Politics & Elections

Four Omaha Public Schools board members aren’t seeking re-election.

Last Wednesday was the deadline for incumbents to file for the 2012 election. Board members Mary Ellen Drickey, Kersten Borer, Sandra Jensen, and Nancy Huston did not file. Drickey, Huston, and Jensen are longtime board members.

Board president Freddie Gray and Subdistrict 6 board member Mary Morrissey are seeking re-election. Candidate information from the Douglas County Election Commission shows James M. English is running against Gray in Subdistrict 2. Morrissey is running unopposed.

The filing deadline for non-officeholders is next Thursday.

Second District Congressman Lee Terry will seek an eighth term in the U.S. House.

Terry, an Omaha Republican, announced his candidacy Sunday afternoon. He was elected to the House in 1998. Terry faces four challengers in the GOP primary: former Husker quarterback and financial adviser Brett Lindstrom, UNO Mathematics Department professor and chairman Jack Heidel, Glenn Freeman, a former chairman of the Douglas County Republican Party, and Paul Anderson.

Prior to his election to the U.S. House, Terry served on the Omaha City Council.

Nebraska's primary election is May 15th.

U.S. Senator Ben Nelson says it may be difficult to keep some agricultural programs from being cut because of the federal deficit.

Nelson says hearings began Wednesday in Washington on the Food and Fuel Security Act. Nelson says it’s important that Congress not make cuts to the USDA rural development program, which he says Nebraska home owners, businesses, and communities benefited from last year. According to Nelson, Nebraska received $189 million in USDA rural development funds in 2011.

The race for U.S. Senator Ben Nelson’s seat has another candidate.

Chuck Hassebrook announced Tuesday afternoon he’s seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He joins Steve Lustgarten in the Democratic race.

Hassebrook has served on the Nebraska Board of Regents since 1994. He's also the executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs. He says his campaign will focus on education and fiscal issues.

The GOP race for U.S. Senate has five candidates, including State Treasurer Don Stenberg, Attorney General Jon Bruning, and State Senator Deb Fischer.

Nelson announced in late December he wouldn't run for reelection. Last week, former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey ruled out a run for Nelson's seat.

Job creation, reducing crime, and flood recovery were dominant themes in Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle’s third State of the City address.

Suttle gave his State of the City speech Thursday morning at the Gallup campus on Omaha’s riverfront.  Suttle says 700 new businesses have come to the city during his three years in office, bringing with them 8,000 new jobs. The Nebraska Department of Labor says the Omaha metro area’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in December, the same as December 2010. Suttle expects further economic growth in 2012, projecting that new developments at Midtown, Aksarben, and Crossroads will create one billion dollars in new investments.

LB 882 would take cancer treatment decisions away from insurance companies and put them back into the hands of patients and their doctors.

That’s according to Omaha Senator Jeremy Nordquist, who introduced LB 882.  He says the measure creates parity between oral chemotherapy medications and IV medications for cancer patients.  Senator Nordquist says under the current system, IV medications are considered a medical benefit. 

Oral chemotherapy medications, however, are considered a pharmaceutical benefit.  Because pharmaceutical benefits cost more, patients may have to forgo the medication their doctor feels is most appropriate because the patient cannot afford the treatment.

A UNO political scientist says former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey’s decision not to seek the Democratic nomination for Ben Nelson’s seat will make it difficult for the state Democratic party to field a viable candidate.

Kerrey, who’s also a former Nebraska Governor, announced Tuesday he won’t run for Senate. Paul Landow, who teaches political science at UNO, says that makes a contested U.S. Senate race unlikely.“Without Kerrey in the race, a Democrat who has not spent any time yet fundraising or building a campaign team and does not have much name recognition is going to have a real uphill battle.”

Nebraska’s U.S.  Senate race has another candidate.

Steve Lustgarten filed Monday as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. Lustgarten owns a video production company in Omaha. He’s the first Democrat to enter the race.

Lustgarten says what he sees as a lack of action by Congress over the past year motivated him to run for Senate. "Over the course of the last year especially there’s seemed to be Republicans twist further to the right, and the debacle in August when they were trying to pass a continuing resolution to pay the debt level was one of the crisis modes for me to think about this needed to be changed."