Embattled Nebraska state senator may survive cybersex scandal

LINCOLN (AP) — Nebraska state Sen. Bill Kintner is the kind of unabashed conservative whose comments on immigration, gay rights and fellow legislators have made even supporters cringe.

If colleagues needed a reason to boot the married, family-values lawmaker out of office, they got one when he admitted last month to having cybersex on a state laptop computer with a woman who later tried to blackmail him.

Despite bipartisan calls for his resignation — even from Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts — Kintner appears to be surviving the kind of scandal that has toppled lawmakers in other states. Conservative groups, worried about losing one of their strongest allies, are rallying behind the senator, even as they condemn his behavior as disgraceful.

The push to remove Kintner “is a political witch hunt designed to remove an obstacle to growing government in Nebraska,” said Joe Herring, a conservative activist from Omaha who organized a rally to defend the lawmaker from Papillion, an Omaha suburb.

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