Last year, the Nebraska legislature introduced a bill to ban dangerous medical sex changes for children… only to be stopped by a group of left-wing lawmakers to launch a weeklong filibuster, the longest one in the state’s history.
At the time, conservatives comprised 32 of the 49 seats in the chamber, but they needed 33 votes in order to overcome a filibuster.
One Democratic lawmaker finally had enough and announced he was joining the Republican Party to end the filibuster… just ahead of a bombshell bill that could impact the 2024 presidential election results.
Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha announced Wednesday that he is switching his party affiliation to Republican. McDonnell cited his censure by the Nebraska Democratic Party because he supported some abortion restrictions last year.
Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, the only one in the nation. In effect, Nebraskans have a state senate but no state house, and they call their state lawmakers “senators.”
With Republican Gov. Jim Pillen currently in office, conservatives have just amassed a filibuster-proof machine in all of Nebraska’s political branches of government — just in time to consider a new bill that could impact the election rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, called on the new, filibuster-proof majority to move the state toward a winner-take-all model for awarding electoral votes. Currently, the state awards electoral votes by congressional district, rather than giving all its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state.
Democrat President Joe Biden won one of Nebraska’s four congressional districts in 2020.
“I am pleased to welcome Senator Mike McDonald to the Republican Team. The extreme new Democrats are pushing common-sense officials and voters to our party,” Ricketts said in a statement, describing the arrangement as a “filibuster-proof majority.”
“This timing heading into a Presidential election is an awesome opportunity to mobilize our Republican majority to a winner-take-all system and put one more electoral vote in the Republican column for 2024!”
Nebraska’s legislature is the only one to remain officially nonpartisan. However, each party endorses political candidates, and the lawmakers often self-describe as Democrats or Republicans.
Nebraska’s filibuster rules are less severe than in other states, some of which forbid lawmakers from sitting, taking a bathroom break, or speaking on anything other than bill being filibustered.
The Nebraska rules allow them to discuss pretty much whatever they want. Far-Left Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh filibustered the medical sex change ban for children bill by giving monologues on everything from her favorite Girl Scout cookies to the plots of her children’s favorite animated movies.
Nebraska rules, instead, place time limits on filibusters. Bills must go through three rounds of debate to pass, and up to eight hours of debate is allotted for the first round before a cloture vote — or a vote to end debate — is taken. If the bill is uncontested, it can get through that process and be voted on much sooner. But if it’s filibustered, it usually takes the full eight hours.
The second round gets up to four hours of debate, and the final round gets up to two hours. If a cloture vote gets 33 or more votes, debate ends and a vote is taken on the bill. If cloture gets less than 33 votes — in any round — the bill is considered dead for the year.
Former state Sen. Ernie Chambers, a left-wing lawmaker from Omaha, served 46 years as a state senator and mastered the use of the filibuster to try to tank bills he opposed and force support for bills he backed. But he had a knack for convincing lawmakers to change their minds, often within days.
Take a look at McDonald’s announcement —
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.