Deb Fischer ran a stealth campaign.
The state senator from Valentine who scored one of the biggest upsets in Nebraska political history Tuesday started to surge in the polls at the perfect time — early enough to win and too late for her opponents to respond.
Fischer, who raised a paltry $440,000 to front-runner Jon Bruning’s $3.6 million, is now in position to become the second woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska, if she defeats Democrat Bob Kerrey in the fall. A third was appointed.
She took her first poke at Kerrey shortly after taking the stage at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln in front of a crowd of jubilant supporters, many with tears in their eyes and some still in shock.
“We need somebody who’s different. Somebody who’s tough. Somebody who’s a Nebraskan,” said Fischer, 61, in a not-so-veiled reference to Kerrey having lived the last dozen years in New York City.
She beat Bruning by slightly more than 10,000 votes and nearly doubled State Treasurer Don Stenberg’s tally. She won the vast majority of Nebraska’s counties.
A somber Bruning pledged in a very short speech to his supporters that he would support Fischer.
The attorney general attributed his loss to a “barrage of media attention,” and tactics by his opponents that he “didn’t agree with,” an apparent reference to negative advertisements run by third-party groups who supported either Fischer or Stenberg.
As for Kerrey, the former senator took his own jab at Fischer, noting that a super PAC funded by former Omaha businessman Joe Ricketts funneled money into her race, helping her over the finish line.
Kerrey decried the large amount of money pouring into campaigns and asked what Ricketts expected in return.
“When he calls on her, what’s he going to get?” Kerrey asked. “Does he want lower taxes? Probably. Does he want less regulation? Probably. And when you put that kind of money up, the question’s going to occur.”
Fischer was truly the darkest of dark horses. Her strategy from the beginning was to remain positive and to let her two opponents bruise and batter each other on the campaign trail.
It worked.
Read more at the Omaha World-Herald.
