Nebraska Democratic Party leaders pushed back Thursday on Gov. Pete Ricketts’ State of the State address to Nebraska lawmakers.
NDP Chair Jane Kleeb: ”Ricketts has failed Nebraskans across the board. From failing to fix the broken child welfare system, to reforming the unfair property tax system, to letting our prison overcrowding crisis languish, he gets failing grades. He has bucked safety measures advocated by President Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci at every turn as they fight to save lives in the COVID pandemic. Ricketts has wasted taxpayers’ money with political stunts like sending Nebraska state troopers to the Texas-Mexico border and enabling Attorney General Doug Peterson to join every frivolous lawsuit filed by the Republican Party. He jumps on every right-wing bandwagon from, conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric around women and LGBTQ families along with flat-out lies about land conservation programs. Ricketts might be a great bundler of dark money to buy elections but he is an epic bungler of anything that could actually help the people of Nebraska.”
State Sen. and gubernatorial candidate Carol Blood: “It’s hard to know where to start on the failed leadership of Ricketts. Just a few highlights of his failures include giving millions of fraudulent unemployment payments to the Russian mafia and Nigerian crime rings, not stepping up to the plate in a timely manner to protect the people of Mead in the AltEn pollution scandal and never eliminating unfunded/underfunded mandates to local governments — which is the root cause of high property taxes. All departments that fall under the responsibility of our executive branch have failed the people of our great state. It’s time for new blood and new ideas in our state elected officials.”
