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"Damaged, but not broken."

That's Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad's assessment of the Nebraska Legislature following adjournment of a bitter 88-day session that sharply divided most Republican and Democratic members, triggered an onslaught of filibusters and plunged senators into a long and weary series of night sessions.

"Very few senators want a repeat of the 2023 session," Conrad said during an interview over coffee at Cultiva's location across the street from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's East Campus.

"We have nowhere to go but up and to go up together," the Democratic senator said.

Conrad returned to the Legislature this year after being term-limited out of office in 2015 following two consecutive terms. She was elected in 2022 to represent north Lincoln's District 46, resigning her position as executive director of ACLU of Nebraska and returning to the Legislature as a leading Democratic voice.

"I really feel we probably have set the low-water mark," Conrad said.

"We can find a lot ways to work together ... and make a concerted effort to start to figure out where consensus might lie for the next session," she said.

"I'm sensing a willingness to do that across the political spectrum," Conrad said.

Perhaps the sharpest divisions this session erupted over human rights, she said, including what Conrad and others viewed as "government interfering with parental rights and access to medical care."

At issue, she said, was what she described as "identity and humanness."

It was Omaha Sen. Kathleen Kauth's bill (LB574) to ban minors from receiving gender-affirming procedures that kicked off the marathon filibuster of the legislative session launched by Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha. 

That bill eventually was amended to ban only gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youths and it was passed by the Legislature with the addition of a 12-week abortion ban in Nebraska.

The presence of only 49 state senators in Nebraska's unique non-partisan, one-house legislature opens a door to developing the kind of personal relationships that is not there for senators and representatives in other state legislatures with their multiple numbers, Conrad noted.

And she said she plans to continue to pursue that task of getting to know and understand one another better.

"Our legislature has been a firewall from the most radical politics," Conrad said, serving as "a moderating force" at a time when national politics has lunged into an explosive battleground.

"Nebraskans are right of center," she said, "but not interested in partisan dysfunction."

That's where a nonpartisan, citizen legislature can meet the moment, Conrad said.

And all of that is what lured her back to the Legislature, she said.

"I felt I like I had to try to make a positive difference," Conrad said.

"There are so many common-ground issues that bind us together."

The 2023 legislative session was "painful and challenging," Conrad said. 

But it can be the outlier, not the norm, she said. 

"We need to fix a lot of the brokenness," Conrad said.