Nebraska, like Maine, awards a single electoral vote to the presidential popular vote winners in each of the state’s three congressional districts. The Nebraska Legislature has been discussing moving back to winner-take-all elections.

Omaha-area state senators and voters have pushed back against such proposals, arguing that the state benefits economically from the spending by both presidential campaigns competing for the electoral vote that might prove vital in a close race.

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.