Brett Lindstrom’s crucible moment as a legislator hit early in his political career, on a matter of life and death.
After months of study, the first-year Nebraska state senator, a pro-life conservative Republican, cast a series of votes in 2015 to overturn the death penalty. The decision put him at odds with Gov. Pete Ricketts and much of the base of his own party. Lindstrom described it at the time as “the hardest vote I’ve ever made.”
Nebraska voters restored capital punishment the following year after a referendum heavily funded by the Ricketts family.
“I still stand by my decision, based on being pro-life,” Lindstrom said, adding, “The voters spoke with the ballot. Moving forward as governor, I will uphold the law.”
Seven years later, Lindstrom, running to succeed Ricketts, is an underdog in the May 10 GOP primary against two well-funded and better-known front-runners and several other candidates.
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A lesson he first learned as a hard-luck Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback was reinforced by what Lindstrom acknowledges was a rough rookie year as a lawmaker. In addition to the drama over the death penalty vote, just one Lindstrom bill made it through the Legislature.
“Getting knocked down and getting back up — (I learned that) things don’t always run smooth,” he said.
But Lindstrom said he watched how successful legislators worked, and he learned to engage in the political horse-trading that gets bills passed. He claims authorship of 60 bills that have passed in the years since. A financial adviser by profession, he has labored on literal pocketbook issues on committees that deal with banking, commerce and state revenue.
Last year Lindstrom authored a bill he had worked on for years that would reduce state income taxes on Social Security income in half by 2025, and possibly eliminate them entirely by 2030. He considers it his top legislative accomplishment.
“It’s probably the largest tax cut we’ve done in several decades,” he said.
Ricketts did not invite him to the bill-signing ceremony. Lindstrom ignored the slight and held his own event.
“He’s highly regarded among his peers in the Legislature,” said Paul Landow, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and a former chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “It’s primarily because he’s seen as a decent guy, who’s solid and hardworking.”
Lindstrom is trading on that reputation in the rough-and-tumble primary race, characterized by the barrage of bruising ads the two front-runners, Charles W. Herbster and Jim Pillen, have aimed at one another.
Herbster, a businessman from Falls City, has won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump while Pillen, a hog producer from Columbus and University of Nebraska regent, touts his backing from Ricketts.
They have pushed hard on hot-button issues like critical race theory, gun rights and immigration.
Lindstrom doesn’t differ much from his opponents on those issues. His campaign website pledges he will “ensure the radical left comes nowhere near your constitutional right to keep and bear arms” and promises a “fact-based, patriotic education” without “Anti-American, divisive and left-wing propaganda like ‘critical race theory.’”
His advertising, though, has emphasized his youth and his telegenic family, while gently promoting his tax-cutting bona fides.
Lindstrom, who will turn 41 this week, was born in Lincoln and grew up in Omaha. His father, Dan, and two uncles played football at Nebraska.
“I grew up in a football household,” Lindstrom said. “I used to put on my dad’s helmet and football jersey and run around.”
He played sports, too, and was a standout receiver at Millard West High School, graduating in 1999. He was offered athletic scholarships elsewhere but had thoughts only of playing at Memorial Stadium.
“I walked on at Nebraska, back in the good old days,” Lindstrom said. “I’m a little bit of a legacy.”
He made the team, shifting from receiver to quarterback. But injuries hobbled him — two screws remain in his foot from one such injury, he said.
Lindstrom majored in history at UNL and graduated in 2004. He married his wife, Leigh, three years later.
Lindstrom stuck close to home, following his father into business at The Lindstrom Group, a financial services firm. He still works there today.
By 2012, he was a young husband and father when a friend made an offhand comment that he should run for Congress. He did, one of five challengers to incumbent Rep. Lee Terry in the GOP primary.
“It was probably the best and worst thing I ever did, because I didn’t know anything,” Lindstrom said.
He finished a distant second but impressed Republican kingmakers. Two years later he ran to succeed Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh, to represent District 18, in northwest Omaha, in the Legislature. He won by 10 points in 2014 and eight points in 2018, each time defeating a Democrat in the officially nonpartisan race.
Since that hard first year, Lindstrom has focused mostly on issues of taxation and finance. He introduced his Social Security tax reduction seven times before it was finally adopted. This year, his bill to speed up the timetable to completely exempt Social Security income from state income tax is still alive with just 16 days left in the 60-day legislative session.
With his legislative career nearing an end because of term limits, Lindstrom set his sights on the Governor’s Office to pursue “unfinished business.”
One big piece is solving Nebraska’s seemingly intractable school funding deadlock. He has studied the ins and outs of public school financing and believes there’s still a path to boosting state aid while trimming property taxes.
Earlier this month he also unveiled an economic development plan. The centerpiece is a proposal to cut the top state income tax rate to 4.99% (from the current 6.84%), and eliminate it completely for single taxpayers with earnings under $50,000, and married couples with earnings under $100,000.
The plan also calls for spending on infrastructure and rural broadband. It does not specify how the tax cuts and new spending would be paid for.
As governor, Lindstrom would also have to grapple with the state’s grossly overcrowded prison system. He doesn’t favor proposals to build an additional state prison. He would prefer to spend money addressing addiction, mental health and workforce issues of the current inmate population first.
"Obviously violent offenders belong in prison, but I think there are people who we can do a better job rehabilitating,” Lindstrom said.
First, he must win a Republican primary in which the two front-runners have built up large war chests, according to campaign finance reports.
Through the end of 2021, Pillen raised $5.3 million (including $1 million of his own money). Herbster’s $4.9 million campaign was almost entirely self-financed.
Lindstrom is within shouting distance, having raised $1.6 million, thanks mostly to the three co-founders of Buildertrend, an Omaha software firm that has grown to 900 employees since brothers Steve and Jeff Dugger and their friend Dan Houghton started it in their basement 16 years ago.
The trio donated $1.2 million last year, including a $1 million contribution from Steve Dugger.
Lindstrom said the contributions are about friendship, not influence-peddling. He said he has known the Buildertrend co-founders since childhood and counts Steve Dugger as his best friend.
In an email, Dugger deflected an interview request and did not directly address his hefty contribution. But he described his longtime friend as “passionate, and a person of good character that will provide that next generation of leadership for Nebraska.”
Kevin Smith, chair of UNL’s political science department, said he couldn’t recall a larger outside contribution to a political campaign.
He said buying influence with large campaign contributions is a big concern, but he agreed that the long friendship between Lindstrom and Dugger puts the donation in “kind of a different category” that "would mitigate the concerns" for most people.
It is hard to tell how much traction Lindstrom is gaining, due to the lack of public polling.
But the Lindstrom camp sees a closer race than the popular narrative indicates. They believe they can squeeze out a win by building a positive image of him while Herbster and Pillen fire away at one another.
Smith thinks there is an outside chance it could work.
“Pillen and Herbster are focused on each other. This third candidate — the lack of that kind of limelight can still be an advantage,” Smith said.
Much depends on who turns out to vote, Landow said.
“The Republican primary electorate is older and more conservative and more rural. That’s why you see the kind of ads that are running,” he said. “I think Lindstrom is less appealing to that electorate.”
Even his acceptance that President Joe Biden was duly elected in 2020 could prove controversial with a large group of Republicans that accepts Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen. Lindstrom said he has met people with that belief on the campaign trail.
“I don’t discount how people feel,” he said. “My message is that we can’t talk about the past, we need to talk about the future.”