We deserve more than glossy viral videos

Hi,

Welcome to the fourth installment of my column for paid subscribers in which I talk about good and not-so-good things happening in Nebraska. If you're new to the newsletter, I explain the concept here:

The Good Life?

Note the question mark.

This Week In LincolnTynan Stewart

First, a quick update on something from the Thursday events newsletter. Dan Osborn's upcoming rally, which was originally happening in a local union hall, has been moved to the Bourbon Theatre instead, apparently due to high demand. (I also had the time wrong, and I've corrected that.) Here's the updated event listing:

If you're not already a paid subscriber, you can sign up to support This Week In Lincoln and read the rest of this column, plus all future posts!

Paying for the newsletter helps keep it sustainable. The other stuff I publish, including the weekly events calendar and coverage of the local arts scene, is free! Though as regular readers probably noticed, I'm experimenting with including extra bonus sections for paid subscribers on otherwise free posts. I did that with the piece I ran on Friday about a local Rock the Vote show. Nothing important got locked behind a paywall, just some historical trivia that is probably only interesting to me personally. (Great pitch, I know!)

Anyway, check it out if you missed that:

Can local bands make voting cool again?

There’s a free show on Saturday aimed at getting Gen Z registered — and excited — to vote.

This Week In LincolnTynan Stewart

~ Ty

P.S. Please send me things I should write about. Or just tell me how wrong I am about something. My email is tynanstewart@proton.me

Not The Good Life: Most of Austin Ahlman's ill-fated campaign

There's a lot to be said about independent candidate Austin Ahlman's aborted run for Congress. You've almost certainly seen the news that he dropped out, and while I think he had essentially no chance of winning in November, it sucks that his dad's cancer is what forced him out of the race. As Nebraska Public Media reported:

Ahlman, who has made his parents' health and financial struggles a centerpiece of his campaign, said in a social media post that his father's cancer, which had been in remission when he started his campaign in May, has returned.

"My family and I have gone from speaking about the future in terms of decades to mere months," Ahlman said in the post.

"Family comes first – always," Ahlman said. "For that reason, I am suspending my campaign for Nebraska's 1st District."

To me, Ahlman's campaign was a mess of contradictions: It had elements I desperately want to see reflected more in Nebraska politics, but they were implemented in strange, incoherent ways.

I love that he wanted to channel the spirit of the nineteenth-century agrarian populists, yet he seemed to think he could conjure a movement from the top-down simply by running for office — a belief entirely at odds with the actual history of the Farmer's Alliance, the People's Party and the independent candidates who fought corporate power in the Gilded Age. He talked about "fighting for the little guy," but his ugly messaging about the supposed need to "secure the border" gave me no confidence that he'd fight very hard for our immigrant neighbors. Ahlman (correctly) pointed out that Chris Backemeyer, who only moved back to Lincoln in October, is trying to represent a district he hasn't lived in for years. But that criticism sure sounds hollow coming from someone who spent the last half-decade trying to build a journalism career in DC!

Ahlman probably doesn't want my advice. But if he really wants to be part of a meaningful political project, perhaps he should build community institutions in Norfolk, challenge local power structures, help elect candidates with populist ideas to city and county governments, and organize to bring real change to the Unicameral.

In other words, he should do something more substantial than just producing a viral video that plays well on Twitter. That might convince me his brief electoral career wasn't just a vanity project.

Not The Good Life: Lynne Walz's empty platform