The 2020 Legislature's most enticing battleground might turn out to be the $266 million in unanticipated state revenue that may be available this biennium.
Gov. Pete Ricketts has made his position clear and he doubled down on it in an online column last week.
"With the exception of a couple urgently needed priorities, such as flood recovery funding, growth in revenue should go toward property tax relief," the governor stated.
"The state's two-year budget has been set," Ricketts said.
That position will clash with likely proposals from some state senators to use some of that unanticipated revenue to increase funding for prison reform, to reduce the pressure on rising tuition costs at the University of Nebraska and other institutions of higher education with additional state funding, to boost support for community colleges, to increase the state's depleted cash reserve fund.
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Along with other possibilities.Â
The state's two-year budget was shaped with earlier and more conservative revenue projections in mind.
"We cannot take for granted that the surplus revenues will go toward tax relief," the governor cautioned in his weekly column.
"Some special interests would rather spend the money on big government," Ricketts said.
Looks like a battle is brewing.
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Gotta imagine a huge voter turnout in Nebraska in 2020.
Transformational ballot initiatives, perhaps including substantial, game-changing property tax relief, the advent of casino gambling at Nebraska horse racing tracks and legalization of medical marijuana, may join a presidential contest that essentially will center on approval or disapproval of President Donald Trump.
It's hard to guess at this point who the Democratic nominee may be, but it may not matter that much.
This vote probably will boil down to pro-Trump or anti-Trump, for or against a president who probably will have been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate long before the November vote.
As always, the outcome will be influenced by turnout. And probably heavily so.
It's hard to imagine that dependably Republican Nebraska could be in play. The odds of that seem long. The state hasn't been competitive for a half-century.
West of Lincoln is solid GOP territory buttressed by a history of strong voter participation.
Lincoln and Omaha are likely to vote against Trump, but voter participation is lagging in some of the big-city Democratic neighborhoods up the road.
In 2016, both Lancaster and Douglas counties voted for Hillary Clinton, although the edge in Lancaster County was razor-thin. Within the two cities, the urban margin for Clinton was considerably larger.
All polls and voter surveys should be approached warily, but the results of one ongoing survey in Nebraska are intriguing.
Morning Consult found 56-33 approval for Trump in Nebraska when he took office in January of 2017. A year later, it was 51-45. In January of 2019, the results were 48-48.
The latest survey showed 46% approval, 51% disapproval as of Nov. 1.
Is that an accurate depiction of the political landscape in the state? Who knows? But it's the trend line that probably is the most interesting and compelling factor here.
Much will have changed in the volatile world of the Trump presidency by the time voters go to the polls less than a year from now.
It would be a stretch at this point to guess that Nebraska might actually be in play, but it probably is safe to say that the 2nd Congressional District presidential electoral vote in metropolitan Omaha definitely will be.
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Finishing up:
* Yes, it did take a lot of hard work and money, but Lincoln's Star City Holiday Parade — now gone for a decade — was a spectacular and defining community event. And a Christmastime gift to Lincoln's children.
* Deb Fischer, Scott Lautenbaugh, Heath Mello and Danielle Conrad were among the members of the Legislature's 2011 redistricting committee. Which heavy-hitters will be on the 2021 committee when it divides and distributes political power for the coming decade?
* Redistricting is the one moment when political parties openly surface in Nebraska's non-partisan Legislature while, across the street and behind the scenes, maps show up on tables in the Governor's Residence.
* Does Vice Admiral Ted Carter, the new University of Nebraska president, realize he'll have a navy on hand once he settles into his new landlocked surroundings? The Great Navy of the State of Nebraska was created in 1930 and its members, appointed by the governor, are all admirals.
* What holds some Republican officeholders in Nebraska dutifully bound to President Trump? Judges. Perhaps, a distant second, tax cuts. But it's hard to make a persuasive case for trade after all the lost ground and lost markets for agriculture.
* "These are the times that try men's souls," Thomas Paine said. He must have been a Husker fan.