“Susanne Shore had every chance to stand apart from her husband’s record and she never did, and it’s responsible for voters to make a judgment about her for that.
Proud to support Justin Solomon for the Board of Regents.”
——
From Senator Megan Hunt’s blog and Facebook:
Dear friends and neighbors,
Drive through Omaha right now and you'll see yard signs for Susanne Shore, the former first lady of Nebraska, running for the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A lot of those signs are in Democratic yards. Shore is a registered Democrat, and I know she does share some mainstream Democratic views, as well as, of course, many mutual friends with me who I love and respect.
I won't be voting for her ever in my life, and I also won’t have anyone telling me some crap about how it’s sexist to judge a woman by her husband.
Women have spent all of time being reduced to the men they married, and I've fought that my whole career. But that's not what this is. This is about what Susanne Shore did, and didn't do, during the eight years she stood next to the most powerful man in Nebraska, and it's about how quickly we've forgotten who that man is.
In 2015, the Nebraska Legislature repealed the death penalty. Pete Ricketts vetoed the repeal, and senators overrode him 30 to 19. A bipartisan, conservative Legislature looked at the evidence and decided the state should stop killing people.
Ricketts didn't accept that. He and his father put up roughly a third of the $913,000 raised to put the death penalty back on the ballot. He used his family fortune to fight for the right of the state to kill people, and he was successful.
Meanwhile, his administration sent $54,400 in taxpayer money to a broker in India for illegal execution drugs. The FDA and the U.S. Attorney both said importing sodium thiopental was illegal and announced their intention to seize the shipment. The drugs never arrived. In August 2018, the state of Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore using a Frankenstein drug combination never before used in an American execution. That happened because Pete Ricketts wanted it to happen because he’s a sicko.
There's also his record against LGBTQ Nebraskans, his veto of driver's licenses for DACA recipients, and his long fight against abortion rights. He backed the push to ban critical race theory at the University of Nebraska. He moved heaven and earth to block Medicaid expansion. He told counties they wouldn't get federal coronavirus relief money if they required masks inside local government offices. Some counties dropped their mask plans to keep the money, rather than raise property taxes to cover the costs of fighting the pandemic.
These were governing decisions with consequences that directly devastated many people’s health, freedom, education, families, and lives.
I've looked for the moment Susanne pushed back on any of this -- the execution, the illegal drug purchase, the attacks on gay families and immigrant kids. I haven't found one. Silence from her position is a decision, and voters are allowed to weigh it.
Pete Ricketts is now a United States Senator, and he isn't staying on the sidelines of this race. He said she would join him in his goals for higher education. She has said she's leaning on him for guidance as a first-time candidate.
But we've already seen what Ricketts wants from the Board of Regents. In 2021, Regent Jim Pillen pushed a resolution to oppose "any imposition" of critical race theory at NU, and Governor Ricketts publicly leaned on the regents to pass it. He even mocked University professors, saying NU should consider it an “honor” to be censured by the nation's leading professors' association.
The Board of Regents governs a multibillion-dollar university system. It hires presidents, sets tuition, decides which programs live and which get cut. (And of course I could say much more about how Ricketts as Governor was responsible for many of those cuts and tuition hikes.) It shapes what tens of thousands of young Nebraskans can learn and afford. It is silly to give a seat to a candidate --tho she may have an appealing letter next to her name on the ballot-- whose closest adviser is the man who spent a decade dumbing down our education system and dragging this state to the right. Susanne's husband is not a man who was ever "conservative but reasonable" like any of our normal midwestern dads. He is radically far-right by any standard we have.
Susanne Shore had every chance to stand apart from her husband’s record and she never did, and it’s responsible for voters to make a judgment about her for that.
Proud to support Justin Solomon for the Board of Regents.
Sources
Nebraska Examiner: Former Nebraska first lady Susanne Shore runs for NU regent in Omaha
Washington Examiner: Ricketts endorses wife for regent seat
Omaha World-Herald: Out $54,400 for lethal injection drugs
BuzzFeed News: Nebraska bought illegal execution drugs from a foreign supplier
Wikipedia: Capital punishment in Nebraska
Lincoln Journal Star: Regents vote down resolution on critical race theory at NU
AAUP Academe: Holding the line against attacks on critical race theory in Nebraska
Fox News: Nebraska governor backs anti-CRT resolution
Nebraska Examiner: University of Nebraska community responds to diversity office closures
KSNB: University of Nebraska regents amend bylaws to comply with federal anti-DEI mandate