Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen, like a number of governors nationally, says he would be open to redrawing the state’s congressional maps in the middle of the decade.

The governor said so during an Examiner interview as White House talk of Nebraska redistricting has cooled — for now. Pillen’s embrace of the idea appears less bullish than his pushes to alter how the state awards its Electoral College votes for president.

“I’m open to all kinds of conversations,” Pillen said. “Obviously, a couple of states have done redistricting. It was done before I became governor, so that was off my radar … I’ve just not paid attention to how all that works.”

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Nebraska, like other states, typically redistricts once a decade after the U.S. Census has finished providing population estimates. The Legislature is tasked with drawing congressional and legislative maps.

Pillen, like many Republican governors with swing or Democratic districts, faces White House pressure to redistrict the state’s congressional districts mid-decade to advantage the GOP in the 2026 mid-term races for the U.S. House.

While all five members of Nebraska’s federal delegation are Republican, the now-open seat contest in the Omaha area’s 2nd Congressional District could prove crucial to national Democrats, who are trying to retake control of the U.S. House. The seat is considered a possible pickup for Democrats after GOP U.S. Representative Don Bacon retired.

After the 2020 census, the GOP-led majority in the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature redrew the state’s congressional maps. It did so in a way that shored up the slight GOP lean of the 2nd District by swapping some Democratic-leaning residents in suburban Sarpy County with more reliably Republican residents of rural Saunders County.

The Nebraska Constitution requires redistricting after each census, but the language doesn’t specify whether lawmakers can revisit the maps before the next census. Some have argued the language allows the Legislature to redistrict at different times. Others have argued any effort to redistrict mid-decade would face legal challenges.

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President Donald Trump initiated the national redistricting tit for tat when he urged Texas to redraw its map, mainly to give Republicans a better chance of holding onto House control in an off-year election when the party out of power usually fares better. The Texas Legislature approved new maps this summer designed to give the GOP up to five additional House seats in the 2026 elections.

California and other Democratic-led states have since attempted to redraw their maps to counter the GOP’s gains in Texas and to potentially offset other Republican-led states that are also pursuing new maps mid-decade, including Missouri.

Nebraska has been mentioned as one of the states likely to consider redrawing. Bacon confirmed such talk locally in August. Thirteen Nebraska state lawmakers visited the White House last month for a state leadership conference but said they didn’t hear a redistricting pitch from the Trump team. Some with knowledge of the meeting said plans changed because of media attention.

The governor’s reserved approach to redistricting — at least while the Legislature is out of session — differs from his full-court press for winner-take-all ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Pillen and Trump got personally involved, calling and lobbying lawmakers to shift the state from parceling out some electoral votes to the winner of the presidential popular vote in each congressional district to awarding all five of the state’s electoral votes to the statewide winner, which is typically a Republican.

Nebraska is one of just two states — Maine is the other — that parcel out some electoral votes by district.

Pillen at the time floated the idea of calling a special session for winner-take-all, but only if he received a “clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote.” He also held an 11th-hour meeting at the Governor’s Mansion with at least two dozen GOP state senators about securing support and tried to convince holdouts to support winner-take-all. The 2024 effort died after former Democratic State Senator Mike McDonnell of Omaha, who had joined the GOP, opposed the change.

The governor pushed again during this spring’s legislative session, despite lacking enough support from GOP state lawmakers to overcome a promised filibuster. The effort fell short.

One possible explanation for the difference in Pillen’s approach: Redistricting mid-decade appears to have less support. GOP state lawmakers have privately questioned whether such an effort could secure 25 votes, far fewer than the 33 needed to get through a likely filibuster.