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Civic Engagement Legislature LGBTQA+ misogyny Nebraska Politics

John Keuhn and Another Nazi Connection

The Legislature is expected to soon debate and vote on John Keuhn for an appointment on the Nebraska Board of Health. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and see why Keuhn is another attempt by the governor to block healthcare access to Nebraskans. 

Pete Ricketts has been blocking healthcare for Nebraskans as a #1 goal his entire time in office. He has blocked medicaid expansion, first in the legislature and then after it was approved by the voters in 2018 (it’s 2020 now). To ensure that medicaid would never expand, he appointed Matthew Van Patton, the former chief of staff of Trey Gowdy, a man who worked night and day to take away women’s healthcare in Congress.  

Since it’s not simply enough to refuse healthcare to the poor, he has worked tirelessly to ensure that employer healthcare wasn’t available to LGBTQ Nebraskans. He’s proudly stood with hate groups like Nebraska Family Alliance to block workplace protections for LGBTQ people and sent Nebraska’s Attorney General, Doug Peterson, to DC to fight for the right to fire transgender workers. 

The latest attempt to thwart healthcare is to get the partner of his campaign manager onto the State Board of Health. That is none other than the former state senator, John Kuehn.

It’s been a while since we’ve last mentioned him. He was a Nebraska senator until 2018 until he decided to not seek re-election and then immediately began work as the leader behind SAM Nebraska – a dark money fueled anti-marijuana propaganda group. If you’ve heard any radio ads over the last several months claiming that Big Marijuana is coming to get you, that is his doing. Here’s what we’ve previously published:

February 2018Keuhn tried to criminalize political clubs

In a fascist dictatorship, political activity that is not in lockstep support of the ruling party is criminal.  Depending on how unpopular your political views or policy stances are with the ruling party, your political activity is now suspect in Nebraska.  In 2018. For state employees, this is the purpose of LB1129: to limit dissenting voices and to criminalize political engagement of approximately 120,000 Nebraskans who work for the state government.  This is not 1930’s Germany. This is Nebraska, right here, right now. And it is not Trump. This is Ricketts.

April 2019Keuhn is connected to the Rickett’s Nazi, Bennett Bressman

Before being outed by Nebraska Antifa, Bennett Bressman also worked for Pete Ricketts’s anti-marijuana PAC, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which is headed by former Senator John Kuehn, who is engaged to Pete Ricketts’s former re-election campaign manager, Jessica Flanagain. Jessica Flanagain is now Senior Vice President of Axiom Strategies. In 2009, Ricketts was fined for failing to file state financial reports on time for a political committee he formed whose primary expense was paying Axiom Strategies for a voter survey ahead of the 2006 campaign for U.S. Senate, a race Ricketts lost to then-Sen. Ben Nelson.”

March 2020 – Keuhn tries to get back into the government 

John Keuhn’s partner is also behind the anti-marijuana advertisements; using Axiom Strategies as a medium. He also worked directly alongside the Ricketts Nazi when he employed Bressman to work as an organizer for SAM Nebraska before being outed. We also know that the governor has a well established history of blocking Nebraskans’ access to marijuana for any purpose.

When it’s time to vote, the Legislature must vote no on John Keuhn. 

Contact your state senator and tell them it’s not OK to continue failing Nebraskans when it comes to our health. We deserve someone with more integrity and more compassion than John Keuhn on the State Board of Health. Find your senator here – https://nebraskalegislature.gov/senators/senator_find.php 

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