NE's most feared lawyer threatens defamation suit against Omaha mayor's campaign

Jean Stothert, Omaha's Republican mayor, is using trans people as political footballs in new, last minute TV ads to rip her opponent, John Ewing, as standing with unnamed radicals on boys in girls sports and bathrooms. His campaign called the ad utterly false.

     The Ewing campaign's lawyer, Dave Domina, isn't turning the other cheek. Domina, whose lawsuit halted the Keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska even before President Biden revoked its permit, is perhaps the most feared lawyer in the state. His letter to Stothert's campaign demanded a retraction and correction, and implied a defamation lawsuit if both were not forthcoming.

The election is tomorrow.

     Wrote Domina: "Nothing Mr. Ewing has said at any time supports this statement for your publication," adding that the statement was made with either "malicious intentions or wanton disregard for the truth."

     (It appears that Ewing has largely, if not completely, ignored the plight of the trans community in Omaha, neither attacking nor defending them.)

     Mailers have also appeared on porches across Omaha, attacking Ewing in a manner that is either incredibly nasty or face-palmingly idiotic. 

     Unlike the suspiciously similar TV ads, they aren't from Stothert's campaign, but from a born-last-spring PAC called Omaha Leadership Fund, which has spent 75 grand so far, to trash Ewing. (PACs are forbidden to collude with the campaigns of candidates.) 

     The fund also generously dumped at least $18k into the Stothert campaign in cash and in-kind contributions.

     So who funds the Omaha Leadership Fund?

     Another PAC, possums! One called Common Sense Nebraska.

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     And who funded that?

     Marlene Ricketts!–the matriarch of a billionaire Nebraska family (TD Ameritrade), who is rapidly becoming known in some circles as the Ma Barker of Nebraska politics. (She recently funded a successful voter ID referendum, presumably to make it harder for Cornhusker poors to vote for Democrats, that employed out-of-state mercenaries caught repeatedly on camera lying to voters and feloniously failing to read the summary at the top of the referendum signature sheets.)    

     Jean Stothert, for her part, claimed that she has a good relationship with Omaha's LGBT community (she doesn't) and told the World-Herald that she consulted with members of the LGBT advisory board she created, before running the ad.

      She evidently bet that the World-Herald wouldn't check with anyone on her LGBT Advisory board, and she seems to have bet right.

      BOTTOM: an example of Mayor Stothert's "good relationship" with Omaha's LGBT community during her tenure on the city council, where she twice voted against adding LGBT Omahans to the city's list of classes protected from job discrimination.