Is there a “get rid of incumbents” streak out there, like there seems to be with the U.S. Congress?

 Are voters comfortable with the Legislature’s controversial decisions to restore prenatal care for illegal immigrants and allow cities, with voter approval, to raise local sales taxes by a half cent?

 And, can a couple of recent appointees of Gov. Dave Heineman withstand some stilff challenges in their districts?

 A veteran lobbyist has said that appointed senators are like barn cats — you’d better not get too attached to them.

 But will voters feel the same way about Sen. Dave Bloomfield in northeast Nebraska’s 17th District and Sen. Paul Lambert in the 2nd District in Cass County, just south of Omaha.

Bloomfield was a soft-spoken legislator,  but will get a stiff challenge from a trio of candidates in his district, including Van Phillips, the former superintendent of schools in South Sioux City, the district’s largest city. Some think Bloomfield won’t get out of the primary.

 Lambert was more talkative, weighing in on issues like the half-cent sales tax bill and another to maintain a tax-exemption for cities who finance buildings via non-profit leasing corporations. But the former Plattsmouth mayor has five opponents, including Robyn Larson, the mother of current Sen. Tyson Larson.

 Other questions:

 – can incumbent Ken Haar out-poll a well-financed pro-life opponent, Mike Hilgers, in District 21 in northern Lancaster County? The primary results will tell us a lot about what to expect in November.

 – ditto with Omaha’s District 11, where incumbent Sen. Brenda Council will face off with former Sen. Ernie Chambers? Will Ernie have to do some campaigning to win? He said he did do campaign signs way back in the ’70s. But he won several re-election bids by just filing for the office.

 – who emerges from a seven-candidate field in District 43 in Nebraska’s Sand Hills to replace Sen. Deb Fischer, who is term-limited  but in a hot race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. Could a non-rancher win that seat?

 The U.S. Senate race is getting almost all of the primary chatter this year. And we’ll find out Tuesday if Fischer’s purported late surge is enough to overcome the early lead amassed by Atttorney General Jon Bruning and the solid base of State Treasurer Don Stenberg.

 It would be an epic upset if Fischer pulls it out. It would confirm what some say about Bruning’s support among Republicans — that it’s like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep.

 That bill will provide taxpayer-funded prenatal care for low-income women who are in the country illegally — a resumption of a decades-long policy that was ended two years ago when the federal government told the state it had to fund it in a different way.

 That same issue confronted Massachusetts in 2003, and then-Gov. Mitt Romney took an entirely different course than Heineman, an early and faithful supporter of the presumptive GOP nominee for president this year. Romney, in 2003, supported changing the program so that prenatal care could continue.

 That may make for an odd coupling during Romney’s visit to Omaha today.

 Heineman has been consistent in his view that illegal immigrants do not warrant taxpayer-funded benefits, even if those benefits might help a child (who will automatically become a U.S. citizen upon birth) be born healthy and without life-long birth defects.

 The Nebraska governor has also been an outspoken critic of President Obama’s health-care law, which is similar to an insurance-mandate adopted in Massachusetts when Romney was governor.

 We’ll see if those divergent stances come up today.

 Meanwhile, this what then-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in 2003 when Massachusetts joined four other states in taking advantage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) program to provide pre-natal services (the step Nebraska took this year). 

 ”This new coverage will give thousands of children in Massachusetts a healthy start by providing access to prenatal care,” Secretary Thompson said. “Prenatal care is crucial to the health and well-being of both mother and child. Vital services during pregnancy can be a life-long determinant of health and we should do everything possible to make this care available to everyone.”

“President Bush and I are committed to doing everything we can to encourage states to use all their SCHIP funds to expand health coverage to low-income children and pregnant mothers in their states who otherwise would remain uninsured,” Thompson said.

 Since the 2012 session of the Nebraska Legislature ended, we’ve neglected to keep up our daily posts on our new Legislative blog, State Line, launched earlier this year.

 Bascially, we were just worn out. So we took a couple of weeks off.

 It was a brutal session, with lots of late nights and lots of emotional issues in the last month. The session ended on a heated note, with the Legislature overriding Gov. Dave Heineman on issues related to immigration and taxation.

 The governor fired back, saying the session would be remembered for raising taxes on legal citizens, while extending benefits to illegal immigrants.

 Pretty blunt stuff. I’m guessing that the gov isn’t getting many golf invitations from state senators, at least for a while.  

 But, if letters to the editor to the World Herald are any guide, it appears that Heineman has a point in saying that Nebraskans agree with his opinion.

But, in case you missed it, the New York Times doesn’t agree.

 It weighed in on the emotional finale over providing taxpayer-funded benefits to the unborn children of illegal immigrants in an April 23 editorial entitled “The Undocumented and the Unborn.”

 It noted how a strange coalition of groups — groups that oppose and support abortion, and those that advocate for immigrants and those that usually don’t — combined to push Legislative Bill 599 to approval. Both Nebraska Right to Life and Planned Parenthood, for instance, supported the bill.

  The editorial concluded with a rap on the conservative Republican governor, who has staunchly opposed any taxpayer expenditures for illegal immigrants. (The bill got around that by declaring that any funds would be expended on the unborn child, which will become an American citizen automatically upon birth.)

 ”Advocates for women and the poor are not used to expecting much in Nebraska, one of the country’s most severely restrictive states for abortions and contraceptive services,” the editorial concluded. “If devoutly anti-abortion lawmakers can decree that immigrants’ children are precious people before they’re born, maybe at some point they can extend some of their compassion to children who have already entered the world, and to their parents who lack legal status.”

“But that is not what the governor wants. ‘Nebraska will become a magnet for illegal aliens,’ he warned darkly in his veto message, pointing out that none of his state’s six neighbors were following its lead on prenatal care. For us, that makes Nebraska a beacon on the prairie, for which the governor deserves no thanks.”

Senators overrode his veto of a bill providing publicly funded prenatal care for the unborn babies of illegal immigrants. They also overrode his veto of a bill allowing cities to raise sales taxes by up to one-half cent with voter approval. Heineman fought intense, public battles against both measures but failed to sway more than a couple votes.

The governor prevailed on two other vetoes — one of a bill that would have allowed gambling on old horse races and one of a little-noticed measure that would have provided startup grants for school-based health clinics. But Heineman did not make such a public effort on either and support for the health clinic bill had been soft.

The governor fared little better the rest of the session. His major initiative of the year was a package of individual and corporate income tax cuts along with the elimination of the inheritance tax. It passed but only after getting pared back to less than half its original size.

Lawmakers snubbed two other ideas entirely – his plan to merge the departments of Labor and Economic Development and his proposal to transfer the youth rehabilitation and treatment centers from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Correctional Services.

Meanwhile, lawmakers took the lead on fixing the state’s child welfare system after the administration’s experiment at privatization fell apart. The Legislature handed the governor his third override on a measure that paid child welfare providers who had been left in the lurch by one of the former private contractors. Lawmakers also stepped in on other executive branch issues, including the problems with the new call centers for handling food stamps, disability aid, Medicaid and other public benefits.

The governor didn’t lose them all, though. His influence helped shape the final budget measures and he worked with lawmakers to get several business tax incentive measures passed.

That won’t be the case Wednesday on the 60th day of the 60-day, 2012 session.

Four bills vetoed by Gov. Dave Heineman face override votes, including the controversial bill to resume taxpayer-paid prenatal care for poor women in the country illegally.

Rumors were running strong on Tuesday that at least one, and maybe two senators, had dropped their support for the override. That would leave supporters one short of the 30 needed to override the governor.

Of course there was also talk that a couple of senators might be willing to support the override who hadn’t supported the bill earlier. The governor claims vote trading is going on. It wouldn’t be the first time that votes would be traded if it happens, though senators denied it.

There was some conjecture that the governor’s unwillingness to give the traditional, session-end speech (something Heineman doesn’t see as a tradition but has been one for at least 20 years) might steel senators to vote for the overrides.

It’s been a wild finish.

First the governor calls out the Speaker of the Legislature, singling out Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk for his support of the prenatal bill.

That was unprecedented, as was the senators’ response — a cross-state tour to publicize why they support the aid for unborn babies who will become U.S. citizens upon birth.

The Republicans struck back, organizing a robo-call poll in world-record time — probably only an hour or two — that they said proved that Nebraskans overwhelmingly opposed taxpayer benefits for illegals.

Of course that came after a poll done by LB 599 supporters that stated that Nebraskans, by a solid majority, were OK with using taxpayer money if it saved unborn children.

It was a classic example of how polls can be spun by the change of a couple of words.

Gov. Heineman has used his pulpit as the state’s chief executive to keep the issue in the news, and especially his view that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used for illegals.

One of his points fizzled after it was found that Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer prenatal care in Nebraska, so they won’t be in line for money from LB 599 as the governor claimed.

But Heineman has energized his base, and dismissed the political whiff, saying that Planned Parenthood would probably add those services in the future (even though PP officials did not indicate that).

Wednesday, we’ll find out if he energized enough senators to sustain his veto.

 That’s the kind of snub that gets the chatter going over at the State Capitol.

 And maybe there’s something do it. Maybe the governor didn’t get a chuckle out of the skits at the annual Sine Die Party last week, especially the one that had him signing an executive order so that the purportedly Canadian peregrine falcons — illegal immigrants — couldn’t rear some “anchor babies” on a nesting box at the top of the Capitol.

 Or maybe, as the governor said, he just doesn’t see a need for the speech.

 Whatever it is, we’re headed for some emotional votes on Wednesday.

  The stauchly anti-illegal immigration governor has stirred up his supporters, and he said they will not forget at the ballot box who supported the override of LB 599.

 But supporters of the prenatal bill see it as upholding pro-life principles, even when the going gets tough. This, they said, is about the health and well-being of unborn babies who will become U.S. and Nebraska citizens. And, they add, prental care will save taxpayer dollars, since taxpayers have to pay to deliver and care for the babies, who are more likely to have birth defects and other maladies.

 Don’t forget the override vote on LB 357, which would allow cities, with voter approval, to increase local sales taxes by a half cent. Backers see it as an essential tool for cities to raise money for infrastructure needs, like new streets and sewers, while Heineman said it’s purely about raising taxes.

 As for the session-end speech, the Clerk’s office said governors haven’t  skipped that ceremonial duty for at least the past 20 years. That includes some years when the governor got pretty roughed up by lawmakers in the way of veto overrrides.

 Those season-end speeches are usually a bunch of verbal slaps on the back — even if the governor and lawmakers didn’t get along at all times during the session.

 It is a ceremonial speech. Not much substance. But it does carry an important signal that seems to be lacking in politics these days — despite their differences, politicans can shake hands at the end of the day. 

                                                                               * * *

The governor might not be getting much love from state legislators, but he got some from the Washington Post recently.

 A Post blogger included Heineman among the 10 most popular governors in the U.S. The Post wrote: “Heineman’s approval in a 2010 Rasmussen poll topped out at 77 percent (!), and he’s consistently been in the 60s and 70s in all public polling. (Heck, he beat beloved former University of Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne in a primary a few years back!) There was little doubt he could have walked into the U.S. Senate when Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced his retirement this year, but he opted not to. Like (Oklahoma Gov. Mary) Fallin, Heineman benefits greatly from representing a very conservative state.”

 But on Thursday, state senators will be boarding a plane to defend a controversial vote to approve a bill restoring taxpayer-funded prenatal care for unborn children of illegal immigrants. Hospitals in Scottsbluff, Kearney and Grand Island are the stops on Thursday, with Omaha and Lincoln to follow on Friday.

 Senators voted 31-15 on Wednesday on final-round approval of LB 1161. That sends the bill to Gov. Dave Heineman, who has promised a veto.

 There’s been some interesting gamesmanship going on with the prenatal issue, and the fly around by senators (the first that I can ever recall) is one more chess move in an interesting political issue, one that mixes pro-life issues with illegal immigration and state spending.

 Heineman insists it’s all about the use of taxpayer dollars, and he says Nebraskans go nuts when they use them on “illegals.”

 Leading senators, like Speaker Mike Flood and Health Committee Chair Kathy Campbell, frame the issue differently. These are unborn kids that the state has denied prenatal coverage, coverage that can prevent birth defects, complicated births and even death.

 It’s an undisputable medical fact that an ounce of prevention via prenatal care and avoid a pound of health problems later on. And supporters of LB 599 point to one case of inadequate prenatal care costing the state $800,000 in intensive care costs for a baby born with health issues.

 And at least one poll (of 500 Nebraskans, with a 5-percent margin of error) says that 47 percent of respondents strongly support resuming the prenatal care, and another 22 percent “somewhat” support it.

  The governor could have vetoed the bill on Wednesday, setting up a final showdown on Thursday over whether senators can hold together at least 30 votes to override the veto. (The picked up a 31st vote on Wednesday when Hastings Sen. Les Seiler, fresh from heart bypass surgery, cast a “yes” vote, saying it would save the state money and was “the right thing” to do.)

 But Heineman said he wanted to take the constititonally allowed five days to veto the bill. That gives him more time to lobby senators like Seiler, whom the governor appointed to the post.

 It also gives state senators who support LB 599 more time to tell their story.

The change is all part of the end-of-session jousting between the governor and the Legislature. By law, the governor has five days (not counting Sundays) to sign or veto bills. If they are in session when a bill is vetoed, lawmakers can try to override a veto. But they have no recourse if the governor’s five days last beyond the end of the session. 

To avoid that “pocket veto” problem, legislative speakers in the past have gotten the governor to promise he would not use all five days and would send all bills back, signed or vetoed, by the last day of the session. This year, Flood said, the governor would not make a similar agreement. He said the governor cited the crush of bills at the end of the session for his decision to use all five days.

Yet Gov. Dave Heineman will have to sign or veto all but a handful of bills by Wednesday. Among the handful remaining is a measure that would provide publicly-funded prenatal care for the unborn babies of illegal immigrant women. Heineman should have no trouble making up his mind on that bill, given the all-out efforts he has made to defeat the measure and vilify those who support it. So why the delay? It gives him that much more time to crank up the political pressure on senators, who are expected to be taking up three override motions that day.

 Gov. Dave Heineman has targeted the Speaker of the Legislature for criticism, and, through his weekly newspaper column, appealed to the public to condemn all senators for advancing a bill that would restore taxpayer-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants.

 It’s a simple issue, Heineman said. Illegal immigrants should not receive taxpayer benefits.

 But he isn’t the only one calling out senators.

On Monday, the state’s leading pro-life group, Nebraska Right to Life, fired back, calling on six senators who voted against advancement of LB 599 to change their minds.

 Julie Schmit-Albin, the groups executive director, said in a letter that the six senators had been proud, pro-life voters in the past, but it was “sad and alarming” that they now were putting immigration ahead of the health and welfare of unborn babies.

“When did it become important to pick and choose which babies deserve prenatal care and which babies don’t, by virtue of whose womb they reside in? How is it ever right to say that some babies are more deserving than others?” Schmit-Albin wrote.

 ”By boiling LB 599 down to an illegal immigration issue, you as pro-life senators, are saying that some babies are less deserving,” she wrote.

 The governor came out with his own statement on Monday, dismissing two studies that tend to refute that Nebraska would become a “magnet” for illegal immigrations if LB 599 was passed.

 The governor’s response:

“This is an issue of fairness. Hard-working Nebraskans pay their taxes and obey the laws. Illegal aliens who don’t pay taxes and don’t obey the laws should not be receiving taxpayer-funded benefits,” he said in a prepared statement.

“If Nebraska provides benefits to illegal aliens, when 36 other states do not – including all of our surrounding states – logic indicates that Nebraska will be incenting illegals to come to our state in order to receive taxpayer-funded benefits.”

 The Legislature is expected to give final approval to LB 599 on Wednesday. With the governor’s promised veto, it sets up some 11th hour drama as lawmakers will attempt to override the veto (with 30 votes of 49 senators) on the final day of the 2012 session.

 No matter how that vote comes out, it is all another signal that legislators showed an independent streak this year, at least when it came to Gov. Heineman’s priorities.

 The governor promised a veto and took the unprecedented step of singling out one senator, a fellow Republican, for his support, even though 13 other GOP senators voted “yes” to advance LB 599.

 State Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, the Speaker of the Legislature, was singled out, Heineman said, because he is a “leader” in the effort to pass the bill.

 That should come as no surprise. Flood, a leading pro-life senator, said that when an issue comes down to a choice between the law and the life of an unborn child, he opts for the health of the child.

 That, he said, is what being pro-life is all about, even when the going gets “tough.”

Heineman, on the other hand, sees it clearly as an immigration issue. The governor said that taxpayer money should not be used for “illegals,” a word (or variation of the word) that was used eight times in the first four paragraphs of a critical letter to Flood.

 Flood dismissed the criticism as not “personal.” It was also easily predictable, he said, given the governor’s passion on the issue.

 But fellow senators condemned the governor’s attack, calling it “harsh,” not appreciated and probably counter productive.

 What is clear in the debate is that prenatal care actually saves state taxpayer dollars.

 Just one case involving a child who didn’t get adequate prenatal care last fall cost taxpayers more than $800,000 to treat health complications in a neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital.

 That one case compares to the expected $650,000 a year state cost to resume the prenatal care for about 1,100 illegal imigrant mothers and about 40 women in prison.

 Heineman, besides asserting that LB 599 would increase taxpayer expenses, said that Nebraska would become a magnet for illegal immigrants if it passed the bill. But Omaha Sen. Brenda Council pointed out that immigrants from Mexico could save a whole lot of traveling by having their children in Texas, which already offers such prenatal care.

 At this hour, there’s a filibuster underway to try and derail LB 599. That means that lawmakers will have to attract 33 votes (probably on Thursday) to advance the controversial bill, rather than the 30 it received to advance to second-round debate.

 One now has to wonder if the hard feelings created by the filibuster and the governor’s criticism will filter over to Thursday, when the Legislature votes on Heineman’s top priority — his much-reduced package of income-tax cuts.