After stepping up, senators step aside until next session

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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star

Come Monday morning, Sen. Lavon Heidemann, chairman of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, will be moving cattle to a summer pasture.

Sen. Ron Raikes, who shepherded the Education Committee through the Omaha metro schools minefield, will be pouring concrete for a feedlot, if it isn’t too muddy. 

Sen. Abbie Cornett, who helped broker major changes to the state’s workers’ compensation system, will be moving boxes into a newly purchased house and trying to decide how to deal with an avocado-colored sink and kitchen appliances.

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Nebraska’s citizen legislators ended their full-time stint as state senators in Lincoln on Thursday and returned to their private lives — to relax, or earn a living.

Last week, senators and others involved in the daily operations of the 2007 session looked back at a pivotal year, the first in which term limits culled a number of veteran senators from the flock.

And the newly elected crop, 20 senators with no experience and two who had served in earlier years, were the heroes of the session.

Everyone thought this group would have a slow start, said lobbyist Trent Nowka.

That didn’t happen. New senators took to the microphone early and helped behind the scenes to negotiate contentious issues such as water and education.

Larry Ruth, a veteran lobbyist who also teaches political science at Nebraska Wesleyan University, looked back to the 1937 session when Nebraska moved to a single-house, nonpartisan Legislature. Then, a group of 43 senators, many veterans of the two-house partisan body, made the new system work.

Seventy years later, there was another change as term limits turned the body into amateur hour. And this year, freshmen senators, who in past years would have mostly watched and listened, needed to become heavily involved quickly.

“We have an amazing ability to adapt,” Ruth said. “There were sea changes in the legislative body. But I don’t see any diminution to the work product and the ability to get things done.”

They rose to the occasion, he said, counting off major issues addressed — from water law to tax cuts.

The freshmen senators were a talented group, according to veteran senators and lobbyists.  And they  showed their skills early on.

“Since virtually one-half of the Legislature was new, I don’t think we felt intimidated about jumping in,”   said Sen. Steve Lathrop, a freshman senator from Omaha.

New senators had a steep learning curve this year, said veteran Sen. Pat Engel of South Sioux City. He saw them begin to learn early the art of compromise, necessary in a body that requires getting at least 25 people on board to get something done.

That means learning to compromise without harming your basic principles, he said.

And it means learning to respect, even like, people with whom you disagree. Freshman Sen. Kent Rogert of Tekamah described that lesson.

“I’ve learned that supporting a fellow member on a bill and fighting that same member on a different bill in the same five minutes is common, necessary and by no means personal.”

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.