Charles Herbster steps into the Republican gubernatorial race on Monday, joining Jim Pillen in a primary contest that lies more than a year away.
Sen. Deb Fischer says she isn't jumping in; Rep. Don Bacon says count me out; the biggest shoe yet to fall is worn by former Gov. Dave Heineman, who isn't talking yet.
State Sen. Brett Lindstrom has said he'll be in and Bryan Slone, president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, remains on the potential list of GOP candidates.
But that wide-open field of prospective Republican candidates that once filled newspaper stories is dwindling down to a precious few.
Herbster will announce his entry on Monday at an event in Fremont, where Heineman lives and where Gov. Pete Ricketts will be headlining a big community event celebrating a Highway 77 beltway project at virtually the same hour.
Does former President Donald Trump endorse Herbster, who was an insider during the Trump administration, a regular participant in White House events and Trump gatherings after initially being named as an agricultural adviser.
Early guess: yes and yes.
The Pillen campaign is being guided by Jessica Flanagain, the governor's trusted political adviser who managed his 2018 re-election campaign.
Yet to be determined are the eventual size of the GOP gubernatorial field and where western and central Nebraska's big Republican primary vote may gravitate if the end game ultimately begins to center on Pillen and Herbster, both of whom would be pointing to their agricultural credentials.
The 3rd District is the state's Republican stronghold, counting considerably more registered Republicans than either of the two eastern and more heavily populated Nebraska congressional districts.
And that strength is multiplied by the fact that 3rd District voters are more likely to turn out to vote than some of their eastern Nebraska brothers and sisters.
Heineman's entry would dramatically alter the dynamics of the GOP primary race. A prodigious vote-getter, especially in the 3rd District, with a familiar name on the ballot; but also a name that would have been out of the spotlight for eight years.
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It's probably the-more-the-merrier for a candidate like Lindstrom.
Just look to the 2014 Republican gubernatorial primary to see how important the size of the field would be.
Ricketts won the GOP nomination with just 58,000 of the 220,000 Republican votes cast in that six-candidate contest, edging Jon Bruning by a couple thousand votes.
* Tom Osborne describes Jim Pillen as "a game-changer" in a video endorsement ad supporting Pillen's bid for the governorship; the ad centers on Pillen's crucial fumble recovery that propelled the Huskers to victory over Oklahoma in 1978.
* Maybe he should suit up on Sept. 18 when the Huskers go to Norman and try to slow down that high-octane Sooner scoring machine.
* Steve Achelpohl, the former Democratic state chairman who died earlier this month, was a remarkably good and kind man. He interrupted an interview with me once to take a call from a grandchild — exactly the right priorities.
* Ricketts was the governor who initiated the letter that 11 Republican governors sent to President Joe Biden opposing the president's land and water conservation executive order designed to combat climate change.
* Bold Nebraska, the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and the Indigenous Environmental Network bought a full-page ad in The New York Times applauding President Biden for cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline.
* Rep. Jeff Fortenberry was spotlighted as a Republican member of Congress who is environmentally sensitive in an article in The Dispatch, which describes itself as a center-right digital media site.
* Twitter is where I often learn things first, but every politician, elected official and candidate can tell you that Twitter can be really mean.
* This will be tax bill week at the Legislature with a number of proposals reducing state revenue — and with that reduction growing over time.