The 16-year incumbent in this race, County Attorney Don Kleine, was a Democrat until two years ago. Then, amid the Black Lives Matter citizen uprising of 2020, Kleine garnered statewide controversy after he declined to press charges against white bar owner Jake Gardner, who fatally shot Black protester James Scurlock in downtown Omaha, the county’s population center. Gardner was eventually indicted by a grand jury, before killing himself in Oregon the day before he was set to turn himself in.

For his determination that Gardner had acted in self-defense, Kleine faced the wrath not only of furious activists, but also of his party base: Nebraska Democratic delegates from across the state passed a resolution declaring that Kleine had “perpetuated white supremacy” in his handling of the case. Two weeks later, Kleine switched parties and received a hero’s welcome from the Nebraska GOP.

“You could call Don Kleine a jerk or clown or whatever,” Kleine told The Reader of Omaha. “But white supremacist or racist? Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t handle that.”

He now faces Dave Pantos, a more reform-minded Democratic challenger, and the former executive director of Legal Aid of Nebraska. Pantos told Bolts that he agrees with his party’s resolution slamming Kleine as racist, and that he believes that Gardner should have been charged with manslaughter and several other offenses. 

“Clearly there was a sense of, ‘Hey, let’s give this guy a break because he was on our side,'” Pantos said. “He should have been arrested. He should have been charged.” 

The contest could be tight. Douglas County voted for Democratic President Joe Biden by 11 percentage points in 2020, but local Republicans have fared better in other races, and the mayor of Omaha is a Republican. Kleine may also benefit from the decisive advantage incumbents usually enjoy in prosecutor elections, though his decision to run with a new party affiliation will test that proposition.

Pantos is running amid controversy of his own. The Omaha World-Herald reported last month that he was fired from Legal Aid of Nebraska in 2014 after the organization’s board of directors investigated an affair he was having with an employee, and a promotion he gave to that employee. Pantos admitted to the affair but told the World-Herald that the employee was already promoted when the affair began; he repeated that explanation to Bolts.

Kleine, who declined to be interviewed by Bolts, didn’t switch parties quietly in 2020, telling reporters he’d voted for former President Donald Trump and that it was an “easy choice.” He held a press conference in 2020 with conservative Nebraska Republican leaders, and vowed at the time that he would not switch his approach to the job of county attorney. He told reporters, “I didn’t change who Don Kleine is. You get what you get here with me, and that’s the way I am. That’s the way I’m going to continue to be. … (I)t’s not going to change how I run the Douglas County Attorney’s Office.”

He was no progressive before his switch, having earned a reputation among local reform advocates as a Democrat resistant to criminal justice reform. Kleine’s office, for instance, has prosecuted four of the five people placed on death row in Nebraska in the years since he was elected, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (All cases were before his party switch.)

As a Republican, he pushed back against a would-be landmark bill this year that was designed to stem prison overcrowding. Despite being part of the committee that recommended the changes, he did not support the package, and opposed its provision to lower the severity of drug-related charges, among other changes. The bill failed.

Progressive Omaha activist and organizer Morgann Freeman said she’s observed no shift in Kleine’s approach on the policy front. But one change she’s seen in him, she said, is that he seems much more willing to explain himself to the public, even when she’s disagreed with his decision-making. 

“That’s the fascinating and traumatizing part: because of what happened with the protests, there was a lot more scrutiny put on his practices that he didn’t have before,” said Freeman, who was standing a block away when Gardner shot Scurlock.

“When he was still listed as a Democrat, he got away with structural racism in a way that I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand.”

The World-Herald’s analysis of U.S. Department of Justice data shows that Nebraska is one of only two states that grew their prison populations between 2010 and 2020, alongside Idaho. While the national average prison population went down by 24 percent during this period, Nebraska’s increased by 16 percent. 

Douglas County is overrepresented in Nebraska prisons. In 2020, it comprised a 38-percent plurality of state prison admissions, despite having only 30 percent of the state population, a state commission found. Substantial racial disparities are fueling this dynamic: Research from the University of Nebraska Omaha showed that, as of 2019, one in eight Black residents in Douglas County, which is substantially less white than the state as a whole, had been arrested at some point. That compared to just one in 45 white Douglas County residents. 

“I think Omaha is one of the places where you really understand America’s tale of two worlds,” said Ja Keen Fox, the organizer who authored the “white supremacy” resolution against Kleine in September 2020. Fox had recently been removed from a city advisory board by Omaha’s mayor over tweets he wrote in 2016 about a man who killed police officers in Dallas; the mayor’s decision drew a protest from longtime state Senator Ernie Chambers, a Black Democrat who represents Omaha.

“There’s a Black Omaha and there’s a white Omaha,” Fox said. “Don Kleine, to white Omaha, was a stand-up guy.” To Black Omaha, Fox added, “He’s someone that would arrest and prosecute to the maximum, for any kind of crime.” After Pantos entered the race, Fox worked for his campaign but is not currently involved.

Fox pointed in particular to Kleine’s treatment of young Black people accused of crimes; in one well-documented case, he charged a 14-year-old Black boy as an adult in a homicide case. At a hearing this spring, a Democratic state senator who represents Omaha faulted Kleine’s decisions for fueling particularly high incarceration rates among the city’s Black residents. 

Pantos is proposing a very different route on criminal justice policy. He criticized the legislature’s failure to contain prison spending and population this legislative session. 

He told Bolts that he supports the provision Kleine had taken the most issue with: reclassifying of drug possession cases to make them lower-level misdemeanors rather than felonies.

“If we treat them as misdemeanors, we can still divert them into drug court,” Pantos said, referencing a reason Kleine has given for opposing this change, “and have them come out the other end without having that felony prevent them from getting a job or housing.”

Pantos added that he personally believes many drug possession cases shouldn’t be prosecuted at all but that voters—and systems—may not be ready for such a change. 

“It’s recognizing that Nebraska and Douglas County are in the 1980s camp. We need to move from that to the middle first,” he said. “We need to walk before we run … the ultimate goal would be people aren’t being charged at all, but I don’t think the resources are in place yet, and we need to keep the horse in front of the cart.”

Pantos says he would take a similarly incremental approach on other issues to to bringing reform to the prosecutor’s office: He said cash bail amounts to the “criminalization of poverty,” but that he would still seek cash bail in certain cases rather than switching the prosecutor’s office “all at once” in that area. 

He said he opposes the death penalty, but that, because Nebraska voters have supported it by repealing a law that had abolished it in a 2016 referendum, he wouldn’t rule out seeking capital punishment if elected. (Douglas County residents also voted in favor of repeal, 52 to 48 percent.)

“I don’t want to put a political scientist hat on too much, but I don’t think the issue of criminal justice reform has been really tested in Nebraska,” Pantos said. “I want to be mindful of the culture and where folks are at. I guess we’ll know more [on Nov. 8] how ready folks are for change.”

Update: This article was updated on Nov. 7 with information about Ja Keen Fox’s previous work on the Dave Pantos campaign.

The post Omaha Prosecutor Seeks Re-Election, Two Years After His Party Accused Him of Racism appeared first on Bolts.

The racial justice uprisings of last summer, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, have turned mayoral races across the country into a focal point amid demands for leadership committed to representing marginalized communities. 

In Omaha, Nebraska, a city rocked by protests against police violence, some see the upcoming mayoral election as an opportunity to chart a new course on policing, public safety, and racial equity.

Protests erupted in Omaha last year after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, and again in November when Omaha police fatally shot Kenneth Jones, a Black man, during a traffic stop. Police crackdowns on the protests and the murder of a Black demonstrator by a white man known for bigotry further escalated tensions and fueled demands to defund police.

Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican who first took office in 2013 and  is seeking her third term, instead proposed to increase police funding. Now the Omaha Police Officers Association, which did not endorse a mayoral candidate in 2017, is backing Stothert.

“This is us rewarding loyalty for a mayor who has stood with us,” announced the association’s president, Sgt. Tony Conner. 

Local activists are rallying behind two Democratic challengers: criminal justice reform advocate Jasmine Harris and school board member Kimara Snipes. The election of either Harris or Snipes would give Omaha its first Black female mayor. Both candidates have spoken about the need for a more holistic approach to public safety that recognizes the root causes of crime that simply increasing policing doesn’t address.

Two other Democratic candidates, high school teacher Mark Gudgel and real estate firm owner RJ Neary, will also appear on the ballot for the nonpartisan April 6 primary. The top two vote candidates will move on to the May general election

“When we’re talking about the city [government], this entity that’s supposed to represent us, it needs to have the same work ethic and reflect the diversity and the makeup of the people who are doing the work,” said Dawaune Lamont Hayes, founder of a community-led local news outlet, North Omaha Information Support Everyone (NOISE). “Because we’re out here, and we’re making it happen.”

Hayes launched a short-lived bid for Omaha mayor with a wide-ranging platform that included restorative justice, equitable transportation, and environmental sustainability. They withdrew from the race after not receiving enough verified signatures to get on the ballot, but that has not deterred them from becoming a driving force for voter engagement along with local grassroots groups. 

No matter who wins this year’s municipal elections, Hayes said, “we still need an engaged electorate that’s going to hold those people accountable.” Hayes is among the activists supporting Harris and Snipes, describing them as “brilliant coalition-building women who have offered incredible ideas.”

Public safety is a key issue in this race. More than 36 percent of the city’s budget goes to policing. During heated fiscal debates last summer, Omaha City Council president Chris Jerram proposed a measure to remove $2 million that Stothert added to the police budget and put it toward mental health services and employment training. The council shot it down, but then passed an amendment to pull $1.8 million from the city’s cash reserves to fund those services. Stothert vetoed the amendment saying it would be “reckless” and “irresponsible” to take money from the contingency fund during a pandemic. 

Harris said one of her first priorities as mayor would be to review all agency budgets to identify programs that need reworking for greater efficiency and equity. She said the police department is no exception. 

“When people talk about public safety, they’re always saying ‘we need to add more police to keep the public safe,’” said Harris, who works as the advocacy and policy director for RISE, a statewide organization that supports people coming out of prison and advocates for initiatives to reduce incarceration. “But at the end of the day, everybody doesn’t feel safe with the police. So we need to ensure that public safety encompasses everyone. And for me that’s taking on a preventative and proactive approach.”

Harris said she would work to decriminalize activities that traditionally have led to interactions with police, like panhandling. She also wants to demilitarize the police by restricting their use of riot gear and chemical weapons. To ensure police accountability, there should be “a transparent misconduct process where our community members know what’s going on along the way,” Harris explained. “That means creating an independent police oversight board. So that way, they have authority to be able to do investigations and to have the discipline afterwards.”

Harris wants to see the Omaha Police Department’s behavioral health and wellness unit further expand and receive proper funding and support. Last year, Omaha implemented a program that pairs precincts with mental health co-responders. The program debuted shortly before the city settled with the family of Zachary Bear Heels who was shot with a Taser and beaten while handcuffed in June 2017. He was having a mental health crisis and died as a result of the officer’s conduct.

Harris pointed to the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon, and the STAR program in Denver as models she supports. These programs send mental health responders to some emergencies instead of, rather than alongside, police.

Snipes, an elected member of the Omaha Public Schools Board, told the Political Report in an email that she would take a holistic approach to public safety, including expanding the role of mental health professionals. 

“To be a 21st century city, we need to jettison 20th century politics,” wrote Snipes. “That means we need to show an openness to change and innovation.”

Snipes wants to establish an all-civilian police oversight board. And she told the Political Report that public safety requires addressing the root causes of crime, “including unemployment and underemployment, mental health, homelessness, poverty and inequities.”

During  a forum held by the League of Women Voters of Greater Omaha this month, Snipes criticized the mayor’s handling of protests. “The people should not have to wait on leadership,” said Snipes. “[Mayor Stothert] showed she was out of touch with the community when we were dealing with the social justice protests.”

NOISE reported last month that the ACLU of Nebraska obtained emails showing the city of Omaha and police had coordinated surveillance of racial justice organizers. Lieutenant Sherie Thomas told NOISE via email that officers acted in consultation with the city’s legal department to determine which sources of intelligence they could legally access. 

The events they monitored were generally regarded as protected First Amendment activities, including a sidewalk chalking event, a former NOISE reporter’s livestream of a City Council meeting, and a prayer vigil for James Scurlock, a Black protester killed by a racist white bar owner. 

Omaha Abolition Research (OAR) is among several local groups that have pushed for the city to move away from policing. In an email, the group told the Political Report that in different neighborhoods, “safety differences are not correlated with police presence. … Safety is correlated with economic stability or instability and the continued impact of class and racial divides.” 

OAR named affordable and safe housing, transportation access, a clean environment, and access to food and healthcare as some of the things that make a neighborhood safe.  OAR added that Omaha’s status as a city with a large per capita share of millionaires enables wealthy people to disproportionately influence the city’s priorities.

“Omaha would benefit greatly from a participatory budgeting process so that middle and lower class residents … are able to have a voice in how public funds are allocated,” explained the OAR team. 

Participatory budgeting is underway in Seattle, where community organizers and elected officials are using the process to reallocate funds cut from the police budget. Harris said in a forum in January that she would like to use participatory budgeting to “let the community members decide how funding will be spent.”

That could lead to investments in housing and transportation, which Harris named as two major issues affecting residents in the city. 

“In Omaha, people live in one area and jobs are in another,” Harris explained. “And our public transportation isn’t set up to conducively get people from their home to their job, or back from their job to their home if they have a late shift.” She pointed to the struggle to find living wage jobs as a key challenge for many community members, particularly people who were formerly incarcerated. 

Snipes expressed a similar concern during the League of Women Voters forum, citing a shortage of approximately 80,000 affordable housing units. She referenced a study from the Sherwood Foundation that found that the shortage is concentrated in majority-Black North Omaha.   

Gudgel echoes these stances. He told the Political Report that tackling issues like affordable housing, better public transportation, and access to higher education is the way to address the “poverty that breeds crime.” Gudgel also expressed an interest in having an independent police review board, decriminalizing marijuana, and demilitarizing the police. “Military grade weapons, such as tear gas, should never be allowed for use against civilians,” Gudgel wrote in an email. 

But Gudgel’s commitment to racial equity was called into question this month when anti-Black Lives Matter comments made by one of his primary campaign donors came to light. Gudgel, who is white, apologized and cut ties with the donor.

Neary, who has raised the most campaign funding among those challenging Stothert, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Despite Neary’s financial advantage, Hayes is skeptical he could beat Stothert in the general election. They make the case that Neary lacks the grassroots support necessary to build the kind of multiracial coalition they think it will take to win. The campaigns that Snipes and Harris are running are “emblematic” of Omaha politics shifting toward electing “a mayor that represents the people,” Hayes said.

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