In the News

At 1/24/2005 12:18:26 PM, Kyle Michaelis said...

Our State Chair, Steve Achelpohl, on the appointment of Hastings mayor Rick Sheehy as Lieutenant Governor, "I don't know this guy from Adam..."

Of course, our titular head said other things in the LJS article, mainly attacking the appointment as a political ploy and re-emphasizing his "unknown" status, but the above quote really stands out, especially since Mr. Sheehy was a registered Democrat until two years ago. That means he won election in 2000 as Mayor of one of the state's 10 largest cities, in the Third District no less, AS A DEMOCRAT. And we don't know who he is? That's telling in a lot of ways. On a first glance, it says we're REALLY out of touch with Nebraska outside Omaha and Lincoln. It even suggests this guy may have made the right choice switching parties, demographics aside, because we weren't making much of an effort to give he or his constituents a seat at the table.

Of course, this guy did change parties and make a pretty quick leap that could prime him to succeed Coach Osbourne. Surely there's more to the story that may paint Sheehy quite the calculating fellow with who-knows-what king of bargainin chips. But...that's just a mere assumption...what's known is that Sheehy was one of us, in name at least, and now he's playing for the other team. Saying we've never heard of him and attacking him for being from outside the "Nebraska beltway", our non-existent power base, is more an indictment of us than it is anything else.

We need to change our tone. We need to be expressing hope that since this guy WAS a Democrat he'll still have some sympathy for the poor and some remaining remnant of the bond with working peoples' concerns that made him a Democrat originally. Instead of defining ourselves and making this issue work FOR us, we went into tired and obnoxious ATTACK mode, as has been our lame fall-back position for as long as I remember. No wonder we keep losing.

Article to which the above post refers:
Our New Lieutenant Governor


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