Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold

Praise for Rural Rebellion

At a time when social and political differences tend to be portrayed in stark binary terms, Ross Benes adds depth to our understanding of rural Americans’ attitudes about abortion, immigration, big government, and other issues of contention. And while Nebraska shares plenty of cultural and geographic characteristics with its neighbors, Benes suggests that each state in this often-stereotyped region has its own story to tell. Folks who don’t have relatives and friends in Nebraska can thank Benes for lending us his.

C.J. Janovy, author of No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas

Ross writes interesting sentences and takes stories down paths the reader wouldn’t or couldn’t travel without him. He knows this Nebraska because he’s lived it and processed it as a kid, a wannabe rock star, a college student, a football fan, a social scientist, and more. Now he translates it, and he does it all with an intellect that forces us to rethink our suppositions about each other. A great read no matter where you are on the rural-urban or red-blue divides.

Scott Winter, associate professor of journalism, Bethel University, and author of Nebrasketball: Coach Tim Miles and a Big Ten Team on the Rise

Raised as I was in Kansas, I’ve entertained theories of how my neighboring state—where Willa Cather once lived and Warren Buffett still lives—became such a bastion of Trump support. This engaging book by a writer who knows Nebraska firsthand explains why, and in so doing enriches our understanding of rural America.

Robert Wuthnow, Gerhard R. Andlinger ’52 Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

"In Rural Rebellion Ross Benes provides a deeply personal look at how the Nebraska we both know and love has taken a hard right turn over the past quarter century, turning the state and its neighbors in flyover country into a no-fly zone for Democrats. How Nebraska went from being a notoriously independent and bipartisan state into a place governed by the most conservative elements of a conservative party is a complete mystery to most liberals—and one that Benes decodes adroitly. Must reading for anyone who wants to know how we got where we are and how to chart a roadmap out of the great divide in American politics."

Jack Todd, author of Sun Going Down: A Novel

Written with deep insight, and with a keen appreciation for how politics unfolds through specific stories, this book is indispensable for anyone trying to understand how American politics got to be so profoundly divided along overlapping lines of partisanship and geography. At the same time, Benes’s Nebraska roots lend the narrative an empathy that distinguishes this book from so many others. At root, this book reminds us that our problems aren’t fundamentally about other Americans—they are about a politics that pushes us into incompatible camps.

Daniel Hopkins, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania

"This is a story of a young man trying to make sense of both his past and present—how the place he came from shaped him and why that place ceased to exist. This is more than a coming-of-age story, more than a nostalgic look back to a simpler time when we know that no time was ever simple. With Rural Rebellion Ross Benes does the impossible: he combines an honest personal narrative with extensive reporting and research, making it an invaluable resource to all of us who look at the country and ask, ‘Why?’ This book does more than explain Benes, more than explain Nebraska. It helps us understand modern America."

Sridhar Pappu, author of The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age

Rural Rebellion

RURAL

REBELLION

HOW NEBRASKA BECAME A

REPUBLICAN STRONGHOLD

Ross Benes

University Press of Kansas

© 2021 by Ross Benes

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Benes, Ross, author.

Title: Rural rebellion : how Nebraska became a Republican stronghold / Ross Benes.

Description: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, [2020]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022324

ISBN 9780700630455 (cloth)

ISBN 9780700630462 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Nebraska—Politics and government—21st century. | Conservatism—Nebraska.

Classification: LCC JK6616 .B46 2020 | DDC 320.5209782—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022324.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in the print publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

For the good people

of Brainard

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Pro-Life License Plates

2 A Soccer Town

3 The Cornhusker Kickback

4 An Undivided House Falls

5 Dear Old Nebraska U

6 Democratic Disarray and Hidden Progressivism

Conclusion

Notes

Acknowledgments

Before I lay out some earnest thank-yous, I want to share a note with readers to give them some context of what they’re getting into. This book blends several genres including memoir, journalism, political science, history, and sociology, but some subjects were much more personal than others. To tell the story of why my own views have evolved and why Nebraska politics have changed, I felt it necessary to include both personal essays and institutional critiques. In the first half of this book I talk more about my own experiences because the topics of religion, health care, and immigration are very personal matters. In the second half of the book I talk more about institutions—like the state’s legislature, public university system, and political parties—so those chapters are less memoir driven. While various genres are imitated throughout the entire book, readers may find that the first part of the book is more memoir whereas the second part is more historical and journalistic. In citing where I obtained material, I tried to be thorough without overwhelming readers with endnotes, which led me to combine citations at the end of paragraphs. As part of my effort to limit endnotes, I excluded the numerous interviews I conducted from the endnotes section. Instead, I mentioned those interviews in the text and embedded them into my reporting. Quotes that have no endnote citation usually came from interviews I conducted.

Now on to the acknowledgments. I must begin by thanking friends and colleagues who fed my vanity by repeatedly telling me that my perspective was worth sharing. I’m amazed that you convinced me to write a political memoir. I appreciate the work you did building my ego.

My family deserves a shout-out. I’ve always been outspoken and not one to shy away from an argument. I appreciate that you guys keep putting up with me considering how often I disagree with you. And it’s great that some of you were open to sharing your thoughts with me for this book. I’m glad that we get along well despite our differences. I know many others who moved away from their hometowns who don’t have it so good. Similarly, I want to thank the people of Butler County, and to those throughout Nebraska, who make life easy there. Your friendliness is a cultural feature worth clinging to.

Thanks to my agent, Lane Heymont of the Tobias Agency, for believing in this project and assuaging my concerns. Thanks to my editor, David Congdon, and everyone else at the University Press of Kansas, for believing in the book and making it happen. Coming into this project, I was ignorant of how university presses work. Thanks, Jason Berry, Jon Lauck, and Scott Winter, for helping me understand this niche. Thanks, CJ Janovy, for your early feedback. Thanks, Matt Fraher, for your help creating charts. Thanks, Morgan Baskin, Zach Fulciniti, and Riki Markowitz, for your fact checking. Thanks to the peer reviewers for your constructive criticism.

Like most authors, my books haven’t generated a substantial amount of money, so I take on other work. I’m grateful to eMarketer for employing me the past few years. It’s been a good job that’s allowed me to live more freely. I also want to thank editors I’ve worked with while freelancing. Sections of articles I wrote for the Nation, American Prospect, Deadspin, and Esquire found their way into this book in new formats.

Throughout the reporting process of this book, I spoke with many sources. I appreciate everyone who shared their time with me, including those who would rather remain unnamed. Sources who I want to personally thank include Greg Adams, Roy Baker, Doug Bereuter, Tom Brewer, Jon Bruning, John Cavanaugh, Vic Covalt, Sue Crawford, Frank Daley, Al Davis, Kara Eastman, Laura Ebke, Renee Fry, Amanda Gailey, Jack Gould, Ben Gray, Chuck Hagel, Gerard Harbison, John Harms, Burke Harr, Dave Heineman, Robert Hilkemann, Bill Hoppner, Megan Hunt, Jim Jansen, Ron Jensen, Jerry Johnson, Bob Kerrey, Jane Kleeb, Connie Knoche, Jon Knutson, Ari Kohen, Rick Kolowski, David Kotok, Bob Krist, Doug Kristensen, Paul Landow, Chris Langemeir, Rich Lombardi, Preston Love, John McCollister, Janece Mollhof, Randy Moody, W. Don Nelson, Ben Nelson, Patrick O’Donnell, Tom Osborne, Dave Pantos, Mary Pipher, Vince Powers, Barbara Raya, Walt Radcliffe, David Reneicke, L. Lynn Rex, Crystal Rhoades, Kim Robak, Chris Rodgers, Michael Rose-Ivey, Barry Rubin, Drey Samuelson, Judith Schweikart, Lee Terry, Tony Vargas, Don Walton, Sändra Washington, Gerald Wright, and Jeff Yost.

My research led me to ask librarians and state officials to help me find particular documents and statistics. I’m grateful for the patience of Brooklyn librarians at my neighborhood branch who helped me file many interlibrary loan requests. University of Nebraska librarian Signe Boudreau went beyond her required duties to find an old, rare report that helped inform my reporting. Workers at the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission were also helpful.

It has been rather strange finishing this book while stationed in the US epicenter of a global pandemic. As I write this, I’ve been shut in my apartment for three months, unable to go anywhere besides my neighborhood’s grocery store, pharmacy, and park while New York City tries to control the spreading coronavirus. Having nowhere else to go helped me finish this project quicker, and producing this book gave me something to look forward to during these long days. By the time you read this book, I hope like hell that we’ve overcome the virus and our daily routines have resumed.

Last, I want to thank my fiancée, Rachel. Ever since she’s met me, Rachel has heard a lot more about Husker athletics and small-town nonsense than she would prefer. Once I started working on this book, she then had to hear about Nebraska politics, which she doesn’t care about at all. Yet, she’s been patient and a helpful editor. Whether we’re quarantined in our home together or traveling abroad, I’m always lucky to have her, and our hounds Cooper and Snoopy, who’ve done their part to calm my nerves, make me smile, and appreciate how good I’ve got it.

Rural Rebellion

Introduction

Man, Chi-Chi looked gorgeous strutting down the ramp. Bright lipstick made red lips pop, a pink bandanna accentuated dark, thick curls, and a blue dress with a hemline high enough above the knees to make your imagination run wild. Butler County, Nebraska, would never witness another drag queen so magnificent.

Chi-Chi was a character played by actor John Leguizamo in the 1995 movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. The movie was filmed about a six-minute drive from my parents’ house. As the area’s heating and air conditioning repair man, my dad got called when Leguizamo’s trailer had a malfunctioning unit. While Dad fixed the AC, he saw the movie’s stars Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and Leguizamo walk out the trailer and down a ramp wearing high heels and short skirts. The image burned in his mind.

Leguizamo looked like a woman, Dad said. He was decent-looking actually. Snipes was the ugliest. God, he made an ugly woman.

In case you haven’t seen it, To Wong Foo is about New York City drag queens on a road trip to Hollywood for a pageant. On their way to California, the drag queens get stranded in a fictional midwestern small town called Snydersville. They deal with locals’ ignorance of drag, take the townswomen shopping for new clothes, and engage in other novelty plot twists you’d expect from this sort of campy film. Snydersville is actually Loma, Nebraska, an unincorporated area where maybe thirty people live that sits just outside my hometown, Brainard. In Loma, there’s a bar, a church, an old schoolhouse, a handful of houses, a cemetery, and . . . that’s really it.

Loma is so rural, it makes Brainard and its elitist paved roads feel like Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Driving through the town’s dirt strip (there’s just the one) gives a feeling of Walker, Texas Ranger meets the Great Depression. The Loma bar is a national treasure, and I genuinely enjoyed drinking Boone’s Farm in its empty pastures as pickup headlights and torched coaches guided us through the dark. When my fiancée visited Nebraska for the first time, I drove her up a hill outside Loma, turned off the engine, rolled down the windows, and watched fireflies dance in a ditch full of tall grass while we gazed at an orange moon and a sky full of stars that we normally can’t see in the city. As much as I appreciate Loma, the place hasn’t changed since Tom Joad headed Californee way. People there still talk about the time Leguizamo, Snipes, and Swayze stopped in town for their drag gig, more than twenty-five years ago.

It’s not just in people’s memory that the movie remains alive. Several buildings, including the Catholic church, received paint jobs, new wiring, and fixed-up storefronts from the movie production—and most haven’t been touched up since. A building made for the movie that says Welcome to Snydersville still stands and is used by a family as a storage shed. In my closet back home, as in many other people’s closets from Butler County, a Loma Goes Hollywood T-shirt hangs as a relic of a bygone era.

Over the years, I’ve talked to many people who were extras for the movie or owned land that was used in the filming. They are always eager to share their brief film experiences. My dad is no different, which is amusing given his heteronormative views.

My dad is essentially Hank Hill, which makes me an awkward and bewildering Bobby. He grew up a farm boy who’s now in his seventies. He’s a plain, straight, ordinary, blue-collar, old-fashioned man who never misses mass. His distaste for change is reflected in his loyalty to Bud Light. Whenever we go to a baseball game or bar where his favorite beverage isn’t offered, Dad buys an alternative lager the server recommends. Without fail, he remarks, This ain’t Bud Light after taking the first sip.

When Leguizamo, Swayze, and Snipes came to town dressed as women, people in Brainard like my dad didn’t obsess over their differences with their Hollywood visitors. Sure, the idea of two men marrying each other at that time was perceived as an abomination by most folks in town. But the movie’s deviation from heterosexual norms was viewed as harmless campy fun. Opportunists didn’t use the movie to weaponize the anxiety that rural people have about gay rights. Fox News didn’t exist yet, and no news publications were stoking people’s fears by turning Loma Goes Hollywood into Hollywood Assaults Small-Town Values. Evangelical groups weren’t out picketing the movie set for its lax attitudes about sex. Talk radio hosts weren’t propping it up as an example of liberals tainting the values of real Americans. There were no fringe online forums spreading conspiracies about the town or the actors. The movie wasn’t leveraged as an excuse to target gay people who lived in Nebraska. Everyone in Brainard was just thrilled that famous people acknowledged their existence briefly.

It’d be a stretch to say the philosophies of To Wong Foo’s filmmakers were embraced throughout Butler County. There’s a reason gay kids from our area wait until college or later to come out. My hometown isn’t always welcoming to those who are different. However, in this specific case the outsiders presenting a different view on life were at least welcomed and politely tolerated. Because the movie wasn’t instantly tethered to political or identity issues, my dad and many other Nebraskans who are apt to vote against gay marriage fondly remember the drag queens who delivered Loma its fifteen minutes of fame. Rather than upset people, To Wong Foo is a source of nostalgia for Brainard. The only thing I can do when faced with this dissonance is smile that there exists a condition in small-town Nebraska where cross-dressing has brought joy, not to mention a little renovation.

If a movie like this were filmed in Loma nowadays, the experience would likely be different. Pundits and political groups would turn to the internet and cable TV to nationalize and weaponize the situation. Operatives from Washington and New York would pour their attention onto Brainard to turn the filming into a controversy so that they could rally support by aggravating people’s most basic emotions. With everyday life interactions increasingly turning into culture-war proxy battles, someone from Brainard would go viral and those who caused the sensation would be gone and have moved their attention elsewhere by the time the aftermath set in. Luckily for the good folks of Brainard, they didn’t have to deal with this nonsense.

What I find intriguing about the making of To Wong Foo is that people from distinct parts of the country guided by dissimilar beliefs were able to respect each other’s personal differences while being exposed to new experiences. We the people—and that equally applies to those who live on farmsteads and those who dwell in cities, and everyone in between—should strive for this type of openness and understanding when it comes to our politics. We have a long way to go in fulfilling this ideal. Like so many other states, Nebraska politics have become more extreme since Chi-Chi came to town.

The story of Nebraska is about how a once independent state full of gracious people became baptized into placing their hopes in fortunate sons and narcissistic TV stars. My story is about loving those whom I’ve left behind.

To understand my viewpoint, you should know that John Mellencamp’s small town is a metropolis compared to where I come from. In Brainard, Nebraska, there are no stoplights, movie theaters, grocery stores, parking meters, concert halls, rec centers, car dealerships, public gyms, convenience stores, or chain restaurants. The tallest structures are the Catholic church’s steeple and the grain elevator showing that God and farm reign supreme here. The town’s bar, aptly titled Husker Bar in honor of the beloved University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, functions as a coffee shop, restaurant, saloon, community center, and psychiatrist’s office. Whenever a family moves out of town it reduces our population by a few percentage points.

According to the 2010 Census, Brainard was 99.7 percent white. In 2000 it was 99.4 percent white. Our racial diversity was cut in half when my Hispanic high school Spanish teacher left to teach at another school. If you never left Brainard, you’d be under the impression that Lutherans and Methodists are ethnic minorities since nearly everyone attends the same Catholic church.

The population density is so low that you don’t just know everyone’s name in town. You also know who they are related to, who they’ve dated, where they work, and what type of beer they like. My graduating high school class was the biggest in East Butler history, yet it had fewer than four dozen students. Because my mom specializes in gossip, I knew more information about our neighbors than J. Edgar Hoover ever had on suspected communists.

Psychologically and geographically, Brainard is far removed from big city life. Sure, Omaha is just over an hour’s drive away, but the closest city with more than a million residents is five hundred miles away in Chicago. Isolated areas of working-class religious white folk usually vote conservatively, and that has been the case with Brainard for a long time. What’s been overlooked by many analysts is how much areas like Brainard have changed politically. Small towns throughout the Midwest have shed their interest in moderate candidates and embraced the hardened right.

Lots of people were puzzled by the level of support that the Midwest gave Donald Trump during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. In the greater Butler County area that Brainard is a part of, about 80 percent of voters picked Trump in 2016. In trying to explain the shock of Trump’s victory, CNN sent cameras to my home county, which was unprecedented. What resulted was a three-minute segment of local farmers talking about their love for Trump set against the backdrop of tractors rollin’ through alfalfa fields. Nobody took that guy serious, a local Vietnam veteran donning an army helmet and fatigues told CNN. Well, they forgot about us deplorables here in the Midwest. They totally forgot about us.¹

When the clip was shared on Facebook and Twitter, commenters yucked it up over how backwards rural Nebraska appeared and how they never want to visit there. I think the same people calling Nebraska Trump supporters disgusting and inbred drug dealers would be blown away by how nicely rural Nebraskans would treat them if they ever got the guts to go there and talk to people who challenge their worldview. The disparaging comments directed at Nebraskans in reaction to the video showed why the deplorables line resonated so strongly with folks who were fed up with being looked down on.

While Trump’s rise was unparalleled, much of middle America has been moving to the right for a while. Having spent the vast majority of my life in Nebraska, I’ve seen a gradual shift in the types of candidates we elect to our state legislature and the US Congress. The accumulative changes over the past few decades have made it extremely difficult for Democrats to be competitive outside of certain parts of our two biggest cities, Omaha and Lincoln, and even there, it is often an uphill battle for liberals. Nebraska is not alone in this regard, as the aversion toward Democrats has grown in several states in the middle of the country. Following the 1980s farm crisis, states with large rural voting blocs saw many seats flip from red to blue. By appealing to economic issues, such as federal support for agriculture, Democrats in Nebraska as well as in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, and other states were able to defeat Republicans tethered to conservative doctrine. Republicans wrestled back that power. These states that once helped Democrats become the majority in the Senate are now an albatross for the party.²

It took a bizarre outcome to get news outlets like CNN to look at places like Brainard. But the dynamics that push small-town people away from liberal and moderate candidates have been in the making for many years. Now that I’ve spent over half a decade living in New York City, I have experienced how painfully unaware both rural and urban Americans are of how the other half lives. I realize that the people I grew up with around Brainard are some of the sweetest folks on Earth, even though I often disagree with them.

Nebraskans like to think of themselves as independent minded. It’s in our blood. The state’s settlers were explorers who took a gamble coming west to make a life for themselves on America’s frontier. When presented with the chance to become a state in 1860, these prairie people voted against it. Statehood came seven years later, and not long after that Arbor Day was founded in Nebraska. The holiday was started by conservative Democrat Julius Sterling Morton, who took a liking to environmentalism and briefly served as Nebraska’s governor and US secretary of agriculture. During that era, Morton’s biographer wrote, Nebraska belonged to a section of the country that seemed for a time to produce only radicals.³

For years, the state eschewed the Republican-Democrat dichotomy. Many Nebraskans supported the People’s Party, an agrarian movement that arose back when the word populism actually meant something and wasn’t just a watered-down buzzword that pundits use in varied ways to try to make themselves sound smart. These rebel farmers fed the rise of William Jennings Bryan, a political liberal and fundamentalist Christian who railed against big business when he represented Nebraska in Congress. He became the Democratic Party nominee in three presidential races, all of which he lost. Bryan’s contempt for big business interests was best exemplified in his famous 1896 Cross of Gold speech wherein he stated that banks had become too dominant in society and that maintaining the gold standard would crucify the working class.

Nebraska asserted its political independence once again in 1937 by doing something truly radical and removing party labels from its state legislature. It remains the only state to have a nonpartisan as well as a single-house lawmaking body. Almost every newspaper in the state opposed this move, but it was adopted largely because the effort was spearheaded by George Norris, a man popular enough in the state to get elected five times apiece to both the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Every mile of the road, it seemed to me, I had been in conflict with the Republican leadership; and I knew it considered me as a thorn in its side, Norris wrote in his autobiography, Fighting Liberal. Norris served the majority of his career as a Republican before becoming the only registered independent in the 1940 Congress. He was religiously agnostic, a supporter of liberalism, and wildly popular in Nebraska.⁴

Nebraska had become more conservative by the time I was born. In 1989 I welcomed the world in Butler County’s only hospital in David City, notable for being the birthplace of Hallmark’s founder. In that era we still elected people who were willing to take unpopular stances if they believed that what they were doing was right. Senator Bob Kerrey defended gay marriage before most politicians in blue states did. Congressman Doug Bereuter chastised his party for leveraging Christianity for political gain. Senator Chuck Hagel sponsored bipartisan immigration reform and was one of the first major critics of the Iraq War even though it put him at odds with fellow Republicans. Nowadays, the most rebellious action Nebraskans can hope for from their representatives is Senator Ben Sasse sending some terse words Donald Trump’s way before voting in lockstep with the president’s agenda.⁵

The difference between the Nebraska politicians who were in power when I grew up and today’s elected officials can be seen in how differently they responded to Robert Mueller’s investigation. Several of the most prominent politicians who presided over Nebraska during my upbringing added their names to a bipartisan group that urged the US Senate to protect American democracy as Mueller’s investigation faced resistance heading into 2019. Meanwhile, Nebraska’s current state lawmakers condemned the Mueller investigation before it got off the ground as a perversion of equal justice. It’s unlikely that the Nebraska GOP is swayed by the indictments and guilty pleas Mueller secured or believes its resolution would have an actual effect on his approach. The group just wanted to express party loyalty and hail to the chief.

In the year I was born, both of Nebraska’s US senators were Democrats, as was one of its three House reps. The following year, Nebraskans elected Democrats for governor, auditor, and state treasurer. By 2020 all those seats were firmly held by Republicans. We haven’t had a Democrat governor for more than two decades, and the Republicans we elect continue to get more conservative.⁶

Other states have had this experience too. Five of the six individuals South Dakota and North Dakota sent to Congress in 1989 were Democrats, but the two states have zero Democrats combined as of this writing. Kansas used to have two Democrats in Congress, but now it has one. Eight of the eleven people Tennessee sent to Washington were Democrat, and now only two are. Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky went from a combined fifteen Democrats to one. Missouri sent five Democrats