Sen. works to unseat colleagues

LINCOLN — Though state senators are elected on a nonpartisan basis, politics is far from absent in the Nebraska Legislature.

But several lawmakers are upset that a young colleague is helping campaigns to defeat two senators in this year's elections.

State Sen. Tyson Larson of O'Neill is helping his mother, Robyn, in her quest to unseat Sen. Paul Lambert of Plattsmouth in eastern Nebraska's District 2.

Larson, 25, is also helping guide the campaign of Brook Curtiss, a Plainview, Neb., newspaper owner seeking to replace Sen. Kate Sullivan of Cedar Rapids in District 41.

While there are no written rules about lawmakers getting involved in political races, past and current state senators say helping to defeat colleagues by running challengers' campaigns offends the collegiality of the nonpartisan body.

"It may be one of the unwritten rules of the Legislature that we don't eat our own," said Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha, who, like Larson, is a Republican.

McCoy introduced a bill Wednesday to prohibit elected officeholders from being paid for campaign consulting or management services.

He said he could see conflicts of interest arising if a senator is paid to run the campaign of someone else running for Legislature.

Volunteering is different, McCoy said.

But he said if a senator, as a paid campaign worker, solicited contributions from the same lobbyists and interest groups he deals with every day, it would create problems — particularly since part of the money raised would come back to him as salary.

"I think we take the nonpartisan nature of the body seriously," he said. "That's why the Legislature has been around for 75 years."

Sen. Mike Flood, speaker of the Legislature, said he spoke to Larson on Wednesday after more than a dozen senators from both political parties complained.

"This is not the way to win friends and influence people in a legislative environment," Flood said. Senators, he said, are elected to represent their constituents, not to turn a profit.

Being too political has never been a path to popularity at the State Capitol.

But generally, there's little complaint when a lawmaker gets involved in legislative races where there is no incumbent. And helping a colleague win re-election gets a different review than working to defeat her.

What about helping to launch a campaign?

Last month, the names of Sens. Steve Lathrop and Jeremy Nordquist, both of Omaha, appeared on an invitation to a campaign kickoff event for Ron Hartnett, who is challenging Sen. Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins in northeast Nebraska's District 17.

Both Lathrop and Nordquist, who are Democrats, said that their names were included on the invitation by mistake and that neither had given permission.

They said state senators should not work to unseat their colleagues.

"That gets into an area that creates hard feelings and makes the cooperation that's necessary down here more difficult," said Lathrop, who apologized to Bloomfield.

Larson said he will not accept payment from his mother or Curtiss for his campaign work.

Curtiss is a friend who came to him for help, Larson said, adding that he did not recruit Curtiss to run against Sullivan.

Larson said he didn't want to violate any ethics rules, but he doesn't see a problem helping his mother and a friend win election.

"I'm a common citizen, too," he said.

Larson, who has a degree in political science from Georgetown University, upset incumbent Cap Dierks in 2010. Larson's campaign skills, which included an exhaustive door-to-door effort, were part of the reason.

He has helped in other campaigns and said he was paid as a consultant in a recent Nebraska school bond issue vote. He declined to say what town, but he said the proposal lost by three votes.

Larson said McCoy's proposal was "overbearing," because it would prevent him not only from paid work on legislative campaigns but on those outside the body, including school bond issue and county board elections.

Contact the writer:

402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com

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