Gov. candidate Ricketts makes stop in Sidney

Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts visited Sidney on Wednesday to touch base with residents about problems they wanted fixed and to also give his perspective on the race's issues.

According to the most recent New York Times/CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker poll, Ricketts is up 20 points, but said he feels the job isn't done.

"We're running like we're 10 points behind," said Ricketts, a Republican. "We can't take anything for granted, and we're working very hard traveling all across the state talking to as many people as we can."

Ricketts told the small crowd gathered at the Sidney Public Library that he firmly believes his background in business will help him as governor.

"Being governor is an executive position and I was a chief operating officer at Ameritrade, which is an executive position," he said. "The way you're successful in business is by putting together plans and getting the right people on board, and that's the same thing we have to do for state government. We were able to grow Ameritrade and thats what we want to do for Nebraska."

In the Nov. 4 election, Rickets will square off against Democratic candidate Chuck Hasslebrook and Libertarian Mark Elworth. Current governor Dave Heineman is term-limited and cannot run for a third consecutive term.

Ricketts said has extensive plans in which he will use to grow Nebraska, which he stresses is one of his strong points in the campaign.

"We sit in the most innovative and productive country in the world we're ideally situated right here in Nebraska to take advantage of that. That's what I'm going to do as your your governor, put together that plan of how we're going to grow the the state of Nebraska."

In his travels across Nebraska, Ricketts has found that people have brought up a couple of subjects such as tax reform and property tax.

"Nebraska is third-worst in the country when it comes to overall tax burden," Ricketts explained. "We have the second-highest cell phone tax, higher vehicle taxes. All these things make us uncompetitive. Companies don't want to expand here because of that. We have to address that."

The top issue Ricketts said he has encountered is property tax.

"Whether your a farmer, archer, or home owner you know our property taxes are to high."

Ricketts said he has a four-point plan on how to address property taxes in Nebraska.

"The first point is taking agricultural land evaluations down from 75 percent to 65 percent. The second point is putting a cap on how fast evaluations can go up. The third is putting more relief into the property tax relief form. Finally, we have to curtail the unfunded mandates the state pushes down to counties and school districts, whether that's through direct services or regulation that add further burden onto our property taxes.

He also has a plan to bring down taxes in Nebraska and make the state more attractive to companies around the country to relocate.

"We can't get tax relief if we take our expenses up faster than our revenues," he said. "We have to do the opposite. We have to bring our expenses down below what our revenues are and that's how we bring our taxes down."

Ricketts was born in Nebraska City, Neb., and now resides in Omaha. He went to the University of Chicago for both his bachelor's and master's degrees, earning his B.S. in biology and his MBA in marketing and finance.

After college he went to work for Union Pacific Railroad, and then shortly thereafter starting working for the family business which eventually became Ameritrade. He moved through the ranks becoming the senior vice president of strategy and business development, senior V.P. of product development, senior vice president of marketing, president and and then COO.