Ricketts campaign shakeup signals Senate shootout

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By DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star

This month’s shakeup in Pete Ricketts’ campaign signals a more robust challenge to Sen. Ben Nelson buttressed with an effort by Republicans to mass their armies to recapture a Democratic Senate seat.

“We will be tougher, edgier in responding to the sheer negativity” of Nelson’s re-election campaign, Jessica Moenning said.

“Tactically, one of our biggest improvements will be in grassroots and get-out-the-vote organization,” Ricketts’ newly-installed campaign manager said.

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Ricketts and Nelson

Ricketts and Nelson

“What we have that they won’t is a substantial voter registration advantage and stronger statewide organization,” Moenning said during a Lincoln interview this week.

Simply stated: Nebraska’s Republican machine has “more people, and we’re better organized” than the Democrats. And both the party and its nominees are prepared to summon and rally the GOP vote.

Gov. Dave Heineman’s campaign, led by Carlos Castillo, demonstrated its sophisticated get-out-the-vote skills in May’s Republican gubernatorial primary election when Heineman sailed past Rep. Tom Osborne, the early favorite.

Moenning led Jeff Fortenberry’s successful 2004 congressional campaign, which ended with Fortenberry outrunning all pre-election polls to gain a comfortable general election victory fueled by a substantial get-out-the vote drive.

Although Nelson leads Ricketts in all the early polling, Nebraska’s voter registration numbers dramatize the danger facing the Democratic senator and the Republican challenger’s opportunity.

Republicans: 578,916.

Democrats: 371,037.

Nelson won his first Senate term in 2000 by 15,000 votes when the Republican voter registration advantage was 145,000.

It is 207,000 today.

However, 184,000 registered independents also have an opportunity to choose between Nelson and Ricketts in November.

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Paul Johnson, who is managing the Nelson campaign, says the Ricketts campaign doesn’t get it.

“Their biggest claim is people should vote for Ricketts because he’s a Republican. That’s their argument.”

But Nebraskans have demonstrated over time they don’t buy that appeal to partisanship, he said.

“This is more of a populist state than a partisan state,” he said.

“People look for Nelson to set aside partisanship to get things done for Nebraska.”

Just as they looked to Jim Exon and Bob Kerrey and Ed Zorinsky, Johnson said. All were Democrats who won Senate seats (and three gubernatorial elections) despite a Republican voter registration.

Nebraskans can see “the need for bipartisanship is stronger than ever” in Washington today, Johnson said.

Responding to suggestions Nelson is engaged in negative campaigning, Johnson said:

“We’ll continue to talk about Ricketts’ national sales tax plan, his proposal to privatize Social Security and his plan to end the farm program as we know it. Sometimes, people view the truth as negative.”

Ricketts maintains he has merely discussed possible options for tax, Social Security and farm policy reforms rather than advocated specific changes.

What is truly negative and misleading, Johnson said, are Ricketts TV ads that employ “false headlines” from newspapers and guilt-by-association tactics featuring photos of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.

As for the Ricketts campaign vow to mount a massive get-out-the-vote effort, Johnson said: “This is not a one-sided effort. We get to do that, too.”

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Moenning was named Ricketts’ campaign manager 11 days ago, succeeding Pat Fiske, a Republican political operative with campaign experience in Minnesota, Washington and Colorado.

A few weeks earlier, Moenning left her post as executive director of the Nebraska Republican Party to lend a hand to Ricketts in a consulting role.

Fiske did “an excellent job” managing the primary campaign, Moenning said, and he’ll continue to advise Ricketts.

But Moenning, 28, brings a Nebraskan’s knowledge of the state, close relationships with other Nebraska Republicans and their campaigns, and a familiarity with the party and the tools it can bring to the table.

Her skills in transforming Fortenberry’s volunteer-driven 2004 primary campaign into a smooth-operating, million-dollar general election enterprise caught the eye of GOP insiders, who asked her to take the party leadership post.

A move to the Senate campaign, which GOP leaders have identified as their top priority this election year, seemed a natural next step.

Inherent in the targeting of Nebraska’s lone remaining Democratic prize is a GOP assumption that Heineman is, in Moenning’s words, going to be “just fine” following his impressive victory over Osborne.

After seizing the Senate seat vacated by Exon in 1996 and recapturing the governorship in 1998, when Nelson completed his second term as chief executive, the GOP yearns to complete a sweep of the three premier offices.

With the exception of a brief tenure by appointed Republican Sen. David Karnes, Democrats have held the seat occupied by Nelson for 30 years.

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As Moenning took over the Ricketts campaign, more chess pieces were in motion.

Trisha Meuret, former Omaha TV newswoman, resigned as communications director.

Earlier, Melissa Ekberg left her post as finance director.

“A natural evolution,” Moenning said. “Taking on Ben Nelson is a different challenge.”

In the primary battle for the Republican Senate nomination, Ricketts overwhelmed Don Stenberg and David Kramer with his personal wealth, spending $4.7  million of his own money and financing a saturation TV ad campaign.

The money advantage disappears now. Nelson and Ricketts will be generously funded in a contest that will shatter Nebraska spending records.

The next time Ricketts adds more of his own money to the race, he’ll trigger the so-called millionaire’s amendment, which automatically increases the amount of money Nelson can raise from contributors. Ricketts plugged in $725,000 last month and will wait to toss in any more as long as he can.

That increases his need to be more successful at fund-raising.

“It’s an area we do have to focus on,” Moenning said.

Meanwhile, Ricketts will mount an extensive travel schedule. Twenty-three counties in June. The pace will accelerate now.

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Paul Johnson has a different take on the shakeup of Ricketts campaign personnel.

“Ruthless,” he says.

“Pete Ricketts treats his campaign staff the way he treated the employees of Ameritrade and the way he will treat the people of Nebraska: He will do whatever it takes for his personal gain.

“Remember the 600 employees laid off so Ameritrade could hire a $15 million CEO?”

Corporate cost-cutting in 2002 “saved 1,500 jobs in Nebraska,” Ricketts has said. He was chief operating officer of the company before resigning to enter the Senate race.

In a morning show interview with radio broadcasters on KEZO Z-92 in Omaha this week, Meuret said she left the campaign for “personal reasons,” hinting at personality conflicts, but “not with Pete.” Her departure, she said, was “totally amicable.”

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Despite the Republican demographic advantage in Nebraska, Ben Nelson begins this race with what is generally believed to be a double-digit lead.

Nineteen points, said an automated telephone poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports the day after the primary election.

Doesn’t bother Moenning.

Nelson, the well-known incumbent, held only 54 percent support in that survey, she said, precariously close to dipping below majority approval.

If those numbers are accurate, Ricketts is closer to Nelson at this point than Chuck Hagel was in 1996 or Don Stenberg was in 2000, Moenning said.

Hagel overcame Nelson, then serving his second term as governor, to handily win that Senate contest 10 years ago. Stenberg closed fast six years ago before falling just short.

“From an historical perspective, we start from a great position,” Moenning said. “I’m very optimistic.”

Ricketts will focus his message on issues important to him, such as spending control and tax reform, Moenning said.

But what Moenning described as a “negative and misleading” Nelson campaign will also receive a vigorous response.

In August, look for some Republican senators to come to the state to raise money for Ricketts and deliver the message to Nebraska Republicans their support may be needed to retain GOP control of the Senate.

Later, Moenning said, she believes President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are likely to come to Nebraska to lend a hand.

Bush has been appearing in Nebraska recently on Democratic Party TV ads that show the president praising Nelson in Omaha 16 months ago as “a person who’s willing to put partisanship aside to focus on what’s right for America.”

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Nelson’s internal polls show the senator “substantially ahead,” Johnson said.

“However, we know that at the end of the day this will be a competitive race.”

Nelson’s numbers place him farther ahead of Ricketts at this point in the campaign than he was ahead of Stenberg six years ago, Johnson said.

Meanwhile, the veteran campaign manager — Johnson directed successful Kerrey campaigns, managed Nelson’s 2000 victory and has established national Democratic credentials — is building a formidable machine.

The campaign finance report Nelson will file by Saturday will show he raised more than $1 million during the latest 70-day reporting period ending June 30, Johnson said.

And Ricketts already may have opened the door to larger Nelson contributions by triggering the millionaire’s amendment, he said.

“The issue is whether they carried money forward from the primary election,” Johnson said, and whether the Federal Election Commission would consider some or all of that to be personal contributions to his campaign.

In any event, there’ll be plenty of money on both sides to seed the storm clouds ahead.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.