Posted: Sunday, July 2, 2006 7:00 pm
History doesn’t always repeat itself; sometimes it just comes close.
This story starts here, but it reaches back to 1998.
So, buckle your seat belts and turn off your cell phones. Here goes.
A proposed constitutional amendment to limit state government spending may be headed toward a vote of the people this year.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Hahn has announced his opposition to the plan.
Republican Gov. Dave Heineman says he’s still reviewing its potential effects and has not decided whether to support or oppose the proposal.
The governor is trying to “run out the clock,” Hahn says, purposely avoiding taking a position before the July 7 deadline for acquiring sufficient signatures on petitions to gain access to the November ballot.
True or not, Heineman knows what happened eight years ago.
A proposed constitutional amendment to clamp a lid on spending by limiting state and local government revenue appeared headed to the general election ballot early that summer.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Hoppner firmly opposed the measure.
Mike Johanns, the Republican nominee, supported it.
Hoppner prepared to make that difference the central battleground in the governor’s race, arguing that the plan devised by Omaha business leaders would close the door on property tax relief and support for quality education.
It would ignore the needs of rural Nebraska and harm working families, he warned.
Meanwhile, a number of statewide organizations expressed grave concerns about the proposal.
The lid will be “the fundamental issue in this campaign,” Hoppner declared. “It will be the issue in the race for governor.”
In an extraordinary dance, Johanns began to put some distance between himself and the proposal a month after he won the Republican nomination, twice declining during a Journal Star interview to say whether he would vote for the plan. A day after backing away, he abruptly reversed course, announcing he would sign the petition and vote for the proposal. Nine days later, Johanns did a remarkable about-face and announced he would oppose the plan.
That robbed Hoppner of his issue.
In November, 66 percent of Nebraska’s voters, including a majority in all 93 counties, said no to the proposed tax lid, burying the proposal.
Johanns defeated Hoppner in a relatively close race by garnering 54 percent of the vote.
If Johanns had been tied firmly to the government lid, might Hoppner have won?
We’ll never know for sure.
Eight years later, Hahn is Hoppner.
And Heineman ain’t dancing.
v v v
Finishing up:
* The National Journal’s Hotline is confused about the Nebraska Senate race: “If Bush stays popular, does that hurt (Ben) Nelson, or not? If conservatives view immigration as the top issue in the state, does that hurt Nelson, or not? This is a race where sometimes up is down and left is right.”
* Pete Ricketts “has to be the GOP’s second most impressive (Senate) challenger of the cycle,” says The Hotline, trailing only Mike McGavick in Washington.
* Heineman has the second highest approval rating (76 percent) among governors in the latest SurveyUSA poll.
* Heineman was ranked sixth on the Top Ten list of conservative governors by Human Events, which gave him high marks for vetoing legislation to provide resident college tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants. The conservative weekly ranked Jeb Bush first.
* Monroe Usher, who died a week ago, toiled behind the scenes for Nebraska’s GOP for many years.
* Tom Osborne’s schedule for this holiday week includes appearances in 11 communities in the 3rd District. After losing the Republican gubernatorial primary election, including his own congressional district, he could have decided to pack it in and coast to the end of his term. But that’s not him.
* Well, I’ll be darned, there is more than one branch of the federal government.
* And laws matter.
* And you can’t burn, or desecrate, the U.S. Constitution.
* It must be the 4th of July: no king.
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.