Bacon, a retired Air Force Brigadier General, showed his bona fides on national security by holding a roundtable with three other retired Air Force generals on Friday. They all emphasized the importance of keeping Republican Bacon in office at a time of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and a rising, ambitious China.

“To me, the world is burning,” said Bacon, who is running for his fifth term in Washington. “We need experience”

State Senator Vargas campaigned alongside a visiting Democratic congressman, emphasizing his working-class roots and proven track record of helping people get ahead. He cited the $20 million he secured from the Legislature to help first-generation students go to college, his push for hundreds of millions of dollars to build affordable housing, and a bill he prioritized that would extend postpartum coverage for mothers under Medicaid from two months to 12 months .

“I care about making it easier for each of you to have more for your families and your futures,” Vargas said. “This is my record.”

The 2nd District race enters the national battle for control of Congress; Democrats are looking to flip the grid on the four seats they will need to take the speaker’s gavel, while Republicans are trying to maintain control.

The importance of the Omaha area was underscored last week when GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries descended on the city to push party candidates to toe the line.

“This is an important election,” Jeffries said Sunday when he saw Vargas at Big Mama’s Kitchen restaurant in North Omaha.

The New York congressman also talked about the critical position of the 2nd District in the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, who has a big impact on down-ballot races like Bacon-Vargas.

“Nebraska is doing its thing right now,” Jeffries said.

On Friday, Bacon convened a panel of three Air Force generals with whom he served and retired with 11 stars between them. They praised Bacon as smart, thoughtful, good with people, and someone who understood how to use strategic deterrence to keep the country safe.

“Experience is important in this position; you can’t fake that,” said Frank Gorenc, who previously commanded U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

The generals also praised Bacon’s work on a bipartisan panel trying to improve soldiers’ quality of life and his leadership of a House subcommittee on cybersecurity, a growing threat to the nation.

“Don has been there and done that,” said Bruce Wright, commander of U.S. Forces Japan.

While campaigning Thursday with U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas before a women’s group in North Omaha, Vargas said her upbringing as the child of immigrants and her time as a classroom teacher — at a time when nearly all of her students grew up in poverty — helped shape her perspective . He would take it to Washington.

Vargas said when he first ran against Bacon two years ago, the incumbent said he would work to handle staffers’ jobs if Republicans took over the House. Instead, Vargas said, the GOP-led House of Representatives has failed to do business over the past two years; It was a message Crockett echoed.

“This was the most inefficient session in today’s history, maybe in all of history, because MAGA runs the House,” Crockett said, referring to pro-Trump Republicans. “We have to do better.”

He called Vargas “someone who was ready on Day 1 and understood the mission.”

PhD student Donella Liddell Lampkin said Vargas’ message of working to help people get ahead is appealing at a time when families are dealing with rising prices.

“This is real,” he said. “We need to do something about this.”

The positive messages the candidates presented on the ballot were particularly in contrast to the multimillion-dollar television ads and direct mail pieces that have been flooding the area for weeks.

Total spending by outside political action committees is now approaching $17 million and has already surpassed the record high of $13 million spent to influence the 2nd District race in 2020. The total includes nearly $10 million supporting Bacon and almost $7 million supporting Vargas; Most of those dollars are harsh advertising targeting the opposition.

Bacon rejected ads from Vargas and Democrats suggesting he opposed tax cuts for the middle class or supported allowing insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing health conditions, saying no one really believed he would take such positions.

Although the ads said Bacon wanted a complete ban on abortion, he said he supported an exemption for maternal health in every issue survey he completed.

Vargas condemned ads portraying him as dangerous on crime, noting that the bills cited were criminal justice reforms supported by both Republicans and Democrats. As a man with a family and two children, he said public safety is important to him.

Vargas said an ad suggesting he supported the hiring of predators as Omaha Public Schools board members was completely misleading. The board hires one person: the superintendent.

The final week of the campaign will be spent taking their supporters to the polls, with both candidates expressing confidence in their ground game.

Vargas said 150 volunteers campaigned for him last weekend. He said his campaign was knocking on 20 times more doors than at the same point two years ago, when he narrowly lost to Bacon by less than 6,000 votes.

“We will continue this until election day,” he said.

Bacon acknowledged he started the race from behind after a tough primary in which Democrats overwhelmed him with ads. But after strong arguments and knocking on thousands of doors, he said he now feels his campaign is gaining momentum.

“I firmly believe that if the election were held today we would have a narrow win, but it’s too close to call it,” he said. “We can’t take anything for granted.”