Lindstrom: campaign attack ads mean opponents worried

    Saying he’s kept his promise to run a positive campaign, Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Brett Lindstrom believes the recent attack ads against him are actually a good thing.
    “I like it. They are worried,” he said of his opponents.
    He made those comments April 26 in a meet and greet stop in Imperial at the Lied Imperial Public Library.
    In the past couple of weeks, local voters have received mailings describing Lindstrom as an “Omaha liberal.”
    It notes he’s been endorsed by several Nebraska Democrats, but said he never asked for their endorsements.
    He said he felt great about his campaign, just two weeks ahead of the May 10 Primary.
    “I couldn’t be happier,” he said last week.
    His campaign’s internal poll in Omaha mid-April showed him with 39% of the vote for Governor, but noted 21% of the western Third District respondents were undecided.
    He said he was leading with 28% in another poll of 800 voters taken April 19-20, with Charles Herbster at 26% and Jim Pillen with 24%. Sixteen percent were undecided.
    “I’ve run the campaign I wanted to,” he said.
    His three children are the reason he pledged at the start of the campaign to stay positive, he said.
    “I don’t want something to come up in 10 years,” he said, when someone recalls his name for something negative he said or did.
    “I don’t want that message,” he said.
    He also doesn’t want to have issues with people he will have to work with later, if he’s elected Governor.
    “So, I will keep talking the issues,” he said.
    Lindstrom said he’s been to all 93 counties in the state, and to some, like Imperial, twice.
    In those visits, the top issues continue to be housing and the workforce. In a lot of Republican circles, education and CRT are also discussed, he said.
    Broadband and roads are other issues that arise, he added.
    Regarding the workforce, he believes the state needs to sell itself as an “up and coming” place, and possibly something offered on the “credit side,” such as tax credits.
    Noting 60 to 70% of property taxes go to K-12 education, it’s one of the biggest contributors to the rural/urban divide, he said. Nebraska also ranks 49th in U.S. for state funding of education.
    As state senator for District 18 in Omaha, who completed his 4-year term this session, Lindstrom is proud of the Legislature’s passage of the tax cut package.
    “It’s the largest in the history of Nebraska,” he said.
    One of its parts was the gradual phase-out of state income tax on Social Security benefits, to be 100% eliminated by 2024.