Two who served on Lincoln City Council now competing for Nebraska legislative seat | #citycouncil

In a general election season marked by often heated state and local races, both candidates have said they dislike negative campaigning and have largely avoided attacking each other, despite their often heated exchanges from the City Council dais.

But their priorities, if elected, differ.

Christensen, a Republican, said he’s a conservative who believes property tax reform is a priority.

“As a conservative, I have looked for ways for people to keep their money because I believe that people spending money is better than government spending money,” he said.

Raybould, a Democrat, has identified criminal justice reform, public education funding, mental health services, advocating for environmental resiliency and restoring state aid to cities and counties as priorities.

But meeting with various organizations in recent weeks has changed her perspective, she said, and she believes she could have a big impact on the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

She’s particularly interested in making Medicaid reimbursement rates fair so rural communities, in particular, can keep health care services open.

“I look on it as economic reinvestment,” she said. “We want to keep people in our rural communities, but we have to invest in our rural communities in a smarter way so that all these health practitioners can remain in those communities and serve the people that really need their services.”

Raybould said she plans to “hit the ground running from day one,” while Christensen said he would take time to learn the ropes and get to know the people in the Legislature.

“Ultimately, in my experience, you get things done based on personal relationships. You can’t just come in and run roughshod over people,” he said. “So humility is a good thing when you come into an organization.”

That said, Christensen believes the Legislature must find a way to enact meaningful property tax reform or people will launch an initiative petition to do it themselves.

“The people will do something and it will almost certainly be something more drastic than the unicameral would ever come up with,” he said. “And then the unicameral and the governor would have to be dealing with the damage.”

A proposal to limit political entities’ spending to 3%, he said, was a good idea, but there are lots of other ideas and they should all be on the table.

“The friction in politics, in my opinion, kind of purifies the product,” he said. “So I’m not afraid of friction. We need to … engage with each other, talk to each other in reasonable ways.”

He said he prides himself on putting politics before people and working across the aisle to get things done.

Another priority: stopping bad legislation from passing.

“The government’s history is filled with unintended consequences,” he said.

Raybould said criminal justice reform was a priority for her when she served on the Lancaster County Board, particularly finding alternatives to incarceration such as more problem-solving courts, and she’d like to find a way to pass many of the reforms included in a criminal justice reform bill that failed last year.

She said she’d like to find a way for the state to contribute more to public education, and she’d like to reinstitute state aid to cities and counties. The state ended that practice when she was a county commissioner and she saw how difficult it was for those governing bodies.

Christensen said he would consider introducing legislation to make men who have non-consensual sex with women who then get pregnant responsible for supporting the child until age 21, something that would have to involve a civil process and be separate from the criminal process.

On abortion — an issue that will likely come up in the Legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — Raybould and Christensen differ, though Christensen said Planned Parenthood misrepresented his position in a flyer.

The ad said he didn’t support abortion even in cases of rape, incest or fetal deformity, and that’s not true.

He said he does support abortion in those cases, as well as in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, and would support legislation not allowing abortion except in those cases.

Raybould said she supports the current limitations in place that keep abortion safe and legal.