April 3, 2025 • 12 mins
Mayor Jean Stothert Talks Strategy for May's Mayoral Election
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of those candidates is the current mayor of Omaha,
Jeans Stothard, who is joining us in the studio today.
Mayor Stother, thank you so much for being with us
once again on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You bet, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Okay. So, I we were talking off the air about
just kind of personally, it kind of like gears up.
I know it's a kind of a different chapter of
this campaign, but what's the emotions. You know, you've gone
through it a few times now, the emotions of primary night,
after all the campaigning and getting the information out and
just now the waiting game of seeing how Omaha votes.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, nothing changes for our campaign because Wednesday we are
right back out there campaigning. But you know, every mayoral
race in Omaha is competitive, and this one's no different.
I didn't expect anything different at all. There's usually at
least a half a dozen candidates. The first time I
ran in twenty thirteen, there were five major candidates, the
same in seventeen, the same in twenty one. And so
(00:51):
you know, your goal is to win the primary, and
in a five way primary, you expect not to get
one hundred percent of the votes or even sixty percent
of the votes, but you just want to win it
and you want to show people that you are ahead.
And it will be a different race now because now
I know who my opponent is going to be. But
I am running because I want to tell people what
(01:12):
I've done in the past and where I'm going in
the future, and that will just continue. You know, I've
identified what the major issues are for the folks in
Omaha and they remain the same, and so you have
to not only talk about what you've done and where
you want to go, but you've got to talk and
articulate the plan you have and how you're going to
achieve it. And I think I can absolutely do that.
(01:32):
Main issues for people in Omaha Number one are taxes,
public safety, and then roads are still a big issue,
and I think we have a really good story to
tell on all three and then what I'm planning to
do to for all of those issues in the future
to keep Omaha moving forward. The momentum I talk about
with my campaign, we have momentum. Let's keep it going forward.
(01:55):
But myself and my team created that momentum over the
last twelve years, and we sure have a good story
to tell.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, so we can go in so many different angles.
I am kind of fascinated about the you know, it's
kind of a decompression for us, because we do change gears,
at least in how we talk about the race. You know,
right you're talking about what all these people stand for
and what they're saying, and everybody kind of has those
bullet points, and now it's a little bit more directive,
you know. And with John Ewing there is quite a
(02:23):
bit of difference in terms of just political background, you
being a Republican and him being a Democrat, even though
we don't vote like that partisan right, right, But there's
what did you learn from this particular primary? You learned
anything about the resulture? Did things kind of play out
the way that you expected them? They played out the
way I expected it, they really did.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
You know. We do a lot of polling. We keep
it all internal. We don't talk about it. It's just
for my own information. But what we saw in the beginning,
what we saw in the middle, and what we saw
at the end was what we hope for and what
we expected. So we knew that we were running strong.
But I always tell my staff and my team, we
never tell about where we are, and we run like
(03:01):
we're ten points behind, because anything can happen with an election.
But the one thing I will say is I look
at this now where it's going to go forward in
the next five weeks between me and John Ewing as
being a race set is focused on issues, and hopefully
it will be focused on what we're going to do
about those issues, identifying them, focusing on that. Campaigns shouldn't
(03:22):
be about all these negative TV attack commercials trying to
mislead voters, trying to lie to voters. I didn't do that.
John Ewing didn't do it in the primary. Another opponent
did that, but he's not in the race anymore. And
so what I am hoping is going forward, we will
really get out there, talk to people and say here's
what we want to do in the future, here are
(03:43):
the issues, here's what we are going to do about it,
and here's our plan. I think that's important because what
I find in the primary is a lot of my
opponents would say, well, I want to do this and
this better, but no plan. And I think voters want
to know, Okay, you're saying you're going to fit this
and that and the other, like for instance, roads, I've
heard a lot of opponents say, are you know we
(04:06):
need to work more on our roads, but none of
them really identified that. In May of twenty twenty, we
passed a two hundred million dollar road bond issue, and
we just reauthorized those bonds in November. So we're going
to have about an additional four hundred million four hundred
million on our roads, and we are rehabilitating our roads.
We will by the end of this year have done
(04:27):
over one thousand lane miles of additional roads in Omaha,
not just pothole repair, but additional rehabilitation. Those that are
running for mayor should know that. They should already know
and realize what we've done and what our plans are
in the future, and if they're going to do better,
then they need to articulate that plan.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
We're speaking with Mayor Jean Stothard here, a mayor of
Omaha who advanced earlier this week in the mayoral primary.
I came from the morning. I moved from the morning
a couple of years ago, and I just kind of
as an appendage to the road conversation. If anybody thinks
Omaha is the only place that has a lot of
road traffic that has bad roads, I mean the point
is I mean, I'll just say it's worse. I mean,
(05:05):
this is a it's a climate, a climate issue and
things like that, and you're just kind of always chasing that, right.
What about that issue though, kind of speaks to the
volume of some of the other successes that you feel
like you've achieved in the last twelve years. Is that
a climate related thing that pretty much every city in
this neck of the woods around the country is dealing with.
(05:25):
Is pretty much the number one issue that people are
talking about, maybe but beyond the streetcar after the primary,
but pretty much the roads kind of seem to take
the cake. What does that tell you about some of
the other things that you have achieved that that's still
like the thing that people are talking about and not
other problems that may have arose over the last tour.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And you know, roads are important, and I always tell
people we try to keep people informed about it because
we have a great website called keep omha Moving dot
com and you could get on there anytime and you
could see the progress of roads construction and road rehabilitation
that's going on now. Our next projects are what the
timeline is for it. So we try to communicate as
(06:05):
much as we can. But I don't think roads are
not the number one issue. They're one of the top three.
Public safety is always number one, always, and that is
my first priority and my first responsibility as mayor. And
last year in twenty twenty four, our crime statistics were unbelievable.
I mean, for a city of right under five hundred
(06:25):
thousand people, you know, our homicide rate was the lowest
it's been in over thirty years. We had nineteen homicides
in a city this big. Put it in perspective, Kansas
City had over one hundred and seventy. You know, that's amazing.
Our violent crime was down twenty one percent. Overall crime
was down nineteen percent. Every crime index, and this is
(06:45):
vetted by the FBI was down last year. And that
just didn't happen one year, it was a fluke. These
have been going down year after year after year. That's
something I'm particularly proud of, and I work really closely
with the police chief on that. Last year, Forbes ranked
Omaha's a number one city to move to in the country,
and safety was one of the issues they looked at,
(07:07):
and the others were affordability and jobs. I'm very proud
of that since I've been mayor, I've taken the unemployment
rate from four percent to two percent. That's really good
record and good momentum. The other one that I said
is taxes. Everybody is concerned with their taxes, and so
am I. That's the number one issue across the state
of Nebraska. You know, I have developed and managed a
(07:30):
one point five billion dollar budget. My opponent hasn't done that.
I've lowered the property tax levy five times, almost twelve percent.
People will say, but my taxes are still going up,
and then you have to just explain, well, that's Douglas
County Assessor raising your valuations. But we're trying to do
our part. So those are the main issues. It's taxes,
(07:51):
it's public safeties number one, and it is the roads.
But again, we have a good story of progress and
successes to talk about. But I can certainly talk about
where I'm going in the future with that too.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, we're speaking with Mayor Jean's author here. Let's go
ahead and talk about that as the campaign kind of
shifts to one versus one and John Ewing we're going
to have on the show tomorrow and certainly he's going
to be kind of telling us more about I'll have
primary questions also how the conversation changes for him in
his campaign, What changes for the messaging here, because, as
(08:25):
you mentioned, you have twelve years of track record as
the mayor of this city. John Ewing's got a lot
of public service as well, but he's not been the
mayor of Omaha before. So how do you kind of
get that messaging across, especially when you're talking about a
specific opponent that you know has been in public service
in Omaha and in Douglas County for a long time, and.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
His role was Yeah, sure he has manned the treasure
but his role is totally different. It's not an executive position.
You know, he has not been responsible for I have
over three thousand employees, not been responsible for creating and
managing you know, a one and a half billion dollar budget.
(09:03):
Those are all things that are different than my role
as mayor and his role as treasure So being mayor
is it's not an easy job, especially for a city
of right under five hundred thousand people. And so I
will continue, like I said, just talking about what we've
done and my knowledge about all of these issues within
(09:24):
the city of Omaha and where I want to take
it in the future to keep this great momentum going
that we have right now. For instance, economic development. You know,
I would ask my opponent, what what have you done?
What is your experience as Douglas County treasure with managing
and taking part in huge economic development projects. Economic development
(09:48):
keeps our finances in the shape that they are in
right now, It raises our economy, It provides jobs. These
are things I am very, very familiar with. And if
if you look at the economic development downtown, Midtown now
and then all over Omaha, it's unbelievable. It's at an
unprecedented pace. And that is because several things. People want
(10:11):
to invest in Omaha because they like the leadership, they
like how we're managing the city, they like what they see.
And also a lot of public private partnerships that I
have developed and you've developed that A mayor develops that
over a period of time. It just doesn't come your
first term. I didn't have hardly any public private partnerships
my first term because philanthropy has got to watch you
(10:34):
and they got to make sure that they could trust
you and you're going to use their money well. Since then,
for instance, with the Riverfront Parks. You know, that's four
hundred million dollars worth of parks that the city put
in sixty and the rest is private and they're still
owned and operated by the City of Omaha. The new
library at seventy second Dodge, you know, that's one hundred
(10:55):
and fifty eight million dollar library the city put in
twenty the rest is private and it's still a city library.
These are things that a mayor with experience that people
trust can continue on with a new mayor doesn't know
a lot about big economic development projects and what we
need to do to keep them going.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Last thing, I'm run a short on time. I know
that a lot of people are just I think excited
to not have to talk about this a whole lot.
But how are we done talking about streetcar? Because I
feel like you and John Ewing are pretty much on
the same page on that project.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well, you know the thing about the street car. The
only thing that John Ewing will say is he would
have put it to a vote, and I would have
put it to a vote too, if the taxpayers were
going to pay for it, And that's what I said
in the very beginning. But the taxpayers are not going
to pay for it. It's basically the development along the
route that is going to be paying for the street car.
You know, there's a saying that how do you pay
for a street car? You build a streetcar, and so
(11:48):
I would I've put bond issues on the ballot all
the time if the taxpayers are going to be paying
for it. I did it in November, and so that's
what John will say. That's different than me. But at
the same time, I don't think it's going to be
an issue where we're going to have yard signs saying
stop the streetcar, because the streetcar shouldn't be stopped at
this point in time. It's an amazing economic development tool
(12:10):
that we are already seeing these successes before the rails
are even in the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Well, we will follow that, and it's gonna be interesting
to see how the race goes because I think I
was saying this, I think it's going to be a
civilized race because two people didn't really do a lot
of mud slinging before the primary, and now we'll have
a general. We talked to John Ewing tomorrow. I'm sure
we'll have you on between now and May thirteenth. Mayor Southard,
thank you so much for stopping in today having me. Well,
we'll chat again soon. I'm sure sure, thanks for having
(12:36):
me
One of those candidates is the current mayor of Omaha,
Jeans Stothard, who is joining us in the studio today.
Mayor Stother, thank you so much for being with us
once again on the show today.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You bet, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Okay. So, I we were talking off the air about
just kind of personally, it kind of like gears up.
I know it's a kind of a different chapter of
this campaign, but what's the emotions. You know, you've gone
through it a few times now, the emotions of primary night,
after all the campaigning and getting the information out and
just now the waiting game of seeing how Omaha votes.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, nothing changes for our campaign because Wednesday we are
right back out there campaigning. But you know, every mayoral
race in Omaha is competitive, and this one's no different.
I didn't expect anything different at all. There's usually at
least a half a dozen candidates. The first time I
ran in twenty thirteen, there were five major candidates, the
same in seventeen, the same in twenty one. And so
(00:51):
you know, your goal is to win the primary, and
in a five way primary, you expect not to get
one hundred percent of the votes or even sixty percent
of the votes, but you just want to win it
and you want to show people that you are ahead.
And it will be a different race now because now
I know who my opponent is going to be. But
I am running because I want to tell people what
(01:12):
I've done in the past and where I'm going in
the future, and that will just continue. You know, I've
identified what the major issues are for the folks in
Omaha and they remain the same, and so you have
to not only talk about what you've done and where
you want to go, but you've got to talk and
articulate the plan you have and how you're going to
achieve it. And I think I can absolutely do that.
(01:32):
Main issues for people in Omaha Number one are taxes,
public safety, and then roads are still a big issue,
and I think we have a really good story to
tell on all three and then what I'm planning to
do to for all of those issues in the future
to keep Omaha moving forward. The momentum I talk about
with my campaign, we have momentum. Let's keep it going forward.
(01:55):
But myself and my team created that momentum over the
last twelve years, and we sure have a good story
to tell.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, so we can go in so many different angles.
I am kind of fascinated about the you know, it's
kind of a decompression for us, because we do change gears,
at least in how we talk about the race. You know,
right you're talking about what all these people stand for
and what they're saying, and everybody kind of has those
bullet points, and now it's a little bit more directive,
you know. And with John Ewing there is quite a
(02:23):
bit of difference in terms of just political background, you
being a Republican and him being a Democrat, even though
we don't vote like that partisan right, right, But there's
what did you learn from this particular primary? You learned
anything about the resulture? Did things kind of play out
the way that you expected them? They played out the
way I expected it, they really did.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
You know. We do a lot of polling. We keep
it all internal. We don't talk about it. It's just
for my own information. But what we saw in the beginning,
what we saw in the middle, and what we saw
at the end was what we hope for and what
we expected. So we knew that we were running strong.
But I always tell my staff and my team, we
never tell about where we are, and we run like
(03:01):
we're ten points behind, because anything can happen with an election.
But the one thing I will say is I look
at this now where it's going to go forward in
the next five weeks between me and John Ewing as
being a race set is focused on issues, and hopefully
it will be focused on what we're going to do
about those issues, identifying them, focusing on that. Campaigns shouldn't
(03:22):
be about all these negative TV attack commercials trying to
mislead voters, trying to lie to voters. I didn't do that.
John Ewing didn't do it in the primary. Another opponent
did that, but he's not in the race anymore. And
so what I am hoping is going forward, we will
really get out there, talk to people and say here's
what we want to do in the future, here are
(03:43):
the issues, here's what we are going to do about it,
and here's our plan. I think that's important because what
I find in the primary is a lot of my
opponents would say, well, I want to do this and
this better, but no plan. And I think voters want
to know, Okay, you're saying you're going to fit this
and that and the other, like for instance, roads, I've
heard a lot of opponents say, are you know we
(04:06):
need to work more on our roads, but none of
them really identified that. In May of twenty twenty, we
passed a two hundred million dollar road bond issue, and
we just reauthorized those bonds in November. So we're going
to have about an additional four hundred million four hundred
million on our roads, and we are rehabilitating our roads.
We will by the end of this year have done
(04:27):
over one thousand lane miles of additional roads in Omaha,
not just pothole repair, but additional rehabilitation. Those that are
running for mayor should know that. They should already know
and realize what we've done and what our plans are
in the future, and if they're going to do better,
then they need to articulate that plan.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
We're speaking with Mayor Jean Stothard here, a mayor of
Omaha who advanced earlier this week in the mayoral primary.
I came from the morning. I moved from the morning
a couple of years ago, and I just kind of
as an appendage to the road conversation. If anybody thinks
Omaha is the only place that has a lot of
road traffic that has bad roads, I mean the point
is I mean, I'll just say it's worse. I mean,
(05:05):
this is a it's a climate, a climate issue and
things like that, and you're just kind of always chasing that, right.
What about that issue though, kind of speaks to the
volume of some of the other successes that you feel
like you've achieved in the last twelve years. Is that
a climate related thing that pretty much every city in
this neck of the woods around the country is dealing with.
(05:25):
Is pretty much the number one issue that people are
talking about, maybe but beyond the streetcar after the primary,
but pretty much the roads kind of seem to take
the cake. What does that tell you about some of
the other things that you have achieved that that's still
like the thing that people are talking about and not
other problems that may have arose over the last tour.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And you know, roads are important, and I always tell
people we try to keep people informed about it because
we have a great website called keep omha Moving dot
com and you could get on there anytime and you
could see the progress of roads construction and road rehabilitation
that's going on now. Our next projects are what the
timeline is for it. So we try to communicate as
(06:05):
much as we can. But I don't think roads are
not the number one issue. They're one of the top three.
Public safety is always number one, always, and that is
my first priority and my first responsibility as mayor. And
last year in twenty twenty four, our crime statistics were unbelievable.
I mean, for a city of right under five hundred
(06:25):
thousand people, you know, our homicide rate was the lowest
it's been in over thirty years. We had nineteen homicides
in a city this big. Put it in perspective, Kansas
City had over one hundred and seventy. You know, that's amazing.
Our violent crime was down twenty one percent. Overall crime
was down nineteen percent. Every crime index, and this is
(06:45):
vetted by the FBI was down last year. And that
just didn't happen one year, it was a fluke. These
have been going down year after year after year. That's
something I'm particularly proud of, and I work really closely
with the police chief on that. Last year, Forbes ranked
Omaha's a number one city to move to in the country,
and safety was one of the issues they looked at,
(07:07):
and the others were affordability and jobs. I'm very proud
of that since I've been mayor, I've taken the unemployment
rate from four percent to two percent. That's really good
record and good momentum. The other one that I said
is taxes. Everybody is concerned with their taxes, and so
am I. That's the number one issue across the state
of Nebraska. You know, I have developed and managed a
(07:30):
one point five billion dollar budget. My opponent hasn't done that.
I've lowered the property tax levy five times, almost twelve percent.
People will say, but my taxes are still going up,
and then you have to just explain, well, that's Douglas
County Assessor raising your valuations. But we're trying to do
our part. So those are the main issues. It's taxes,
(07:51):
it's public safeties number one, and it is the roads.
But again, we have a good story of progress and
successes to talk about. But I can certainly talk about
where I'm going in the future with that too.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Well, we're speaking with Mayor Jean's author here. Let's go
ahead and talk about that as the campaign kind of
shifts to one versus one and John Ewing we're going
to have on the show tomorrow and certainly he's going
to be kind of telling us more about I'll have
primary questions also how the conversation changes for him in
his campaign, What changes for the messaging here, because, as
(08:25):
you mentioned, you have twelve years of track record as
the mayor of this city. John Ewing's got a lot
of public service as well, but he's not been the
mayor of Omaha before. So how do you kind of
get that messaging across, especially when you're talking about a
specific opponent that you know has been in public service
in Omaha and in Douglas County for a long time, and.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
His role was Yeah, sure he has manned the treasure
but his role is totally different. It's not an executive position.
You know, he has not been responsible for I have
over three thousand employees, not been responsible for creating and
managing you know, a one and a half billion dollar budget.
(09:03):
Those are all things that are different than my role
as mayor and his role as treasure So being mayor
is it's not an easy job, especially for a city
of right under five hundred thousand people. And so I
will continue, like I said, just talking about what we've
done and my knowledge about all of these issues within
(09:24):
the city of Omaha and where I want to take
it in the future to keep this great momentum going
that we have right now. For instance, economic development. You know,
I would ask my opponent, what what have you done?
What is your experience as Douglas County treasure with managing
and taking part in huge economic development projects. Economic development
(09:48):
keeps our finances in the shape that they are in
right now, It raises our economy, It provides jobs. These
are things I am very, very familiar with. And if
if you look at the economic development downtown, Midtown now
and then all over Omaha, it's unbelievable. It's at an
unprecedented pace. And that is because several things. People want
(10:11):
to invest in Omaha because they like the leadership, they
like how we're managing the city, they like what they see.
And also a lot of public private partnerships that I
have developed and you've developed that A mayor develops that
over a period of time. It just doesn't come your
first term. I didn't have hardly any public private partnerships
my first term because philanthropy has got to watch you
(10:34):
and they got to make sure that they could trust
you and you're going to use their money well. Since then,
for instance, with the Riverfront Parks. You know, that's four
hundred million dollars worth of parks that the city put
in sixty and the rest is private and they're still
owned and operated by the City of Omaha. The new
library at seventy second Dodge, you know, that's one hundred
(10:55):
and fifty eight million dollar library the city put in
twenty the rest is private and it's still a city library.
These are things that a mayor with experience that people
trust can continue on with a new mayor doesn't know
a lot about big economic development projects and what we
need to do to keep them going.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Last thing, I'm run a short on time. I know
that a lot of people are just I think excited
to not have to talk about this a whole lot.
But how are we done talking about streetcar? Because I
feel like you and John Ewing are pretty much on
the same page on that project.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well, you know the thing about the street car. The
only thing that John Ewing will say is he would
have put it to a vote, and I would have
put it to a vote too, if the taxpayers were
going to pay for it, And that's what I said
in the very beginning. But the taxpayers are not going
to pay for it. It's basically the development along the
route that is going to be paying for the street car.
You know, there's a saying that how do you pay
for a street car? You build a streetcar, and so
(11:48):
I would I've put bond issues on the ballot all
the time if the taxpayers are going to be paying
for it. I did it in November, and so that's
what John will say. That's different than me. But at
the same time, I don't think it's going to be
an issue where we're going to have yard signs saying
stop the streetcar, because the streetcar shouldn't be stopped at
this point in time. It's an amazing economic development tool
(12:10):
that we are already seeing these successes before the rails
are even in the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Well, we will follow that, and it's gonna be interesting
to see how the race goes because I think I
was saying this, I think it's going to be a
civilized race because two people didn't really do a lot
of mud slinging before the primary, and now we'll have
a general. We talked to John Ewing tomorrow. I'm sure
we'll have you on between now and May thirteenth. Mayor Southard,
thank you so much for stopping in today having me. Well,
we'll chat again soon. I'm sure sure, thanks for having
(12:36):
me
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!