Eastern Lancaster County District 25 legislative race highlights public safety, housing

Three candidates are vying for the Legislature's District 25 seat. From left, Aurang Zeb, State Sen. Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln (incumbent) and Nicki Behmer Popp. (Photos courtesy of the candidates; Capitol photo by Rebecca Gratz for the Nebraska Examiner)

LINCOLN — Public safety, housing and taxes are among top issues for three business owners vying for an eastern Lancaster County legislative seat encompassing Lincoln and Bennet.

(Courtesy of Legislative Research Office)

Incumbent State Sen. Carolyn Bosn is running for the District 25 seat for the first time after Gov. Jim Pillen appointed her April 7, 2023, to succeed State Sen. Suzanne Geist. Bosn, a former prosecutor, is joined by Nicki Behmer Popp, a real estate agent, and Aurang Zeb, who owns multiple businesses. All three are from Lincoln and are in their 40s or 50s.

Two candidates will advance from the officially nonpartisan May 14 primary election and compete for a four-year term in November.

Bosn

Carolyn Bosn

Age: 41

Political party: Republican

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Baylor University, law degree from Creighton University

Work experience: County attorney’s offices in Saunders, Lancaster, Seward and Platte Counties; Nebraska College of Law adjunct professor

Political office: State senator, 2023-present (appointed)

Bosn, a former deputy county attorney for the county attorney’s offices in Lancaster and Saunders Counties, brings a public safety and law enforcement perspective to the Legislature that she said would otherwise be missing.

“I think one of the main draws to a community is a feeling of safety and security for younger families with kids,” Bosn said.

Her motivation for a full term remains her four children, for whom she was a stay-at-home mom after giving birth to her third child. During that time, she taught one night a week as an adjunct professor at the Nebraska College of Law and coached the competitive trial team. Bosn also owns a small heating and air conditioning company in Lincoln with her husband. 

If elected, Bosn, a Republican, plans to continue work to reduce recidivism.

“I’m optimistic that we’ll start that and that it will snowball into something bigger and greater and will also help our workforce issues,” Bosn said.

Behmer Popp

Nicki Behmer Popp

Age: 40

Political party: Nonpartisan

Education: Bachelor’s degree in communications from Hastings College, master’s degree in communications from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Work experience: Haberfeld Associates, Unicameral Information Office, legislative aide, lobbyist, real estate

Political office: Lincoln Airport Authority (2021-present)

Behmer Popp, a board member for the Lincoln Airport Authority, got her start in the Legislature in 2010 in the Unicameral Information Office. There, she helped document and record the history of hundreds of legislative proposals each year.

As a self-described “learn it all” and registered nonpartisan since 2010, Behmer Popp highlighted her fascination with policy and a desire for the Legislature to return to that focus, not politics. She is a former aide to State Sen. Jeremy Nordquist of Omaha and served as a lobbyist after her aide position.

Her biggest reason to run is protecting the “gem” that is Nebraska’s nonpartisan Unicameral.

“It’s one of those things that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” Behmer Popp said.

She said her job as a legislator would be to listen and respect voters’ desires, such as access to women’s health care and a referendum on a “school choice” law that could be null and void — she said she’s not against private schools but says there’s an imbalance in provided services.

“Regardless of whether I agreed with the issue at hand, if there was the support to vote on it, you let that happen because that’s what democracy is,” Behmer Popp said.

Zeb

Aurang Zeb

Age: 55

Political party: Libertarian

Education: Two years of college

Work experience: Business owner, Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing, real estate, construction

Political office: Bids for Lincoln Airport Authority (2019) and Lincoln City Council (2021)

Zeb, an immigrant from Pakistan, said he learned politics from his father, who is very involved in his home country.

A business owner of real estate, construction and medical companies, Zeb said people often complain but don’t do anything to fix the problem. Instead, he stepped up.

“This is just my nature when I see something going wrong,” Zeb said.

Zeb, a registered Libertarian, moved to the United States for business, he said, and what he hears from voters most is the desire for lawmakers to care for their basic needs. His main goal is affordable housing.

Property taxes and spending

Bosn said the State of Nebraska has an obligation to work toward some property tax relief, but doing so must be thoughtful so as not to overburden some people to provide relief for others.

She said reform needs to come from “a lot of different angles,” which could include spending caps, expanding the state’s tax base or looking at tax exemptions. She supported the latest relief package and said some solutions might not be right, though conversation must be open and thoughtful “in order to be willing to come up with some relief.”

“I’ve knocked on a lot of doors and 95% of them are telling me that property tax is their No. 1 concern,” Bosn said. “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater because we don’t have the 100% perfect plan on day one, I think, is a disservice to Nebraskans.”

The system must be accountable, and lawmakers must be willing to adjust, Bosn said. Spending should focus on the future, she added, and cuts can’t hurt the state’s most vulnerable people.

Behmer Popp also said the issue is complicated but said her experience with local control on the local airport authority and understanding unfunded mandates informs her thinking. 

She said she’s heard from first-time homebuyers who were clients and whose bottom lines were impacted by valuation spikes. This led her to oppose a proposed levy from her board.

“It wasn’t a talking point,” Behmer Popp said. “It was a real, true story from somebody that I had worked with.”

While she wishes she had a “magic bill” in her back pocket, she prides herself on being a “connector” to bring different voices together for creative solutions. Behmer Popp also wants to preserve public school funding.

Zeb said he is “not a fan” of raising property taxes, not even $1 more, and said spending should be prioritized on people, not building upgrades, new models or fancy furniture.

“You have to get money to spend money on people,” Zeb said.

He said politicians also can’t say they won’t raise taxes but allow other forms of taxation, such as valuation increases, that he said “play a game with people.”

“We should make it so everybody has a home and they can enjoy their life, too,” Zeb said.

K-12 schools and higher education

Behmer Popp said she is a proud product of the University of Nebraska and is concerned with its financial position, especially as it provides education in addition to the workforce.

“We are employing teachers that spend money in our economy,” Behmer Popp said. “It’s a two-fold issue.”

There aren’t enough teachers and those who have stayed are burning out, Behmer Popp added, so teachers need to be incentivized to stay, such as by looking at pay.

She said she’s supportive of the university’s goal to get back into the Association of American Universities, though doing so will require high academic standards and state support.

“That’s not going to happen with cuts,” Behmer Popp said. “And that affects us in the Big Ten, it does affect sports.”

Zeb said there is already free education in the country through K-12 schools but higher education is more difficult because of its business model that can make money off of students through student loans and interest rates.

“We should make it easy for people to get education,” Zeb said, describing it as a fundamental right.

Bosn also noted the teacher shortage and anticipates it could be one of Nebraska’s biggest challenges within the next five years, which will lead to a “crisis.”

She said retention bonuses, scholarships, loan forgiveness and increased pay could help make the profession the No. 1 sought after job. These efforts could also reverse a trend of fewer students going into education or teachers leaving the profession.

“When I was growing up, everybody, all my friends and I, we used to play school. That was what we wanted to do, and you don’t see that anymore,” Bosn said. “My own kids are like, ‘No, we don’t want to play school.’”

Bosn said she wants the latest “school choice” system to be accountable and doesn’t know whether she’d support expanding the current $10 million investment until there is a return on investment and evidence it is working and there’s a record of public school impacts.

Economic development, workforce and housing

Zeb said more businesses need to be brought to the state, and he continues to remind voters every day about the importance of affordable housing.

“We need to do something good right now in economics so we can bring jobs back and we can generate money and then we can have good housing, we can have good roads,” Zeb said. “Everything’s going to be good if we have money.”

On criminal justice, he said the system is a little “broken,” with a level of racism that must be improved. This includes training police officers to treat people equally, Zeb said.

Bosn pointed to public safety and reducing recidivism as a key method to increase the workforce. 

Momentum can be provided, such as through skills or education, so inmates have self-worth and a buy-in for the community, she said. Doing so could also motivate them “to keep on the right path when they are ultimately released and look forward to when they are released.”

Housing is an issue of supply and demand, Bosn said, and the state needs enough safe housing to build out communities. She said existing affordable housing programs or new ones should be prioritized as the effort “dovetails” into property taxes.

Bosn also serves on a committee for the City of Lincoln to provide recommendations for a new convention center, which she said will assist with economic development.

Behmer Popp noted that business incentives and supporting the university, as one of the state’s largest employers, could be boons for the state.

Behmer Popp said she’s familiar with the Legislature’s criminal justice reform packages in the 2010s from her time in the Unicameral Information Office. She hopes to advance proposals that would improve Nebraskans’ mental health initiatives and provide additional services that could reduce prison overcrowding.

When it comes to housing, she said she is careful to watch any funding being taken from the housing trust fund because incentives are important to solving the supply and cost issue. She said the state needs to look at why development is so expensive and whether red tape can be trimmed.

“Some things are understandable,” Behmer Popp said. “Some, there’s a lot of bureaucracy and we need to question: Are we hurting ourselves in what we’re trying to fix?”

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to correct Aurang Zeb’s political party. 

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