Governor Pete Ricketts is a Toxic, Gaslighting Liar—and So Is His Party

Pete Ricketts

Nebraska appears to be on a COVID-19 upswing. Official figures indicate five consecutive weeks of rising numbers, including nearly doubling last week. Given this opportunity to demonstrate energetic engagement in Nebraska’s public health, Governor Pete Ricketts, Republican, chose instead to appear on CNN, announcing his intent to unilaterally ban abortion at the first chance. He’s so focused on what he calls “preborn babies” that he’s forgotten the literal living.

I’m conflicted in my response. Ricketts, who was born rich and never held office before being elected governor, has a history of saying complete bilge on national media to gain cheap attention. This isn’t even the first time Ricketts has used the “Nebraska is a pro-life state” line, because he apparently believes he’s entitled to pronounce for all Nebraskans. Ricketts believes himself, not an elected representative, but Nebraska’s embodied avatar.

Yet for all his “pro-life” flexing, Pete Ricketts has demonstrated dismal performance among the actual living. His economic policies have favored the rich and urban in an overwhelmingly rural, working-class state. He continued flooding agricultural conglomerate ConAgra with cash subsidies and tax breaks, only to watch ConAgra move its headquarters to Chicago. Ricketts later tried the same trick to hold TD Ameritrade, which his father founded, with marginally better results.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ricketts has resisted even the most nominal efforts to curb the spread. As recently as this January, at the second-highest peak of the pandemic, the Ricketts Administration did worse than nothing; it actively opposed local mask mandates, attempting to declare face hankies “illegal.” Hey, remember April 2020, when Grand Island, Nebraska, briefly had North America’s highest COVID rate? I sure do.

Throughout his administration, Ricketts has defined “freedom” as whatever comforts well-off White men, like himself. Massive interest-free cash transfusions to multinational corporations? Don’t mind if I do. Extended unemployment benefits to protect unskilled workers during a pandemic? Piss off, working-class people have a moral obligation to work. Ricketts also opposes even the most fiddling gun control measures, claiming “Nebraska is a pro-Second Amendment state.”

But letting women make reproductive choices unhindered by government bureaucracy? No dice, we’re “pro-life.” Never mind the things we do that cause death, like obstructing any effort to stem a highly transmissible disease. You have a lawful right to breathe your potentially lethal vapors on somebody’s grandma without impediment, that isn’t a life issue. The mere fact that, under current conditions, the wrong person’s exhale is literally deadly, means nothing.

This contradiction baffles me. Even if we accept Ricketts’ premise that a fertilized zygote is already human (which I don’t), then you know what else is already human? An actual walking, talking human being. Calling yourself “pro-life” because you value a glob of meiotic cells, while actively opposing attempts to protect living humans, or ensure they earn enough to buy groceries during a pandemic, makes you worse than contradictory.

It makes you a liar.

Don’t mistake the importance here. I’m targeting Governor Ricketts because, as a Nebraska resident, I’m familiar with his policies, and their lived consequences. But these effects don’t stop at the Nebraska state line. Republicans nationwide are floating bills that would classify abortion as homicide, bills which have already had intrusive consequences for women who miscarry. Many such laws are actively ignorant of biology.

Simultaneously, the same party actively opposes any attempt to make life easier for employed people. A newly floated bill would preemptively forbid any attempt at student loan forgiveness. In the midst of a much-publicized baby formula shortage, House Republicans voted against fixing the conditions which caused the shortage by 192-12. Easier to blame the Brandon Administration than fix the problem, I guess; doesn’t matter who gets hurt.

(Edit: in the House vote, Nebraska's Congressional delegation split. Don Bacon, a Republican representing the 2nd District, which includes Omaha, was one of 12 to break from the party line. Adrian Smith, a Republican representing the large and mainly rural 3rd District, voted against the bill. The 1st District seat, which includes Lincoln, is currently vacant pending a special election.)

Governor Ricketts isn’t important enough to say that today’s Republican Party follows his lead. Indeed, Ricketts probably follows the marching orders of the cable-news androids whose telegenic outrage drives the base right now. But Ricketts is on-brand for today’s Republican mess: claiming “pro-life” prerogative for actions that will create massive burdens for poor people, immigrants, BIPOC, the disabled, and women, while banning even the slightest inconvenience for themselves.

Today’s Republican Party is opposed to anything that would make life better for those currently disadvantaged. Whether it’s systemic policy, like fixing a student debt machine with interest rates worse than a Dickensian usurer, or pure bad luck, like minimizing the consequences of an infectious disease, they’ve demonstrated they don’t care. Fixing it isn’t their responsibility. Anyone who now votes Republican demonstrates they’re okay with this approach.