Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper

Hassebrook makes campaign stop in Sidney

Chuck Hassebrook has spent his whole life in public service—36 years at the Center for Rural Affairs and 18 years on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. These divergent paths, both rural and urban, converged on the gubernatorial campaign trail.

Though the race for governor is still in its early stages, Hassebrook already has volunteers in all 93 counties across the state. He has visited 50 of the counties and plans to travel to 75 by Thanksgiving.

Because of his involvement at the Center for Rural Affairs and working to revitalize rural America, Hassebrook has made it a high priority to spend time in western Nebraska, and area he believes can benefit most from strategies that he has championed.

“In particular, I want to do more to create good jobs and genuine opportunity for every Nebraskan in every community from the Missouri River in Omaha, to Sidney, to the North Platte River higher up in the panhandle,” Hassebrook said during at stop in town on Tuesday.

There are three priorities in Hassebrook’s campaign—education, wind development and small business development.

“One of the things that I think is the most critical is addressing the fact that we have a lot of kids in this state who start kindergarten already so far behind that the odds are against them ever catching up and succeeding in school. These are Nebraska kids, so we all have a stake in fixing that, because if these kids can’t succeed in school, they’re going to hold back the rest of the class,” Hassebrook explained.

There are many good jobs in Nebraska—jobs for welders, jobs for people who write code for computer programming, jobs for electricians, which often go unfilled because people are not properly trained. The Democratic candidate wants to work with schools, employers and community colleges to gear up job training programs.

Putting more of a focus on training would allow jobs crucial to our economy to be filled while also ensuring more people receive a middle-class income.

Nebraska has the third greatest potential of any state in the union to generate electricity from wind. According to Hassebrook, Nebraska has discouraged wind development in the past, which is why the state with the best opportunity to benefit from wind has the fewest turbines. As governor, he plans to make this a priority, which will also create good jobs and good opportunities.

With the use of the Internet to market products, Hassebrook hopes to make Nebraska the premier place to start a small business. He wants to do more to supports small businesses and remove some of the biases of regulations against them.

But, Hassebrook has another reason for running for governor.

“One of the things I’d like people to know is that in part what motivates me to do this work is my faith because my faith tells me that we all have a responsibility to our neighbors, whether they live across the street or across the state,” Hassebrook said.

“I’m from rural Nebraska. I’ve spent my entire life in small communities and my time on the Board of Regions was spent representing a very rural part of the state—the northeastern region. I’m a small town, rural guy,” Hassebrook said.

 

Reader Comments(0)