If the latest poll numbers are close to accurate, then this will be a very close Governor's race. Last poll that I was saw of likely Republican voters was
Heineman 43.7%
Osborne 43.2%
In the 2002, 152,725 Republicans voted in the primary. If the same number voted and the above percentages hold true, then the race will be decided by about 760 votes. That means your votes matters.
Pete Ricketts conducted a poll last week.
44% Osborne
43% Heineman
6% Nabity
7% Undecided
Read the short version of the 2nd Governor's debate
I have updated the Governor candidate profiles to include the results of the 1st debate. This allows you to see a side by side comarison of how they answered the quetions.
Click on
Races - Candidate Profiles
and then on
Governor
Read the short version of the 1st Governor's debate
Dates and cities for a series of six gubernatorial debates have been agreed upon by all three Republican candidates for governor.
The debates are scheduled as follows:
David Hahn, an attorney and the CEO of a new internet publishing company has announced his candidacy for Governor. Hahn is a Democrat. New Digital Group publishes college newspapers including the Nebraska State Paper, the Columbia Spectator, and the Daily Collegian which publishes informatoin about the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
On Saturday, November 26, Tom Osborne conducted a series of 1 hour meetings about water. Meetings were held in York, Holdrege, McCook, and Imperial. Each meeting lasted about 1 hour. Congressman Osborne mentioned his voting record and stressed, "I'm as far from being a tree hugger as you can get." He also said, "My family has been involved in irrigation since the 1950's." His father was involved in the irrigation business in Hastings and his brother still is. "I'm not interested in doing anything to hurt irrigation in Nebraska," he added.
At each of the four meetings he talked about water and the 2007 Farm Bill. Regarding the farm bill, he predicts that the new bill will have a much greater emphasis on conservation. He believes that there will be less money for traditional farm supports and more money for farmers that use minimum tillage practices that limit erosion and run off.
The Groundwater Foundation calls on Governor Heineman and the other gubernatorial candidates to get involved in the water issue and take a leadership role. The governor appointed Water Policy Task Force estimates that the State will need more than $300 million dollars to resolve water issues. This is more than the Low Level Radioactive Waste fiasco. The Task Force is recommending that the State raise property taxes and use the money to pay farmers to not irrigate. The primary problem with this recommendation is that it would result in insufficient water savings to actually solve the problem. In an earlier post Nebraska Citizen pointed out that we believe water will become one of the primary campaign issues in this election. Water is the headline story this week and is likely to remain a major topic of discussion. Should the State pay farmers to not irrigate or are there other solutions that make more sense? How candidates answer this is likely to determine who gets elected.
Tom Osborne has suggested as a possible solution that Nebraska renegotiate the agreement with Kansas.Links to stories about water in the Omaha World Herald, Lincoln Journal, Imperial Republican, and Nebraska Citizen can be found at WaterClaim
Continue reading "Groundwater Foundation calls on Governor" »
Nebraska Citizen Interview with Tom Osborne
On November 14, 2005, Nebraska Citizen was honored with a telephone interview with Tom Osborne. The following are Nebraska Citizen’s questions (in blue) and a paraphrase of Tom Osborne's comments after each one.
Ryne McClarin links to a a couple of stories about Tom Osborne voting to regulate blogs that talk about politics. That is a direct threat to sites such as this. Ryne says he will ask Congressman Osborne for an explanation. It will be interesting to see why Tom Osborne says he believes the FCC should regulate this site and others like it.