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HOW DEMOCRATS BEAT A SUPPOSEDLY UNBEATABLE REPUBLICAN  
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John Nichols
May 16, 2025
The Nation
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_ The supposedly unbeatable Republican mayor of Nebraska’s largest
city used the GOP’s anti-LGBTQ+ playbook in her reelection bid. And
suffered a resounding loss! _

Democrat John Ewing declares victory in Omaha, Nebraska, mayoral
race, screen grab

 

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert
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a Republican seeking reelection in one of her party’s few big-city
strongholds, was supposed to be unbeatable. She had won her 2021
reelection bid for a third term with almost two-thirds of the vote,
and her 2025 campaign coffers were full of money from corporate CEOs
and billionaire donors. But Stothert knew she was running in a year
when President Donald Trump’s extremism and billionaire “special
government employee” Elon Musk’s destructive impulses had done
serious damage to the GOP brand. Faced with evidence that Democrats in
Nebraska’s largest city and across the country are highly motivated
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vote in 2025’s odd-year elections, and with signals that the local
campaign of Democratic mayoral candidate John W. Ewing Jr. was
surging, Stothert and her supporters seized on what GOP strategists
keep imagining to be a winning strategy: transphobia.

With a campaign based on what Nebraska state Senator Megan
Hunt described as
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hate and discrimination,” Stothert’s backers delivered “a
last-minute blitz of Republican anti-transgender propaganda
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A final TV ad from the mayor’s camp claimed, “Ewing stands with
radicals who want to allow boys in girls’ sports,” while a mailing
from a pro-Stothert political action committee recycled national GOP
talking points and suggested that Ewing wants to “transition minors
without their parents’ consent.”

But guess what? The GOP strategy failed. Massively. In what was
broadly described as a major upset—one that Democrats were hailing
as a hopeful sign that they can make progress in red states as
frustration mounts with Trump and Musk—Ewing scored a sweeping 56-44
victory [[link removed]] over the
incumbent. He will now become Omaha’s first Black mayor.

Ewing’s decisive victory sent a powerful signal about the emerging
politics of 2025—and the limitations of the GOP’s bigoted tactics.
“We need to understand this as a victory against trans hate and
discrimination,” declared Senator Hunt, who has led the fight
against anti-trans measures in the Nebraska legislature. “Regular
Americans don’t react to or receive the call to trans panic. Enough.
We are speaking to the future.”

The result from Omaha, a heartland city where Republicans have
historically been able to hold their own politically, counters the
narrative of GOP strategists who continue to build their campaigns
around crude anti-trans messaging.

TV ads and mailings like those that targeted Ewing were used by
Republicans and their conservative allies in races across the country
in 2024, and have become standard lines of attack
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progressives running in the partisan and technically nonpartisan
contests (such as the Omaha race) of 2025. But Stothert leaned
especially heavily on them as issues relevant to the municipal
contest, saying
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“The mayor is absolutely 100% involved with public bathrooms in our
public spaces, community centers, golf courses, parks, and day
camps.”

Ewing, a retired deputy police chief, the associate minister of the
city’s Salem Baptist Church, and the elected treasurer
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surrounding Douglas County, countered Stothert’s focus on the issue
by saying, “Nobody’s ever brought that question up. So I believe
it’s a made-up issue by Jean Stothert and the Republican Party.”

But Ewing and his supporters did not simply call out the incumbent’s
election-season scheming. The Democrat actively campaigned for the
support of LGBTQ+ voters, appearing this month at an event
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by Nebraska Stonewall Democrats at the city’s FLIXX Lounge & Cabaret
Show Bar. And the dynamic Nebraska Democratic Party
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ally of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who was recently elected as
president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, directly
and effectively countered the attacks on Ewing, “While Mayor
Stothert continues to use the same tired Republican playbook to
distract voters with cultural wars like focusing on bathrooms,”
noted a statement from party executive director Precious McKesson,
“John Ewing continues to focus on real issues that impact people’s
pockets—the endless potholes, new economic development, and housing
that will help Omahans, not Jean’s big donors.”

The Democratic message was reinforced on social media with a waggish
image of the mayor peaking under the door of a bathroom stall, which
featured the tagline
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focused on potties. John is focused on fixing potholes.”

The contrast proved a powerful one. Ewing won big in a city that is at
the heart of a congressional district narrowly held by Republican US
Representative Don Bacon. Democratic National Committee chair Ken
Martin noted after the Omaha results were announced, “From coast to
coast, from blue to purple to even red states, Democrats are
overwhelmingly outperforming Republicans in nearly every election held
this year” and declared, “After tonight, vulnerable House
Republicans like Don Bacon are on notice.”

All true. Also true was Kleeb’s observation
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big-spending anti-trans campaign from a prominent Republican and her
allies was successfully countered by “the creative graphic and
simple message [Nebraska Democrats] used to drive the point home that
Dems are focused on issues families care about and that the GOP is out
of touch.”

* elections
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* anti-trans attacks
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* transphobia
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* Nebraska
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* Omaha
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