Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And Minnesota Public Radio's Clay Masters is also here with us. Hi, Clay. Hey, good to be here. Yeah, great to have you. And we're recording this podcast at 1.36 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026. And we're going to talk about Nebraska today. This is a state that had a primary election yesterday. And it's also home to one of the few competitive districts in the U.S. House, Nebraska's second district, which is sometimes known as the blue dot in

Nebraska. And it also is a state that has a Senate race with some pretty funky political dynamics.

But I do want to start with that house race, this competitive house race. Clay, walk us through the

candidates. Yeah, and I guess I should first declare my bona fides for Nebraska. I'm a

Nebraska native and I graduated from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and started my

career there. So I just needed to put that cred out there to begin with. So the second congressional

district in Nebraska, it's home to the largest city, the most populated city in the state,

Omaha, and the dynamics in this

Democratic primary were so competitive because this state has not been a winner take all when it comes

to electoral politics. So the way that there's only two states that do this, it's Nebraska and

Maine. And in Nebraska, not all the delegates go to the candidate who wins the state, right?

So we've seen this history where Nebraska's second congressional district, a lot of times called the blue dot, has gone to Democratic presidential nominees, while the rest of the state and the other two congressional districts have gone to the Republican.

So there's been this dynamic that's

taking place in this race where the two main candidates, and it's still too close to be called

right now, the two candidates are fighting over whether or not this would have harm on Nebraska's

blue dot. Senator John Kavanaugh serves in the unicameral legislature, and there's

concern that if he is not in the unicameral, then there would be this opportunity for Republicans to

push a winner take all in the state of Nebraska. Got it. So these are the two Democrats who are

fighting and this race has not been called yet. But is there any actual policy

differences between these two Democrats? Or is it just the issue of if this one guy leaves the

state legislature, that it could put the state in a more vulnerable position to change their

election policy? Yeah, the two candidates, John Kavanaugh, he's a Democrat in the

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