Minutes before her window to formally file for reelection closed, Nebraska state Sen. Julie Slama announced that she will not seek a second full term in the Legislature this year.
The 27-year-old lawmaker from Dunbar and newly minted lawyer will instead begin a new chapter as a private attorney "and focus on the joys and responsibilities of being a new mom," she said in a statement posted to social media.
"It has been the honor and privilege of my lifetime to serve my neighbors in Southeast Nebraska," Slama said, thanking her family and pointing to legislation she championed in her single full term as a senator, such as bringing voter ID requirements to Nebraska's elections and infrastructure upgrades throughout her district.
"In January 2025, District 1 will have a new state senator," she wrote. "Until then — I'm going to keep fighting the good fight for Southeast Nebraska in our Legislature."
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Slama's announcement marks a surprising end to her tenure in the Legislature, which began in 2019 when then-Gov. Pete Ricketts appointed the then-22-year-old law student to replace former Sen. Dan Watermeier, who resigned from the body after winning a seat on Nebraska's Public Service Commission.
She ran for a full term in 2020, beating Janet Palmtag with 68% of the vote in a heated Republican primary that saw much of the state's GOP establishment back Slama over Palmtag, a long-time state party volunteer.
Palmtag in 2021 sued the Nebraska Republican Party over political mailers the party sent to voters in the lead-up to the election that claimed Palmtag had "broke the law & lost her real estate license," neither of which were true.
Nebraska's Supreme Court revived Palmtag's lawsuit last month after a Lancaster County District Court judge had dismissed it in 2022.
Slama, who did not return a phone call seeking comment Thursday evening, had given little public indication that she planned to end her political career before Thursday's announcement — though she had repeatedly brought her young son, Clyde, to work with her this year, routinely carrying him with her on the legislative floor.
And she had grown increasingly at odds with the new-age Nebraska GOP, which was taken over by conservative activists in 2022, when establishment party leaders loyal to Ricketts were unseated at a contentious state party convention since described as a "coup."
In a speech on the legislative floor earlier this month, Slama called the Nebraska GOP "broke" and, almost immediately, faced attacks from nameless far-right accounts on X, the social media website more commonly known as Twitter.
Her comments came as she and 25 other conservative state senators circulated a letter endorsing Nebraska's federal incumbents in a break with the state party, which withheld endorsements from the state's five congressional officeholders.
Slama, too, had been critical of hyper-online conservatives who had taken to hurling personal attacks at the lawmaker over her support of establishment Republicans, including Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.
In response to one such attack from an anonymized social media account that suggested Slama wasn't sufficiently conservative and had "no maternal instinct" because she had utilized child care rather than watching her son herself, : "And we wonder why the Republican Party is struggling to draw young women voters?"
As a lawmaker, Slama championed deeply conservative causes, helping usher in the age of voter ID requirements in Nebraska, where voters will be required to show a photo ID at the ballot box for the first time in May.
In one memorable moment in last year's contentious legislative session, Slama, then pregnant with her son, left a local hospital May 19  on the floor of the Legislature to cast the deciding vote to advance LB574, further restricting access to abortion in the state and banning gender-affirming surgeries for minors in a single vote.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers formed a wall around Slama to shield her from TV cameras as she cast the consequential vote.
Filing deadline otherwise quiet
Slama's decision not to run for reelection marked the only surprise that accompanied Thursday's filing deadline for incumbents hoping to appear on May's primary ballot.
The 10 other incumbent state senators who are eligible to seek office again this year have all filed to run in their respective districts, according to published by Nebraska's Secretary of State's Office.
That includes five lawmakers — Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue and Sens. John Cavanaugh, Jen Day and Terrell McKinney of Omaha — who entered the Legislature for the first time after winning elections in 2020.
Four more senators — Sen. Rob Dover of Norfolk, Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha and Sens. Beau Ballard and Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln — are incumbents but will run for their respective seats in the Legislature for the first time this year.
Ricketts appointed Kauth and Dover to the body in 2022, while Gov. Jim Pillen picked Ballard and Bosn to fill vacant seats after he was elected governor in November 2022.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ray Aguilar of Grand Island, the longest-serving member of the Legislature, will seek his fourth full term as a lawmaker this year.
He was initially appointed to the body in 1999 and won the right to keep his seat in 2000, serving two terms that ended in 2008 before returning for his third full term in 2020.
In Nebraska, state senators are only allowed to serve two consecutive terms in the Legislature but can return after waiting at least four years to run again.
Thirteen lawmakers are term limited this year.