Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

OMAHA — It’s a fair question: What on earth is Hillary Clinton doing in Nebraska?

Clinton appeared at a high school gymnasium here Monday, drawing thousands of supporters and sharing the stage with billionaire investor Warren Buffett to deliver a speech outlining her economic message and drawing a vivid contrast between her and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The visit, just three days after the Democratic National Convention and immediately following a bus tour through the competitive and electoral-vote-rich states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, represented a commitment of time and resources to a small state that incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama lost by 21 percentage points and almost 173,000 votes in 2012.

The speech — calling for infrastructure investments, aid to domestic manufacturers, breaks on college tuition and student loans and higher taxes on the wealthy — could have been delivered anywhere.

So why Omaha?

An Electoral College quirk, for one, but mainly the presence of Buffett, who continued a sustained attack on Trump’s character and business acumen by leading figures in corporate America that began at last week’s convention.

Buffett, the Omaha native and Berkshire Hathaway holding company CEO who’s routinely identified as the second-richest man in America, introduced Clinton to the raucous crowd but devoted most of his speech to rebuking Trump, a real estate magnate who has built his campaign on his business expertise.

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He took Trump to task specifically for defying decades of tradition by refusing to release past tax returns. Trump has argued it would be improper for him to do so because he’s being audited by the IRS. But Buffett dismissed that by explaining that nothing precludes taxpayers from sharing their returns and noting that he, too, is under audit.

“I would be delighted to meet him anyplace, anytime between now and the election,” Buffett said of Trump. “I’ll bring my tax return, he can bring his tax return … and we’ll let people ask us questions about the items that are on it.”

Buffett went on to belittle Trump’s business skills, noting that a public company Trump ran lost value while he pocketed $44 million in compensation over 10 years.

“If a monkey had thrown a dart at the stock page, the monkey on average would’ve made 150 percent,” Buffett said. “But the people who believed in (Trump), who listened to his siren song, came away losing well over 90 cents on the dollar.”

The Trump campaign’s Iowa state director responded to Monday’s event by casting Clinton’s policies as a continuation of Obama’s tenure.

“Hillary Clinton represents a third Obama term while the Trump-Pence campaign of tougher law enforcement, stopping illegal immigration and bringing back jobs is resonating strongly across the state,” Eric Branstad said. “Voters are tired of the same old Washington corruption and back-room deals and will vote for change in November.”

Clinton’s appearance with Buffett here follows a Saturday rally in Pittsburgh with billionaire dot-com entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and an endorsement by former New York mayor and billionaire businessmen Michael Bloomberg at the national convention last week.

Unlike Bloomberg, who entered office as a Republican before becoming an independent, and Cuban, who has said he initially considered supporting Trump, Buffett has long been identified with Democratic candidates and policy.

He previously endorsed Obama, contributed to his campaign and allowed his name to be attached to an Obama administration priority: the so-called Buffett Rule, which would tax incomes over $1 million at a minimum of 30 percent.

Beyond Buffett, Clinton’s trip to Omaha also suggested some electoral calculus at work.

While Nebraska as a whole is a rural, conservative and reliably Republican red state, Omaha stands out as a politically competitive purple enclave — and one that potentially has an electoral vote to give.

Nebraska is one of just two states in the country that splits its electoral votes based on the results in individual congressional districts. The Omaha-based 2nd District is represented by a Democrat, first-term U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford, and in 2008 was carried by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (although Obama lost here in his 2012 re-election bid).

“We gave an electoral vote to Obama in ’08 and I think that’s what she wants. I hope we can do that again,” said Susie Sisson, an Omaha schoolteacher who attended the rally. “There’s a lot of people here who are progressive and very committed to issues of social justice and the things that she cares about.”

There are scenarios in which a single electoral vote from the urban center of Nebraska could determine the outcome of the entire election.

As recently as Saturday, an election forecast compiled by the data journalism site fivethirtyeight.com showed the race nearly deadlocked: Trump had a 50.1 percent chance of winning against 49.9 percent for Clinton.

The site’s forecasting model had both candidates winning 269 electoral votes, meaning that shifting Nebraska’s 2nd District to Clinton would be enough to give her the victory.

Whatever the modeling, though, it’s a long shot that the race could turn on a single congressional district, University of Nebraska-Omaha political scientist Randall Adkins said.

“I have absolutely no confidence that this is going to be a 270-to-268 election, so I do not think this one Electoral College vote is going to make a difference,” he said.

Instead, Adkins said, the Clinton campaign strategy here is likely to expand the competitive map enough to force her opponent to commit time here as well.

“It’s an opportunity for Clinton to put Trump on the defensive,” Adkins said. “If you keep Trump playing defense, that’s less of an opportunity for him to play offense somewhere else.”

(Backing up Adkins’ contention was new polling from Sunday and Monday, which changed FiveThirtyEight’s model to give Clinton a 63.3 percent chance of winning and estimated her electoral-vote haul at almost 300.)

Buffett nodded to Omaha’s political competitiveness in his introduction, challenging attendees to get out the vote and make the 2nd the highest-turnout district in the country.

Clinton seconded that challenge.

“If this congressional district has the highest percentage of votes in any congressional district — and if I win — here’s what we’ll do,” she said. “I will shortly after I become president, sometime as soon as I can arrange it, come back here, and Warren and I will dance in the streets of Omaha together.”

Don’t forget, too, when wondering why Clinton might trek to eastern Nebraska, that western Iowa is just across the border. Omaha’s media market stretches into 10 Iowa counties, ensuring that coverage of the Clinton event here is seen in Council Bluffs and many more communities across southwest Iowa.

Polling suggests Iowa is one of the closest-contested states in the country right now. A Real Clear Politics polling average shows Clinton with a 0.5 percentage point lead.

Clinton gave one small shout-out to Iowa, where she won the nation’s first Democratic presidential primary contest last February, by noting the state’s robust wind energy production.