It is Primary Election day in Omaha. The two top finishers in the mayoral and city council races will advance to the General Election in May. University of Nebraska - Omaha Political Scientist Paul Landow says there are many new faces showing up in the races for city council.

Landow says, “That indicates that young people may be re-engaging and also some of these young people may have a future in politics. I don’t see them beating the incumbents today. Once the interest is sparked the interest sticks around and they may be future office holders.” There are seven city council districts and four of those running are incumbents.

The race for Omaha’s mayor has been a bit heated at times. Incumbent Mayor Jean Stothert has four opponents, including former State Senator Heath Mello. Others running for mayor include Taylor Royal, Christopher Geary and Ean Mikale.

The Douglas County Election Commission predicts a 23% voter turnout today.

There were a lot of questions early this morning at a Senator Ben Sasse Town Hall meeting at Elkhorn South High School. There were “boos” and cheers throughout the hour long meeting. Cindy Maxwell Ostdick attended the town hall was surprised at the turnout and surprised to see opposition.

Maxwell Osdisk says, “I was surprised that there were so many people that were brave enough to come out and disagree. It seems like here in Nebraska it is very, very Republican and follow the party line. I think a lot of people are frustrated because even if they voted for President Trump, most people didn’t anticipate the drastic laws they are trying to pass.”

During the presidential election last fall we heard a lot about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. “Build a wall” was chanted at a number of President Trump’s rallies. Today, Senator Sasse said our nation’s defense is a huge issue but the wall may not be the right step. He said, “I believe we have to have border security. I believe in the fundamental purpose in our national government is to provide for the common defense. That is different in believing specific solutions are the right solutions. We need to have better border security on the southern and northern walls. The particular wall is not the most effect means of border security.” There was applause and cheers after that statement.

About 700 people attended the town hall that lasted an hour. Other issues addressed included the budget, the military, health care and environmental concerns.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey

Back in the 1990’s, then U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey was a champion when it came to health care reform. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says the American Health Care Act says it keeps the GOP’s promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. There is a lot of criticism even among fellow Republicans who disagree what the next step should be.

Kerrey says this sweeping change in health care is missing one important ingredient.

Kerrey says, “It is a good faith effort to come up a replacement. The problem he is going to have is that he has got significant numbers of his own party that will oppose almost anything to replace. They just want to repeal. My own experience with health care is if you are going to get it done it has to be bipartisan. It was a big mistake that Democrats made in 2010 because if it isn’t bipartisan it is so easy to misrepresent it.”

Kerrey says the lack of bipartisanship in Washington is causing progress in many areas to grind to a halt. Many people are saying the fighting on Capitol Hill is the worse it has ever been and it is just vicious. Getting that to stop isn’t going to be easy. Kerrey says, “I think it is entirely up to the people. We are going to have to object when individuals of our own party misrepresent, particularly when they say things that aren’t true and they throw these rhetorical bombs because they can terrify people.” He says social media isn’t doing some politicians any favors because a small number of people can basically “troll you into oblivion.”

An accusation of wiretapping of Trump Tower prior to the election is sparking a lot of controversy on Capitol Hill. U.S. Senator Ben Sasse says this is a case where you have to “follow the dots” in order to get the answers.

Sasse says, “I sort of think about it as a decision tree, about what we know and don’t know. First let’s just state there is a lot all of us don’t know. Then inside the universe of stuff that I know, some of that is classified so I can’t legally talk about it but I think we can talk rationally and deliberately about the decision tree from where the president started.”

Sasse says either there was or there weren’t wiretaps of the Trump campaign or organization last year. If we pursue President Trump’s theory there were wiretaps then we have to look into whether they were legal or illegal. If they were illegal, Sasse says Trump should tell everyone what kind of wiretaps there were and how he knows this. Sasse says, “If there were illegal wiretaps of a campaign in the United States that is a massive crisis. We should pursue that. We should understand what the president knows and how he knows it and we should figure out who did what wrong, when, why and with what accomplices.”

There are also legal wiretaps. Sasse says there could of been on under a Title 3 authority or more likely from the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court which is part of the Judicial Branch. That court would have found there were legal reasons for a wiretap. If that was the case, a lot of information would have been presented to a judge to allow that to happen. Sasse says we should also be able to see that information as well.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions recused himself from further investigation into President Trump’s campaign and contact with Russian officials. This stems from Sessions stating during his confirmation hearing that he did not have contact with Russian diplomats before and during the election process. Nebraska’s 2nd District Congressman Don Bacon is defending Sessions saying, “The more I look into this it is a big to-do about nothing.”

Congressman Bacon says he has been in office for two months and had about four sets of ambassadors come into his office already. That is the duty of a member of Congress. He says this was part of then Senator Sessions job and he doesn’t think politics or the election were part of the discussion.

Congressman Bacon says, “I’ve had the Australian guys come by. Taiwanese. Just a variety of diplomats come in for 15 or 20 minutes. On a typical given day we do about eight to ten office calls with different people coming in during a 12 to 14 hour day. I think it is real easy to not remember a 15 minute ‘touch-and-go’ and I think in this case he is being honest and not talking about the election.”

However, Congressman Bacon says Sessions should have been more careful with his answers during the confirmation hearing.

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert is reacting to accusations made by Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning.

Stothert says much of the disagreement stems from a plan that would have established a city-county crime lab at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Douglas County Sheriff’s Office currently runs the crime lab. Stothert says prior to those discussions back in 2016 the two shared a good relationship.

Stothert says, “I respect Sheriff Dunning and had his endorsement last time but I feel our relationship had been excellent until we started discussions about the merged crime lab.”

Dunning says he was brought in on the tail-end of conversations about merging the lab that is currently run by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department. Dunning says he blocked Stothert’s calls because she was yelling at him. Stothert says she didn’t know that Dunning had blocked her calls because she hadn’t tried to call him in a long time. She calls that action irresponsible. She says if there was a public safety issue and the county sheriff blocks the mayor from placing a call is concerning.

Stothert says, “I did call him several times after the crime lab discussions started. I left voice mails but he never returned my call at all. All of the voice mails were cordial. I can guarantee you I never called and yelled at Sheriff Dunning.”

Dunning also expressed concern that Omaha is annexing more subdivisions but there is not enough police to handle the expansion. He says it was just last month there was an accident that deputies handled because the nearest police officer was more than 150 blocks away. Stothert disagrees saying, “Things we do before we even make our annexation plans public or give it to the city council is that the police chief and the fire chief signs off on it. One of the main things we make sure is we have enough police officers, especially in west Omaha particularly because that is the area we are annexing.”

There seems to be some trouble in River City - or rather Omaha. Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning endorsed former State Senator Heath Mello in Omaha’s mayoral race. Dunning supported Mello’s opponent and current Mayor Jean Stothert in the 2013 race. Apparently the relationship between Dunning and Stothert soured. Dunning part of this stems from the city and county wanting to merge the crime lab - that is currently operated by his department.

Dunning says, “She was trying to convince me on the crime lab that there were others that started those meetings, not her - when in fact that is not true. I was upset obviously because they started meeting in October or November of 2015. I wasn’t invited to the table until the last week of February of 2016. Obviously I wasn’t happy about that because what are you doing talking about my crime lab when I’m not there.”

Apparently the situation escalated and Dunning says he blocked Stothert’s calls and texts. Dunning says, “What degree of yelling is there. She yelled and wanted to argue and I didn’t want to do that anymore.” However, Dunning says the city can still contact him as he did not block contact from Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer’s number or Stothert’s chief of staff. Stothert denies the accusations.

Dunning says he is also concerned Stothert continues to annex subdivision of the county but there is not enough police protection to go around. Dunning says, “I have no criticism of men and women of the Omaha police department or Todd Schmaderer for that matter. They do a great job but I don’t think they have been given all the resources they need to do their job. Without those additional resources all they can do is respond to calls. They are not going to have the ability to be proactive.”

Dunning says his deputies responded to an accident last month in the western part of Douglas County because the closest Omaha police cruiser was more than 150 blocks away.

There is perhaps an easier explanation for the current mood in Washington than you might assume.

Congressman Adrian Smith, a Republican, suggests the abrupt nature of the election results caught Democrats and their leader in the House off guard.

“A change in administration and a change from an expectation of what the election would be; I mean I think Nancy Pelosi was hoping to take back the House and the Senate and have the White House. So when she was so shocked that none of those happened, that causes a response that is a little noisy,” Smith tells Nebraska Radio Network.

Smith has some doubts about the sincerity of all the demonstrations that have been taking place in the nation’s capital.

“A lot of it is to be expected, but I’m anxious for things to kind of settle down,” Smith says. “I do get a little concerned that there is opposition for the sake of opposition. It appeared that the placards that were printed up before the Supreme Court nomination; it was a kind of fill-in-the-blank; stop - blank - whoever that would be. So they filled that in.”