Nebraska lawyer aims to be trust-busting U.S. senator.

A Nebraska lawyer is trying to breathe life into an old-fashioned antitrust movement with a campaign for the U.S. Senate based partly on breaking apart the country's biggest banks and blocking consolidation among meatpackers.

In a throwback to an era when some politicians won by railing against big companies for strangling competition, Dave Domina secured the Democratic nomination in May and faces Republican Ben Sasse in the Nov. 4 election.

Rural, agriculture-heavy Nebraska rarely sends Democrats to Congress. Sasse, president of Midland University in Fremont, has not spoken about antitrust policy. In a written statement, he said Nebraskans want to shrink government.

As Congress holds hearings on a series of corporate mergers, Domina's campaign is unusual for condemning big deals that he says squeeze suppliers and small companies trying to compete.

"Those things in turn drive consumer prices up, employment opportunities and business opportunities down, and are completely inconsistent with what is really a free or a fair market," he said in a phone interview. . .

Domina calls for government enforcement against seedmakers such as Monsanto Co. He also says Congress should bar any bank from holding more than 5 percent of all U.S. deposits. The current ceiling is generally 10 percent.

Domina's views run counter to how U.S. antitrust policy and economics have evolved since the 1960s. Courts shifted from protecting small businesses to promoting overall consumer welfare, mainly through lower prices.

In the Tyson lawsuit Domina handled, courts found the company could legally buy cattle through contracts, rather than on the traditional cash market, even though the practice drove down prices paid to cattlemen.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/25/us-usa-politics-nebraska-idUSKBN0F032C20140625

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