Eastman probably wins but I have little doubt that even the supposedly non-partisan Nebraska unilateral legislature won't be kind to her in redistricting and she won't be around long.
It'll be almost impossible to gerrymander that district away in a manner that would be acceptable even to the most partisan of state judges. NE-02 is centered almost entirely around one city, and one that's growing at that. The best Republicans can hope for if they want to get rid of this district is for the state to lose a district due to the census.
What about splitting off the suburbs and pairing Omaha with a swath of rural counties instead?
I don't know how feasible that is either. The city of Omaha already accounts for about 25% of the state's population and it's growing; I feel like they're almost better off allowing the rural areas to keep NE-01 red. And the funny thing is, NE-02 as it is now is already gerrymandered, with Bellevue having been split off into the 1st district. I'm sure they could find a way, but as it stands I think that Omaha is just going to be a thorn in the side of Nebraska's GOP for as long as the state has enough districts allotted to it for the city to comprise its own district.
Here's a map drawn by 538 a few years ago which makes all three districts strongly R-leaning:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/nebraska/#GOP
Are you suggesting that this map would not withstand state courts in NE?
Nebraska has no constitutional guidelines for the creation of Congressional Districts (however, it does for state legislative districts). The state legislature
did adopt
some criteria for federal redistricting... though it is legally nonbinding so it does not need to be enforced.
There would be an uproar about the cracking of Omaha in such an obvious way, but if the legislature did go this far, there's nothing to stop such cracking. I do think there are enough state senators that would be opposed to such obvious gerrymandering...
