The fight over abortion access in Nebraska has drawn millions of campaign finance dollars to the state and made a battleground out of street corners and parking lots in Lincoln as the deadline for dueling petition drives to gain ballot access looms.
Paid circulators armed with petitions and clipboards have grown increasingly prevalent in the Capital City as two groups — one that seeks to expand abortion access in Nebraska and another that aims to enshrine the state's 12-week ban into the state's constitution — make their final push to gather valid signatures from 10% of Nebraska's registered voters before the July 3 deadline to crack November's ballot.
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A coalition of abortion rights advocates known as Protect Our Rights is circulating a petition to enshrine "a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability" into the state's constitution. The group launched its petition drive in November after state lawmakers voted in May 2023 to ban most abortions after 12 weeks gestational age.
Anti-abortion advocates formed the Protect Women and Children Committee and launched a rival ballot campaign in March that seeks to amend Nebraska's constitution to match what lawmakers passed last year, barring most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.
A third petition seeking to recognize fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as people began circulating last month but is staffed entirely by volunteers. No petition drives run exclusively by volunteers have been successful in Nebraska in recent years.
And unrelated petitions — including those that seek to ensure paid sick leave for all Nebraska workers, legalize medical cannabis, upend the state's tax system and partially overturn a new law providing tax dollars for private school scholarships — continue to circulate statewide.
But no ballot campaigns have attracted more money than the two mainstream abortion access initiatives, whose paid and volunteer circulators have enveloped high-traffic hot spots in Lincoln in recent weeks as the battle over abortion access in Nebraska has perhaps become more publicized than ever.
"Particularly in the cities, the number of petition gatherers is — it's huge," said Gavin Geis, the executive director for Common Cause Nebraska, a transparency-in-government advocacy group that closely watches campaign spending.
"I don't think we've ever seen this many people out collecting petitions, on both sides of the equation, ever," he said.
In May alone, the two dueling abortion access campaigns combined to spend more than $1 million, according to their latest campaign finance disclosure filings. Records of both groups' June spending won't be available until next month.
Protect Our Rights — which has been funded in large part by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, the ACLU of Nebraska and Nebraska Appleseed — spent $521,299 in May, according to the filings.
More than 75% of the coalition's May expenditures went to Landslide Political, a Utah-based signature collection company that Protect Our Rights paid $400,000 to May 17.
The coalition, which also spent $73,200 on polling in May, has spent $1.65 million since Jan. 1 and around $2.1 million since it launched its petition effort in November, according to finance disclosure filings.
Protect Women and Children, meanwhile, has been funded almost entirely by three men, including U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, Nebraska's former governor and a Republican megadonor who has personally given $1 million to the campaign seeking to enshrine the state's 12-week abortion ban.
He appeared at four petition signing events across eastern Nebraska in support of the effort Thursday.
Thomas and Shawn Peed, both members of the family behind Sandhills Global, have each donated $500,000 to the coalition, which has raised just north of $2 million, according to group's latest filing. Gov. Jim Pillen's campaign has contributed $645 to the effort.
The group spent $572,983 in May, including $553,703 on "field strategy and staffing" from Missouri-based Vanguard Field Strategies. Protect Women and Children has spent $983,759 since it launched its campaign in March.
Organizers with both Protect Our Rights and Protect Women and Children declined to say last week how close their respective groups are to the signature count — about 123,000 registered voters — required to reach the ballot. The groups also need signatures from 5% of voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
"Nebraskans are energized to support this grassroots campaign," Allie Berry, the campaign manager for Protect Our Rights, said in a statement Friday. "Hundreds of volunteers have been collecting signatures in communities across the state. Our focus right now is making sure that every supporter who wants to sign has an opportunity to do so in the next week.â€
In her own statement Friday, Brenna Grasz, the treasurer of the Protect Women and Children Committee, said the group has "had outstanding engagement from volunteers in every county across Nebraska, and great response to paid circulation efforts."
"We are confident our efforts will be successful as we head into the final push," she said.
The groups will likely have to turn in far more than 123,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's Office to reach the ballot. Around 15% to 30% of signatures are typically invalidated, often because signees aren't registered to vote or fail to date their signatures, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bob Evnen's office said.
Geis, who said Common Cause "is of two minds" on Nebraska's petition process, said the amount the two groups have poured into their campaigns indicate they are "most likely gonna get on (the ballot) and we'll be voting on it in November."
"The amount of money spent is a good sign, just because it puts a gatherer in front of so many people, and that's the biggest challenge in a petition drive is just getting in front of enough people," he said, later adding: "You don't spend that type of cash on a whim."
Such lavish spending on petition drives marks "a trick situation," Geis said.
"On the one hand, I think direct democracy and ballot work is valuable," he said. "It puts issues before the voters that maybe the Legislature can't or won't handle. That's great."
"But then, at the same time, it does lead to much more spending in our elections," he said, adding: "It's another avenue for wealthy special interests to influence our elections. Sometimes, that's for very important things that people need to have a say in."
The sheer volume of petitions circulating in Nebraska "can be confusing for people signing," said Geis, who said signature gatherers "are not always following the rules" that require circulators to accurately represent the petitions they're championing.
A spokeswoman for Evnen's office said the Secretary of State has received six complaints about Protect Our Rights circulators and three about Protect Women and Children gathers, all of which have been related to circulators not reading a petition's "object statement." Nebraska's Supreme Court in 2020 to read a petition's object statement verbatim.
"That's a big takeaway from this time: maybe there needs to be clearer rules and stricter enforcement of what is exactly required from signature gatherers," he said. "Especially when you have them in front of the library and in front of your church and at the farmer's market and at the grocery store, right? Everywhere you turn, there is somebody asking you to sign a petition."