OMAHA — Former State Sen. Brett Lindstrom is still considering a nonpartisan bid for Nebraska governor, dissatisfied with the direction of the state but not wanting to play “spoiler.”
Should Lindstrom start gathering signatures to get on the Nov. 3 ballot, he said that doesn’t yet mean he’ll run in November. If he does, he would join the ballot with Gov. Jim Pillen of Columbus, a Republican who beat Lindstrom for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2022; former Democratic State Sen. Lynne Walz of Fremont, whom Lindstrom served with for six years; and Rick Beard of Omaha, a wine professional and private chef chosen by the Legal Marijuana NOW party.
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Pillen is running again with longtime prosecutor Lt. Gov. Joe Kelly of Lincoln, while Walz and Beard would need to select running mates, as would Lindstrom, if he runs.
“I think people always look at these things as so hyper-political and politically focused, and it’s not that at all. It’s much more about doing what’s right and doing the right thing,” Lindstrom said in a one-on-one interview with the Nebraska Examiner shortly before the May 12 primary.
Lindstrom, an Omaha financial adviser, said he reached out to Walz a few weeks ago because he didn’t want her to be caught off guard if petitions began circulating and that reaching out to her was the “right thing to do.”
“The idea is not to come in and be a spoiler or cause problems for anyone,” Lindstrom said. “The intent is being pragmatic, practical about what this actually looks like — and more about the direction of where the state needs to go and can go.”
‘Behind the eight ball’
Lindstrom said his pondering a run isn’t personal to Pillen but that he hasn’t done himself or Nebraskans a “service” in some of the language he’s used, which “has only put gas on the fire.”
For example, Lindstrom said, there can be policy discussions about immigration, but using terms like “Cornhusker Clink” for the state-federal migrant detention center in McCook and using “libtard” multiple times to describe opponents goes too far. The same is true, Lindstrom added, about Democrats or progressives labeling some people they disagree with “Nazis.”
“If you’re asking for people to trust you and you’re trying to bring transparency, what good is it if you’re calling somebody a name?” Lindstrom said. “You’re already done. You’re not gonna do it.”
Other disagreements with Pillen include the handling of property taxes, the state budget and economic development, such as sports complex tax incentives, which Lindstrom helped pass but that have largely stalled under Pillen.
Lindstrom said he worries Nebraska has been put “behind the eight ball.”
“It’s a combination, and it’s not just one thing,” Lindstrom said. “It’s a lot of different things that I just don’t think there’s been a vision articulated on who we are and where we’re going, and there doesn’t seem to be a growth component to this equation of what we need to accomplish.”
A legislative record
While in the Legislature, Lindstrom was part of a group of more moderate Republicans known internally as the “Reasonables.” Together, seven or eight Republicans, serving between Omaha and Scottsbluff, could make or break legislation sought by shifting majorities.
Lindstrom said listening in his eight years taught him where the “landmines” are, and “while I can’t tell you that it’s going to 100% work out this way, there is a framework that can operate that can build and create that stability and opportunity.”
The possible candidate also leaned into Pillen’s recent comments that the Legislature needs to change its rules requiring 33 votes — a supermajority — to end debate on often contentious legislation, and go down to 30 instead. While the Legislature is officially nonpartisan, 33 senators are Republicans, and 15 are Democrats. The 49th is a progressive nonpartisan.
Lindstrom said he could get bills passed under existing rules, such as lowering the state income tax or phasing out taxes on state Social Security. He repeated a bipartisan caution of some lawmakers about the rules: “Be careful what you wish for, because at one point someday, you might find yourself on the other side of that.”
“At some point, you got to step back and say, ‘Am I the problem? Is my policy the problem? Is it that I’m not working with people or listening to people to say, OK, maybe I can’t get 100%, but how do we get to 80%?’” Lindstrom said. “That just doesn’t seem to exist.”
Another nonpartisan candidate?
Three candidates eyeing other races are already gathering signatures to reach the November ballot — Macey Budke of North Platte and Mark Cohen of Lemoyne, for Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, and Dan Osborn of Omaha to run against U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb. Osborn ran a nonpartisan bid in 2024 and came closer to winning than any Democratic candidate in more than a decade. Austin Ahlman of Norfolk announced a nonpartisan bid for the 1st Congressional District last week.
This year has marked a shift for Lindstrom, who started 2026 as one of two GOP candidates for Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, the politically split Omaha-based district held by retiring U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.
Lindstrom withdrew in January and later switched his party affiliation to nonpartisan. He said he felt frustrated that everything has been driven to “two separate sides,” and people have forgotten about what they’re doing and why.
“A vast majority of people are in the crossfire right now of that political game, and I chose to remove myself from the game,” Lindstrom said.
Speaking with former Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert on her new KFAB radio show this month, Lindstrom said he would not endorse anyone in the 2nd Congressional District race, and if he stays out of the governor’s race, he won’t endorse Pillen or Walz either.
He told Stothert that in the face of growing polarization, Nebraska can be a “lighthouse in the middle of this chaos.”
‘Not on my bingo card’
Lindstrom first opened the door to a nonpartisan bid for governor in an April 29 interview on the Dan Parsons Show, a local political podcast, and he’s been more open about the possibility since, including on shows like Stothert’s. He says others, too, have echoed his political misgivings.
“This was not on my bingo card several months ago at all,” Lindstrom told the Examiner.
“When I started to speak up a little bit more, I must have hit a nerve or something in the political arena or how people were feeling, because it sparked something,” he added.
People reaching out have been of different political identities, and Lindstrom said he put the political parts aside while putting his focus on policy and the future of Nebraska. He believes that by being nonpartisan, it can lead to progress and bring more people on board.
The calculus also comes in part over what he sees as an uphill climb for Walz, cautioning his consideration to run doesn’t mean Walz doesn’t care about the state but faces difficult “math.”
“I would argue that it probably still mathematically isn’t there in the state,” Lindstrom said of a Democrat winning the governor’s office. “That’s not a knock against Lynne or anything else, but it’s just the reality of it.”
Electoral ‘math’
Walz seeks to be the first Democrat to win the Governor’s Office since 1994, and she’s talked frequently about working on property taxes with Lindstrom in 2018 as an example of her service. She’s surpassed the fundraising of all Democratic candidates running for governor up to this point since at least 2002, including the entire Democratic bids in 2018 and 2022 already.
Walz described Lindstrom as “a good friend of mine” and a colleague she “worked well with,” and, in that meeting before the primary, she said he hadn’t yet made up his mind when asked for a response.
“We’ll just wait and see what he decides,” Walz said in an April 30 interview, one day after Lindstrom’s interview with Parsons went live. “I know that he’ll weigh his options carefully.”
Pillen and his campaign, endorsed by President Donald Trump, have taken a different approach than Walz and Lindstrom. His team has said the governor looks forward to talking to Nebraskans “eye to eye” and uplifting the state’s “conservative values” in the coming months.
Asked for response to Lindstrom’s possible bid, Pillen looked to his former Huskers football coach, Tom Osborne, and a lesson that “we focus on what we can do.”
“We never worried about who we played against,” Pillen told the Examiner last week. “And I don’t worry about who I’m playing against in this game.”
By the end of April, Pillen had nearly $9.5 million in campaign cash on hand, while Walz had $650,000, according to the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. Beard had not reported any financials this cycle, which is required after receiving or spending $5,000. Lindstrom dissolved his 2022 gubernatorial NADC committee on April 10.
Another ‘choice’ for governor
Lindstrom says he will consider his own math when weighing the race because he doesn’t want to inadvertently keep the state going in the same direction he has concerns with. Lindstrom says his possible campaign would be about giving Nebraskans a “choice.”
He acknowledged some have speculated whether he might run for a different office, and he said he has received some calls about secretary of state, but he said no office other than governor is on his radar.
Petitions would need to be launched “sooner than later,” with an aim to gather at least double the 4,000 signatures needed to reach the ballot by about mid-July, Lindstrom said. Soon thereafter, he would have to decide whether to fundraise and push toward November.
“Nebraskans, if I decide to do this,” Lindstrom said, “it comes down to giving them a choice on what does it look like and where do we go.”
This story is provided by States Newsroom, a nonprofit state news network and Blox Digital content partner.
