Nebraska's unicameral legislature voted on Wednesday to abolish the state's death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life in prison, USA Today reported.

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts has promised to veto the bill that would make Nebraska the first conservative state to repeal capital punishment since North Dakota did so in 1973, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. But the effort, which passed 32 to 15, enjoys bipartisan support large enough to likely override a gubernatorial veto, USA Today added.

The legislation's sponsor, Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, celebrated Wednesday's efforts in the Unicameral, which included a 34-14 vote to end a last-minute filibuster staged by opponents, the Journal Star noted.

"This is it," he said. "Nebraska will step into history."

But Ricketts said the move was flying in the face of the wishes of citizens across the Cornhusker State, CNN reported.

"No one has traveled the state more than I have in the past 18 months, and everywhere I go there is overwhelming support for keeping the death penalty in Nebraska," the governor said. "I am reminding senators that (this is) a vote to repeal the death penalty and to give our state's most heinous criminals more lenient sentences. This isn't rhetoric. This is reality," he added.

Stacy Anderson, the executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, however, told the New York Times that Wednesday marked "an exciting day for Nebraska."

"I really feel that given the reasoning that the senators gave on the floor, it was so clear that they had studied the issue and really thought long and hard on this, and decided in the end that this was the best thing for the state of Nebraska," Anderson said. "There was clear, strong bipartisan support for it," she added.

Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997, and some lawmakers argued that the state has effectively ended the death penalty in practice, the New York Times noted. Ricketts, for his part, announced last week that the state had procured lethal injection drugs worth $55,000, according to the Nebraska News Service.