Spotlight turns to Kleeb's bid

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By DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star

Cradling a cup of coffee and clad in jeans, jacket and boots on a brisk  Saturday afternoon, Scott Kleeb has some advice to share.

“Make this light, friendly, fun.  Compliment the flower bed.”

Kleeb (pronounced kleb) is standing in the parking lot at Longfellow Elementary School in Scottsbluff talking to two dozen campaign volunteers.

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Scott Kleeb
Age: 31
Occupation: Ranch hand
Family: Single
Quote: "I'm surprised by the number of Republicans who say: 'My party left me.'"

Scott Kleeb
Age: 31
Occupation: Ranch hand
Family: Single
Quote: "I'm surprised by the number of Republicans who say: 'My party left me.'"

“You know this community,” he tells them.  “You know what to say.”

And then young campaign field director Adam Barth pulls “walk lists” from his clipboard and sends pairs of volunteers into the targeted mixed-income, mixed-party registration, high-voting neighborhood to carry the message door to door.

“It’s crunch time,” Barth tells them.

Handed a walk list identifying the blocks he’ll personally cover and the targeted doors where he should knock, Kleeb heads out ready to listen to the concerns of voters and ask for their support.

Kleeb stands in the spotlight at the close of the 2006 election cycle in Nebraska, having reached the doorstep of perhaps accomplishing a feat not achieved in half a century.

Western and central Nebraska voters have not elected a Democrat to represent them in the House since they chose Don McGinley in 1958. Kleeb may not end that Democratic drought this year, but he’s at the threshold knocking on the door.

* * * 

As higher-profile statewide contests appear headed toward more predictable ends, Kleeb and Republican nominee Adrian Smith have moved to center stage, where they are locked in a dramatic end-game.

“I’m optimistic,” Kleeb says.  “Feeling good.  

If he wins, he’s a national story.

As if an unexpected Democratic victory in the reddest congressional district in a crimson state wouldn’t be enough, try this: Ranch hand, 31, elected to Congress.

A single ranch hand from cowboy country with two post-graduate degrees from Yale, for good measure.

As Kleeb moves through the neighborhood, visiting with voters  on their porches and as they take a break from yardwork, leaving signed leaflets at unanswered doors, stirring a chorus of barking dogs along the way, his challenge is clearly visible.

Smith has planted his flag. 

This is his legislative district, a city he has represented at the State Capitol in Lincoln for eight years.  He lives not far away in the sister city of Gering. And his campaign has blanketed this neighborhood’s lawns with Smith signs in advance of the final House debate in Scottsbluff the following day.

It’s all a reminder, however magnified, this is Republican country. 

Kleeb is not deterred or intimidated.

“I’m offering a strong, independent voice in Washington,” he says.  “A new, fresh direction.

“I’m not running left or right; I’m running forward. The issues we need to address don’t respect party.

“I wouldn’t operate on the fringes.  I’d be sensible and moderate.  You’ve gotta do what’s right for the district.”

* * * 

As Kleeb tells an overflow audience at the debate the next day, he’s “come a long way” since he entered the congressional race. 

“I remember when I was just a longshot,” he says. “Today, it’s a dead heat.”

Along the way, a squirrel jumped on his head in Kimball and a dog bit his hand at a parade in Alliance.  And, he says, he met a rancher north of Alliance who told him “he’d never met a Democrat, but he’d vote for me.”

Kleeb acknowledges being a Democratic candidate in the 3rd District is “a big hurdle you have to overcome,”and yet there is ample evidence these are very independent people who live out west.

Despite the daunting fact that Republicans have won 23 straight times, two of the last three times the House seat was open, a Democrat almost won. 

The Big Third, now composed of 69 counties, is the only Nebraska congressional district that has elected a woman, choosing Virginia Smith in 1974. And its independent-minded voters elected Tom Osborne in 2000 even though his primary residence was far away in Lincoln. Osborne will complete his third and final term in January. 

* * * 

Kleeb says he’s committed to reducing health care costs, preserving Social Security, developing renewable energy, eliminating federal budget deficits, promoting rural economic development and creating new economic opportunity in the district.

“We need good jobs, good opportunities, good schools. We need to expand wealth, opportunities, potential.”

“I’d take Nebraska ideas to Washington rather than the other way around,” Kleeb tells an overflow debate audience at the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research Center.

Kleeb says Smith was a “divisive and ineffectual” state senator and now is tethered too closely to about $400,000 in campaign contributions from the anti-tax Club for Growth and its national members.

The club opposes farm supports and ethanol development, and wants to privatize the Social Security System, all anathema to 3rd District Nebraskans, Kleeb says.

“When you’re writing policy, you have to make sense to your voters, not your single largest contributor,” Kleeb says.

Although Smith assures voters he supports a safety-net farm support system and would not be bound by Club for Growth positions, Kleeb says: “It’s awful hard to tell someone who gave you $400,000 no.”

Asked to describe Smith’s political posture, Kleeb says: “An extremist. Part of the very far right.”

* * * 

Voters “want you to put yourself in their shoes and legislate on what is best,” Kleeb says during an interview at the Scottsbluff Holiday Inn Express.

“An awful lot does not get done when you cater to the extremes.”

Kleeb says 40 to 100 people have shown up at recent Republicans for Kleeb meetings in the district, an  indication he may have broken through the partisan divide.

“A district like ours prides itself on independence,” he says.

On the morning of the debate, Kleeb gains the endorsement of the Omaha World-Herald, the only statewide newspaper in Nebraska. It has a legitimizing impact, coming from a conservative voice more often identified with Republican causes and candidates. Kleeb describes it as “a powerful endorsement” in opening remarks at the debate.

Kleeb has stressed the need for fiscal discipline and a balanced federal budget, transparency in appropriations earmarks, line item veto authority for the president, all of that standing in contrast to the fiscal record of the Republican Congress.

“How can anyone spend more than this Congress?” he asks.

Challenged about his brief residency in the state, Kleeb says: “My opponent believes because my parents chose to serve their country overseas, that somehow makes me less Nebraskan. I decided to come back. I came back. That makes me more Nebraskan.”

Kleeb was born in Turkey and grew up in Italy, where his parents taught the children of U.S. military personnel. He received his college degree from the University of Colorado and later studied and taught at Yale, returning to the McGinn Ranch near Dunning — in Custer County, where his father grew up —during summers, holidays, spring breaks and fall brandings.

Smith says: “I came home (after graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) long before there was an open seat.”

Kleeb says: “You don’t run as a Democrat in the 3rd District because you think it’s going to be easy.  It’s because you care.”

Iraq is an issue in the district — as it is everywhere.

The war has been mismanaged, Kleeb says, and it’s time to “ask hard questions, find a new direction.”

“We need a serious reassessment,” he says during the interview following his door-to-door campaigning. 

“What’s working and what’s not?

“We need stronger international involvement.  But no artificial deadlines” for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Smith is “a stay-the-course guy,” Kleeb says.  “He’d love to say I’m cut-and-run, but that’s not the case.”

As Election Day nears, the  question is whether Kleeb now can get from the doorstep inside the door.

“If you could sit in my place for a day, see the numbers I’m seeing, hear the number of people who say, ‘I’m a Republican, but I’m voting for you,’ then you’d see reasons to be optimistic,” he says.

“There’s a lot more out there that we share.”

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