Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
His name is Senator Pete Ricketts and he is joining
us on the phone line. Senator Ricketts has always an honor.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today, My pleasure every Thanks very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I got to ask you, you know, I know your
the polls, you know your race is a little different
than deb Fisher's race, But you know, I couldn't imagine
having my whole life kind of wrapped up into an election. Personally,
speaking for you, I know that you're very busy and
you don't have a whole lot of time to just
sit and think about this stuff. But you've been in
a lot of elections for different you know, things in
(00:30):
different places, in different offices. What are those feelings like
when you get to you know, kind of the last
couple of weeks before an election.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, typically like when we're about a week out as
we are right now, this is when the activity really
really ramps up. Right, You're trying to figure out what
are all the last minute things you could do to
help make sure you finish first in the election. Right
It's you know, there's no there's no consolation prices for
coming in second, and so it's a time of a
lot of activity and typically not a lot of time
(00:58):
for doing a lot of other things like contemplating what
your feelings are. But you know, I know all the
campaigns are working very very hard right now.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, so this is also kind of my my feeling
about this specific election. There's just poles everywhere, and I
know that people that I've talked to that analyze this
stuff for like, yeah, the reason Joe Biden dropped out
of the race is because they showed him a lot
of different polling that they have done. That's say, he's
not doing very well and if they want a chance
to win, he's got a step aside kind of thing.
(01:29):
How often are you guys looking at stuff like that?
Because I know that it gives you some different information
based on some of the polls that you see.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It might not be the same ones that we look at.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
But how does that work as you're kind of monitoring
what people are saying about different aspects of your race,
especially when you're talking about, you know, a Senate seat
in Washington DC.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, we use the polling realated kind of determinati if
the messages that were putting out there are being effective
or not. Certainly, when you first get into a race,
especially if you're unknown, you don't really have a lot
of name reconditions, so you also have to get that
name recognition out there. So the polling can be helpful
and really give you some guidance to know whether or
not what you're doing is effective and so forth. But
(02:09):
we also know the polling, if you're talking about who's
ultimately going to win, could be really wrong. Right, and
you go back to twenty sixteen, I think there were
two polls out of two hundred that showed President Trump
winning back at twenty sixteen, So we know polls can
be really inaccurate. And that's why you got to run
through the tape every time. You got to work harder
right through election day and make sure you're turning out
(02:30):
every voter you know there's going to be vote for you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Senator p Ricks joining us on the phone line here
on news Radio eleven ten kfab. Election legitimacy is always
a question I like to bring up because I think
that's foremost on people's mind these days. I had Brian Cruz,
who's the Douglas County election commissioner on and talked about
some of the different ends in the outs and I
have more to talk about with this, but you know,
from your perspective, it's difficult, you know, because all fifty
(02:55):
states run their own elections. But if you had to
give kind of a grade on how fair and free
you expect this election to be, what would you kind
of tell people who might be concerned that this there
could be more funny business this time.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
First of all, I would say here in Nebraska, we
should be very confident about our elections. We just passed
voter id D, right, so we've got more strengthen, you know,
we're strengthening our laws more with regard to voter integrity.
We also have paper ballots, right, so anybody can request recount,
a hand recount of the paper ballots. And then also
(03:30):
you know, the security state will audit different precincts and
so forth to determine you know, to hand count them
and then check them against what the voting machines are doing.
And the machines that count our paper ballots are not
connected to the internet, so you can't interfere from and
interfere with them that way. We also need to, you know,
remain visual to make sure people aren't trying to stuff
ballot boxes or the people who should not be voting
(03:53):
are trying to vote, and so you know, we've got
to remain visually against those sort of things. You know,
you mentioned that every state's different, and that's certainly true,
and that's the way we want to keep it. I've
had people say, well, why don't we pass like a
national voter ID, and we do not want a federal
takeover election laws. We've got to remember that it was
the states that created the federal government, not the other
way around, and the states ought to continue to manage
(04:15):
their elections and not have the federal government interfere with that.
So that's a very very important part of our whole
election system. It's also why our electoral college is so important.
But again, the states are the ones that determine this,
and that's the way our founders set it up on
purpose to make sure that small states like Nebraska, you know,
small from a population standpoint, would have their sovereignty protected
(04:35):
by our electoral college. So this is really an important
thing for our system of cedralism and protect states like
Nebraska to have our own voting laws, make sure we
have an electoral college all that. So you know, we again,
like I said, we can be very confident about Nebraska,
and we just need to do our part here.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I love the fact that, you know, when we get
closer to this, I think people get a little bit
more open with the way that they feel about not
necessary the politics, but what their emotions are heading into
election day, and there are a lot of fears. I
was reading an article that said seventy seven percent of
Americans have some level of anxiety about what's going to
happen during the election and after the election and who's
(05:12):
going to win the election. A big chunk of people
that are eighteen to thirty four years old also said,
there's a lot of anxiety around this election. How do
we get past that or is that just something that
comes with the territory here, Senator, because I think there
are some people out there that are truly having some
serious issues with, you know, coming to terms with who
(05:33):
may or may not win. How do we kind of
get to back to the point where everything is us
debating different ideas and then the people who win the
election win the election. And then if we don't like
the way things are going, we can, you know, adjust
that by voting in different people. Are we too far
gone from that or is there a way that we
can get back to that kind of civility in our
(05:54):
election system.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We need to remember that we live in the greatest
country in the world, and there are our founders set
up system that is really self correcting that sometimes we
may seem like we get out of balance, but this
country has an amazing ability to right itself and we've
been through very divisive times in the past and it's
come back to, I would say, a more normal state.
And just go back and think about the nineteen sixties,
(06:16):
where I would say we had a lot of similarities
to today, where we had a very divisive environment, we
had assassination attempts, we had way more riots. Back in
the nineteen sixties, we had way more bombings. A lot
of bomb threats were one of the kind of the
hallmarks of that timeframe, but actual bombings also occurred. We
don't see so much of that today. So I think
we need to keep things in the historical perspective that yeah,
(06:38):
it's been divisive as divisive right now, but it's also
been divisited in the past. We've got a great system
of our founders set up, and you know it will
correct itself over time. We do need to, you know,
make sure that everybody gets out and voting. And that's
one of the important things about our republic is that
we're self governing and we get to remain that way
if we all get involved. So people need to get
educated about the issues, and you get educated about the candidates,
(07:01):
and I need to get out and vote.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I think Senator Ricketts. The most important thing, of course,
that we can do at this point is to have
that understanding of how important our vote is. And we've
talked about that with our legitimacy in our elections. Right now,
if there's something that you think is the most important
issue for those who may not have voted, who are
still kind of waiting to the buzzer, not quite sure
(07:23):
about some of the races, or maybe even the presidential race,
and they're still kind of waiting to see how they
feel a week from now, What do you think is
the single most important issue for voters in Nebraska before
they go to the polls and get that vote put
into this ballot box.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, you hear all the time that this is the
most important election in our lifetime, and you may wonder
how that's hyperbole, but you know, the stakes do get higher.
I mean, we can see after nearly four years of
a Biden Harris administration that people are poorer off today. Right,
They're poorer According to Biden's own irs, people are four
percent four poor. They're paying thirteen thousand dollars a year
(07:59):
more to have the same and are living they had
before Joe Biden was in office. We see these high
prices that wages are not keeping up with. We also
see an open border that's putting our country at risk
in a number of different ways, whether it's to risk
to terrorism or the drug trafficking is going on. So
you know, really from the top of the ballot president
all the way and down to who you elect, it's
(08:20):
important that we elect conservatives to really right our country
and get it back on track. So is there one
thing is super important? Well, they're all important, right, that
are all important at whatever level we're talking about. We
also have a number of ballot issues is very important.
You know, for example, we on the abortion issue, we
will have it right to determine whether or not we're
going to decide for ourselves with the laws in the
state we're going to be by voting four thirty four
(08:42):
or if we're going to allow outside money and outside groups,
and you know, national abortion lobby tell us as Nebraskans
how to do our laws, which is why I'm voting
against four thirty nine because that's the pro abortion national
lobby that's pushing that on. So you know, we've got
a lot of different issues, and that's why again you
need to kind of get educated about this stuff. Talk
to people, go read up on where the candidate's positions are,
(09:04):
and make sure we're electing conservatives to keep the country
right back on track.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Last thing for you, Senator Rick is before I let
you go your race. You still have a race. It
is to complete the current term that you have here.
You have your colleague Deb Fisher who's in. It seems
to be a pretty competitive race as far as what
people are talking about in the ad money that we're
seeing here. And then of course we have all these
different district races for the House of Representatives, which we
(09:29):
know every single two years we're going to have big elections,
and there's seemingly a chance that both sides could change hands.
You could see the Senate flip to Republican control. You
could see the House of Representatives flip to democratic control.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
There's a lot of question marks about this.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
What do you forecast, what do you think as you
know from eight days out, what do you think is
possibly going to be What the American people say across
the entire United States about what the legislature will look like.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, I do think that Americans are getting tired of
this administration of high prices and open borders. I feel
very confident that Republicans will take control of the US Senate.
We've got a number of great candidates all around the
country that are running very, very hard in places like
West Virginia and Montana, Ohio, also in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland.
(10:19):
I mean, we get just a number of really good candidates.
So I feel very confident about the US Senate. I'm
not as up on the House racis of course, there's
a lot more of them. What I read is going
to be very close in the House. And I got
to tell you, I'm consciously optimistic that President Trump is
going to win this. So we've seen movements in some
of the swing states, and at that momentum continues, I
think it could be very positive for President Trump on
(10:40):
election Day.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And if you are a Republican or a conservative. You'll
be looking at that and you'd be saying, if that
ends up happening and we wake up on the fifth
or the sixth of November and we see those results,
things are going to change in the United States of America,
that is for sure. Senator Pete Rickets, as always, thank
you so much for the time, and note it's a
busy time for you. Good luck over the next eight
day and we'll chat with you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
All right, great, thanks every you have a good one.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
All right. Senator p rick is joining us on the show.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's four forty nine more of your thoughts on electioneering
and election laws that I wanted to get to before
we move totally on from this conversation. That's next on
news Radio eleven ten kfab
His name is Senator Pete Ricketts and he is joining
us on the phone line. Senator Ricketts has always an honor.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today, My pleasure every Thanks very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I got to ask you, you know, I know your
the polls, you know your race is a little different
than deb Fisher's race, But you know, I couldn't imagine
having my whole life kind of wrapped up into an election. Personally,
speaking for you, I know that you're very busy and
you don't have a whole lot of time to just
sit and think about this stuff. But you've been in
a lot of elections for different you know, things in
(00:30):
different places, in different offices. What are those feelings like
when you get to you know, kind of the last
couple of weeks before an election.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, typically like when we're about a week out as
we are right now, this is when the activity really
really ramps up. Right, You're trying to figure out what
are all the last minute things you could do to
help make sure you finish first in the election. Right
It's you know, there's no there's no consolation prices for
coming in second, and so it's a time of a
lot of activity and typically not a lot of time
(00:58):
for doing a lot of other things like contemplating what
your feelings are. But you know, I know all the
campaigns are working very very hard right now.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, so this is also kind of my my feeling
about this specific election. There's just poles everywhere, and I
know that people that I've talked to that analyze this
stuff for like, yeah, the reason Joe Biden dropped out
of the race is because they showed him a lot
of different polling that they have done. That's say, he's
not doing very well and if they want a chance
to win, he's got a step aside kind of thing.
(01:29):
How often are you guys looking at stuff like that?
Because I know that it gives you some different information
based on some of the polls that you see.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It might not be the same ones that we look at.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
But how does that work as you're kind of monitoring
what people are saying about different aspects of your race,
especially when you're talking about, you know, a Senate seat
in Washington DC.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, we use the polling realated kind of determinati if
the messages that were putting out there are being effective
or not. Certainly, when you first get into a race,
especially if you're unknown, you don't really have a lot
of name reconditions, so you also have to get that
name recognition out there. So the polling can be helpful
and really give you some guidance to know whether or
not what you're doing is effective and so forth. But
(02:09):
we also know the polling, if you're talking about who's
ultimately going to win, could be really wrong. Right, and
you go back to twenty sixteen, I think there were
two polls out of two hundred that showed President Trump
winning back at twenty sixteen, So we know polls can
be really inaccurate. And that's why you got to run
through the tape every time. You got to work harder
right through election day and make sure you're turning out
(02:30):
every voter you know there's going to be vote for you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Senator p Ricks joining us on the phone line here
on news Radio eleven ten kfab. Election legitimacy is always
a question I like to bring up because I think
that's foremost on people's mind these days. I had Brian Cruz,
who's the Douglas County election commissioner on and talked about
some of the different ends in the outs and I
have more to talk about with this, but you know,
from your perspective, it's difficult, you know, because all fifty
(02:55):
states run their own elections. But if you had to
give kind of a grade on how fair and free
you expect this election to be, what would you kind
of tell people who might be concerned that this there
could be more funny business this time.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
First of all, I would say here in Nebraska, we
should be very confident about our elections. We just passed
voter id D, right, so we've got more strengthen, you know,
we're strengthening our laws more with regard to voter integrity.
We also have paper ballots, right, so anybody can request recount,
a hand recount of the paper ballots. And then also
(03:30):
you know, the security state will audit different precincts and
so forth to determine you know, to hand count them
and then check them against what the voting machines are doing.
And the machines that count our paper ballots are not
connected to the internet, so you can't interfere from and
interfere with them that way. We also need to, you know,
remain visual to make sure people aren't trying to stuff
ballot boxes or the people who should not be voting
(03:53):
are trying to vote, and so you know, we've got
to remain visually against those sort of things. You know,
you mentioned that every state's different, and that's certainly true,
and that's the way we want to keep it. I've
had people say, well, why don't we pass like a
national voter ID, and we do not want a federal
takeover election laws. We've got to remember that it was
the states that created the federal government, not the other
way around, and the states ought to continue to manage
(04:15):
their elections and not have the federal government interfere with that.
So that's a very very important part of our whole
election system. It's also why our electoral college is so important.
But again, the states are the ones that determine this,
and that's the way our founders set it up on
purpose to make sure that small states like Nebraska, you know,
small from a population standpoint, would have their sovereignty protected
(04:35):
by our electoral college. So this is really an important
thing for our system of cedralism and protect states like
Nebraska to have our own voting laws, make sure we
have an electoral college all that. So you know, we again,
like I said, we can be very confident about Nebraska,
and we just need to do our part here.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I love the fact that, you know, when we get
closer to this, I think people get a little bit
more open with the way that they feel about not
necessary the politics, but what their emotions are heading into
election day, and there are a lot of fears. I
was reading an article that said seventy seven percent of
Americans have some level of anxiety about what's going to
happen during the election and after the election and who's
(05:12):
going to win the election. A big chunk of people
that are eighteen to thirty four years old also said,
there's a lot of anxiety around this election. How do
we get past that or is that just something that
comes with the territory here, Senator, because I think there
are some people out there that are truly having some
serious issues with, you know, coming to terms with who
(05:33):
may or may not win. How do we kind of
get to back to the point where everything is us
debating different ideas and then the people who win the
election win the election. And then if we don't like
the way things are going, we can, you know, adjust
that by voting in different people. Are we too far
gone from that or is there a way that we
can get back to that kind of civility in our
(05:54):
election system.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We need to remember that we live in the greatest
country in the world, and there are our founders set
up system that is really self correcting that sometimes we
may seem like we get out of balance, but this
country has an amazing ability to right itself and we've
been through very divisive times in the past and it's
come back to, I would say, a more normal state.
And just go back and think about the nineteen sixties,
(06:16):
where I would say we had a lot of similarities
to today, where we had a very divisive environment, we
had assassination attempts, we had way more riots. Back in
the nineteen sixties, we had way more bombings. A lot
of bomb threats were one of the kind of the
hallmarks of that timeframe, but actual bombings also occurred. We
don't see so much of that today. So I think
we need to keep things in the historical perspective that yeah,
(06:38):
it's been divisive as divisive right now, but it's also
been divisited in the past. We've got a great system
of our founders set up, and you know it will
correct itself over time. We do need to, you know,
make sure that everybody gets out and voting. And that's
one of the important things about our republic is that
we're self governing and we get to remain that way
if we all get involved. So people need to get
educated about the issues, and you get educated about the candidates,
(07:01):
and I need to get out and vote.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I think Senator Ricketts. The most important thing, of course,
that we can do at this point is to have
that understanding of how important our vote is. And we've
talked about that with our legitimacy in our elections. Right now,
if there's something that you think is the most important
issue for those who may not have voted, who are
still kind of waiting to the buzzer, not quite sure
(07:23):
about some of the races, or maybe even the presidential race,
and they're still kind of waiting to see how they
feel a week from now, What do you think is
the single most important issue for voters in Nebraska before
they go to the polls and get that vote put
into this ballot box.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, you hear all the time that this is the
most important election in our lifetime, and you may wonder
how that's hyperbole, but you know, the stakes do get higher.
I mean, we can see after nearly four years of
a Biden Harris administration that people are poorer off today. Right,
They're poorer According to Biden's own irs, people are four
percent four poor. They're paying thirteen thousand dollars a year
(07:59):
more to have the same and are living they had
before Joe Biden was in office. We see these high
prices that wages are not keeping up with. We also
see an open border that's putting our country at risk
in a number of different ways, whether it's to risk
to terrorism or the drug trafficking is going on. So
you know, really from the top of the ballot president
all the way and down to who you elect, it's
(08:20):
important that we elect conservatives to really right our country
and get it back on track. So is there one
thing is super important? Well, they're all important, right, that
are all important at whatever level we're talking about. We
also have a number of ballot issues is very important.
You know, for example, we on the abortion issue, we
will have it right to determine whether or not we're
going to decide for ourselves with the laws in the
state we're going to be by voting four thirty four
(08:42):
or if we're going to allow outside money and outside groups,
and you know, national abortion lobby tell us as Nebraskans
how to do our laws, which is why I'm voting
against four thirty nine because that's the pro abortion national
lobby that's pushing that on. So you know, we've got
a lot of different issues, and that's why again you
need to kind of get educated about this stuff. Talk
to people, go read up on where the candidate's positions are,
(09:04):
and make sure we're electing conservatives to keep the country
right back on track.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Last thing for you, Senator Rick is before I let
you go your race. You still have a race. It
is to complete the current term that you have here.
You have your colleague Deb Fisher who's in. It seems
to be a pretty competitive race as far as what
people are talking about in the ad money that we're
seeing here. And then of course we have all these
different district races for the House of Representatives, which we
(09:29):
know every single two years we're going to have big elections,
and there's seemingly a chance that both sides could change hands.
You could see the Senate flip to Republican control. You
could see the House of Representatives flip to democratic control.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
There's a lot of question marks about this.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
What do you forecast, what do you think as you
know from eight days out, what do you think is
possibly going to be What the American people say across
the entire United States about what the legislature will look like.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, I do think that Americans are getting tired of
this administration of high prices and open borders. I feel
very confident that Republicans will take control of the US Senate.
We've got a number of great candidates all around the
country that are running very, very hard in places like
West Virginia and Montana, Ohio, also in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland.
(10:19):
I mean, we get just a number of really good candidates.
So I feel very confident about the US Senate. I'm
not as up on the House racis of course, there's
a lot more of them. What I read is going
to be very close in the House. And I got
to tell you, I'm consciously optimistic that President Trump is
going to win this. So we've seen movements in some
of the swing states, and at that momentum continues, I
think it could be very positive for President Trump on
(10:40):
election Day.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And if you are a Republican or a conservative. You'll
be looking at that and you'd be saying, if that
ends up happening and we wake up on the fifth
or the sixth of November and we see those results,
things are going to change in the United States of America,
that is for sure. Senator Pete Rickets, as always, thank
you so much for the time, and note it's a
busy time for you. Good luck over the next eight
day and we'll chat with you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
All right, great, thanks every you have a good one.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
All right. Senator p rick is joining us on the show.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's four forty nine more of your thoughts on electioneering
and election laws that I wanted to get to before
we move totally on from this conversation. That's next on
news Radio eleven ten kfab
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