Jean Stohert has defeated Jim Suttle to take the Omaha Mayor’s office.
It’s all over but the final count.

Congrats to Jean Stothert and her whole campaign!

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First a little on tomorrow’s Omaha city elections (then we promise to get to some statewide politickin’).

We gotta think the Jim Suttle – Jean Stothert Mayoral race will come down to the wire. Stothert outperformed Suttle in the primary, but the fire and police unions will be working their GOTV machines for Suttle as they apparently fear for their livelihoods if Jean Stothert were to become Mayor. Of course Stothert would convert to an all volunteer police force made up of mall police and leave fire fighting to 101 Dalmatians on a Budweiser carriage. Right?

Oh, but we saw recently the extent Suttle is willing to go to keep his peeps in the police department happy. “Perhaps one MEEELLION dollars will keep you on my side??? Don’t worry, the public has no need to know about this.” Fairly amazing really. But it seriously is garbage like that which may cause otherwise comfortable Democrats to sit on their voting hands on Tuesday.

And yes, we know the OWH endorsed Stothert. We think she still has a shot at winning anyway.

We think many stops will be pulled tomorrow by Team Suttle. Please send us your camera phone pics when you spot something fishy!

(And for more, we will say that we liked the little running-race graphic by the OWH, here.)

***

So we have been following along the Big Political Question for statewide Nebraska politics for a while. And we are wondering if there is a little movement.

Will Dave Heineman run for U.S. Senate?

Hmm. Well, the official answer is still “don’t know”.

But…

We are hearing more and more that the Governor has always been more of a “no” on this than a “yes”. He notoriously does not like Washington, D.C. and then there is the question of the hassle of life in the likely Minority party — coming off of a powerful position in the Gov’s office.

And then…we did not see this AP story about the Gov’s decision run in the OWH (we may have just missed it), but it was in number of other papers.

The story doesn’t break much of anything new, except David Kramer notes that it would be more likely for the Governor to announce his decision prior to the County Fair circuit kicking in. And we are hearing similar tremors for when the Gov will announce.

June.

But we have heard some OTHER indicators as well.

Pete Ricketts apparently just went to DC to meet with party leaders and those at the NRSC regarding a possible Senate run — should Heineman not. A few different thoughts on that:

One, the NRSC loves it when a candidate with deeeeep pockets is considering. It means they don’t have to work as much in that state and can focus eleswhere money-wise. They also probably figure Ricketts starts with a statewide advantage, having been there in 2006.

Others in the DC political areas aren’t so sure about Ricketts. They know he got waxed by Ben Nelson, and might even see his Platte Institute as something a Democrat could hammer, almost like a voting record.

But keep in mind, one would absolutely have to have the “right” Democrat to beat any Republican statewide, and if there is one out there right now, we haven’t heard of him or her. (Not to say they aren’t there, but we’ve heard of no actual names of late.)

But keep in mind that if Governor Dave doesn’t run, you almost 100% for sure will have former State Treasurer Shane Osborn in the race. Osborn has been off the political radar for a few years, but does also have statewide elections under his belt.

And then there is Rep. Jeff Fortenberry — who just kicked out a little foreign policy newsletter item. (To build up his cred on the subject for statewide discussions? Probably not too far from what he usually writes about. But still..)

Those would be the Big 3 we’d see — unless Bruning or Stenberg decided to jump, which we aren’t seeing. We still see Lee Terry as more invested in the House now, and doubt Adrian Smith would jump in against that bunch — but again, who knows? (We had written about Ben Sasse a while back, but haven’t heard much about him since.)

We DO know that if Fortenberry jumps, that creates sudden chaos in the 1st District with all sorts of excitement and full employment for consultants ensuing.

It would be a busy year.

More when we have it.

***

Story’s the same on the Gov’s race.
We would expect more movement within the month.

Though Don Walton reports that Christopher Geary is in. So jump on that band wagon if you’d like.

***

Congrats to Trent Fellers, Jon Bruning’s former campaign manager, on his victory in the Lincoln City Council race!

***

Rest in Peace…

…Former First Gentleman, Bill Orr. We believe his cookbook is lying around the L.St HQ here somewhere. He was just a few years ahead of the male celeb chefs. A few years later and he probably would have had his own show.

…Former U.S. Senate candidate Pat Flynn. Flynn passed away on May 5th after a battle with cancer.

He ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2008 and 2012. We never took his campaigns too seriously, mainly because of his lack of funding or a political background. But he always had a great deal of zeal during the races, and clearly loved his country and wished to serve. And he got in the arena.

Those who knew him well say that he will be sincerely missed, and we wish them well.

***

If your candidate doesn’t win, and you didn’t tell a friend or two to vote, blame yourself.

If you don’t click the Leavenworth Street Amazon links when you’re buying there, well then you’re just plain evil.

(And thanks for not being evil!)

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Joe Jordan keeps asking whether the Jim Suttle for Mayor campaign has enough cash to win in Omaha.

So is the Suttle campaign, as a whole, as big of a mess as this mailer the campaign sent out?

Take a look:

We are more than a bit shocked this piece got sent out by a big-time campaign. Frankly we are wondering if they accidentally sent a draft version to the printer — but even then someone has to sign-off on the final copy.

So let us take a look at a few of the misprints:

“If you believe in better…”

Better…cities?
Better…mayors?
Better…pie?
Better…grammar?

What are we talking about here, Suttle camp? Or what are we believing in…?

(And since when is “Getting things done.” a sentence? But maybe that’s just us.)

Now we will flip it over and we see…

“Jim suttle has proven himself…”

Hmm. Spell-check didn’t catch that one huh? Maybe they changed the spell-checker so that “subtle” was changed, and it just didn’t get picked up. Ah well.

“He’s created over 12,000 new jobs…”

Oh really??? HE HAS, has he? Opened up his own lard rendering plant or some such, yeah?
Oh wait, sure he has repeated this claim over and over and over and over. But then he changed his mind in the TV debate and noted that “he” created these jobs in the 5 county metro area.

Yeah.

But how about, you know, “Omaha” during the suttle…er Suttle years?
Well, according to the Chamber of Commerce, that was a 17,000 job LOSS.
At least this item probably wasn’t misprint.

Onward!

Let’s see.

Suttle either “lowered the city’s crime rate” (yeah, you can bicker about THOSE stats again)

…or he worked on the “City’s” bond rating.

Is Omaha a “city” or is it a “City”?
(And when you say “city” enough it doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore…)

And about that “Triple A” bond rating. Just a note.
The preferred reference is “AAA”.

Ah, but don’t worry, suttle campaign:
“…the best day are still ahead.”

***

It’s been a hell of a week in the real world outside of the Leavenworth Street HQ.
More when we have it.

In the meantime, feel free to chat on about your favorite issue/rant/haircut.

And buy some stuff for Mom via our Amazon.com links!
(Thanks!!!)

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First things first, then we PROMISE that we will hit some non-Omaha Mayor’s race news.

The campaign news of the last couple days:

Mayor candidate Jean Stothert: Crime has gone up on Jim Suttle’s watch.

Mayor Jim Suttle: Oh yeah? Show us the stats.

Stothert: Here are the stats. Crime is up.

Suttle: Um….No YOU’RE dumb!

Seriously, it doesn’t get any more basic than that. Suttle’s response to Stothert that crime has gone up in Omaha over the last four years was that, well, she’s just looking at the CRIME statistics.

Uh.

Yeah.

And all we would say about that is that Jean Stothert and her campaign have captured the issue of the day and Suttle and his camp have been steam-rolled on this issue. It is bad enough that Suttle cannot even at least point to some sort of anti-crime “plan” and say, “well, here is my plan for the next four years”. But he also comes across as, “Oh, THOSE are the crime stats? Did not know that…”

The Stothert camp began their new ad on the crime issue yesterday (good piece, though we’d like her off of the teleprompter).
See it here:

And then here is a little ditty put together regarding Suttle’s demand for some statistics to back up Jean Stothert’s facts. Or something like that.

(We would also add that in the middle of it we had the uncontrollable urge to Salsa dance.)

***

We have also gotten a kick out of Joe Jordan’s increasing demands of the Suttle camp that Suttle start running some campaign ads.

It was a bit humorous to see Jordan browbeating Suttle on the subject until Suttle finally snapped back that the Stothert camp was “wasting” their campaign cash on “early” commercials.

Suttle, political-consultant-in-chief!

Suttle’s position seems to be that “no one is listening” to the campaign this early and that by bombing the airwaves 1-2 weeks before the election he will then get his point across.

But is he losing too early? Is he getting trounced and silenced into submission right now?
If he gets battered early and often, can a late airwar turn the tide (we’re probably mixing a few metaphors into the soup there, but you get the sandwich.)

And then Jordan had a great point when Suttle noted that “all of the Brad Ashford money” was coming his way. Jordan chuckled, WHAT Ashford money?

So does Suttle HAVE the money to push an ad war at this point?

Well, we know that he has Bob Kerrey calling. (You remember Bob Kerrey! He’s the guy who flew in from his home in Manhattan to his sister’s couch in Omaha to run for office in Nebraska, then bought a house in Fairacres to prove he was moving to Nebraska, then lost and took another job in Manhattan where he will also commute to lobby in Washington, DC. But hey, Omaha! Here’s how Kerrey wants you to vote!)

And they are sending out pre-paid postage letters for early voting — with the Nebraska Democrat’s plan to call Jean Stothert a (shudder!) Tea Partier! (Yeah, make that stick NDP…)

And there seems to be an increase in attention on South Omaha and their voting block.

But don’t think that Stothert is letting up on South O. This piece is going to South O, noting the support by South O business. (Oh, and there is a Spanish version as well.)

Basically, Suttle turned his back on the South O business community on the sewer-separation issue — and Jean Stothert took it, ran with it, and worked to solve the issue.

But here is what we DO know. When Jim Suttle and his campaign get backed into a corner, they start thrashing around and doing all sorts of crazy things. (See: Homeless, Paying to vote.)

There is no way this will end normally.

***

So hey, non-Omahans!

Here’s what we got:

Everyone is waiting on Dave Heineman’s Senate decision.

Yeah, big news, right?

But seriously, if Heineman does NOT run for Senate, then the floodgates will open as to who is getting in the races.

For Senate, count in Shane Osborn. Maybe Pete Ricketts? Probably Jeff Fortenberry.
(Which would be a rich-dichotomy for the Josh and Jessica Moenning household to figure out.)

And there are mysterious others who could be in as well.

SOMEONE was recently in the field polling on the Senate candidate question. We still are unsure who it could have been. Could have been the Gov. Could have been Pete. Heck, could have been the NRSC.

But the interest is great. And we will tell you that there are well-connected peeps who are all over the map as far as what they think Governor Dave will do.

And his decision will likely have repercussions on the Governor’s race as well, since whoever clears the path for the Governor would likely take a look at the Gov’s McMansion as an alternative to the Senate. (Interesting question as to which is the better gig, overall. Any thoughts?)

***

And we still are of the belief that Mike Flood will get back in the Governor’s race. But since that decision will be based 100% on Flood’s wife’s health, they likely will not rush it, and will be thorough. And we obviously wish them the best and that they make the best decision for them.

(And we would also note that should Flood decide to run, all those who think that he is making a bad political decision that could hurt his wife should just STFU. Flood already showed that he was willing to drop his political aspirations for his wife’s health, and it is clear he wouldn’t get back in unless they and their doctors were certain.)

BUT that all being said…it is not as if Flood’s name ID is some sort of gold-standard across the state. Same obviously for state Senator Charlie Janssen. Which leads us to believe that there is certainly room for more contenders to get in the race — especially if they can afford to sell themselves on the airwaves to let people learn who they are. Because Janssen and Flood will have to do the same.

We think you could make an argument that Ricketts and Osborn would have less of a task in the name ID department, but we aren’t clear that they are currently interested in the Gov’s office.

So that still leaves it wide open.

And it leaves us waiting on the Governor.

We hear that he could wait as late as the Fall to announce his decision. Though we wonder if others will pressure him to make it earlier.
And whether that pressure makes any difference…

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We know many of you are keen to discuss the legislature stuff, and please have at it. Also the Lincoln races!

Oh, and of course, thank you for helping us to keep the light on at Leavenworth Street by making your Amazon.com purchases via our website banners. We greatly appreciate those who have done so!

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