Score One For Me!

I am insufferably pleased to report that Nebraska Democrats overwhelmingly voted yesterday to nominate Scott Kleeb instead of Tony Raimondo to challenge GOP candidate Mike Johanns in November for the Nebraska US Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating. Kleeb's margin of victory was something on the order of 70% to 30%, so it's not as if Raimondo lost a squeaker.

As I wrote yesterday, I was sure NE Democrats didn't like the relatively negative tone of Raimondo's campaign, especially when contrasted with Kleeb's much more positive one. I also think NE Dems were quite aware that Raimondo's running in the Democratic primary was pure opportunism as opposed to a real shift in his political ideology.

I can't be too gleeful in my prognosticating triumph, however. I was wrong about how Nebraskans would vote on this year's proposed Amendment 1, which would let governmental entities in the state invest like they were private businesses. I thought fiscally sensible Nebraskans would see through that, but no . . . they didn't. No one campaigned against it, to be sure. Moreover, our other US Senator, Ben Nelson, along with NE Attorney General Jon Bruning, made a frequently-run commercial in favor of it.

But geez! Doesn't anyone remember what happened in Orange County, CA, a few years ago? CA taxing entities had that kind of private investing authority, along with all the bells and whistles that were supposed to go off in the event of problems, so that the taxpayer's "investments" would be protected. None of that mattered. The county went bankrupt after losing literally millions of dollars on investments that were way too speculative to begin with, and which only got worse as the County Clerk tried to recoup his initial losses by making even more risky investments when he started losing money.

Oh, well. I think we get one more shot at it in November, and by then, I hope, cooler heads will prevail. I'm still keeping my bragging rights about Kleeb's victory, though. I don't know anyone else who predicted it.