Lawyers compete to succeed Linehan In legislative race, one candidate has health insurance background, the other works on immigration Nebraska Legislature, District 39: Lawyers vie to succeed Lou Ann Linehan in Elkhorn race

ELECTION 2024

To help inform voters, The World-Herald is offering articles on the major races and issues facing Nebraska voters in this year's election.

World-Herald reporters are profiling the races for 11 Omaha metro-area legislative seats, the U.S. Senate, the 2nd Congressional District, the State Board of Education, the Omaha school board, as well as reporting on various ballot measures.

The World-Herald also will publish a voter guide, for which candidates filled out questionnaires, this month. You will be able to find all this work online and in print. Please vote!

Two lawyers are competing to replace the term-limited Sen. Lou Ann Linehan in representing District 39, which includes Elkhorn, Waterloo and part of west Omaha.

Tony Sorrentino, 70, has a background in health insurance and finance, while Allison Heimes, 33, works on immigration.

Linehan has focused much of her legislative energy on untying the Gordian knot binding property tax overhaul and public-school funding in Nebraska. Sorrentino sees himself as well positioned to pick up that mission.

He has worked as a certified public accountant and an attorney, advising businesses about employee benefits. He spent 32 years in leadership positions at SilverStone Group, a large insurance brokerage, and still runs a small consulting firm.

Tony Sorrentino: Social conservative with a focus on fiscal issues

A lifelong Omahan, Sorrentino earned accounting and law degrees at Creighton University. He still teaches there, in the law school, and helps coach track and cross country. He has run more than 60 marathons. He and his wife, Kate, have four children and six grandchildren.

He served on the Metropolitan Community College board from 2009 to 2013, and in 2006 ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature. Now semi-retired, Sorrentino said he decided to run again after an encouraging meeting with Linehan last year.

"I didn't see a similarly situated candidate," he said.

Though legislative races in Nebraska are officially nonpartisan, Sorrentino is a fiscal and social conservative in a district where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 54% to 20%, with 24% registered nonpartisan.

He opposes expanding abortion rights, and he favors restrictions on medical treatments, bathroom use, and sports participation for transgender youths. He opposes legalizing recreational marijuana and online sports betting.

But what animates him are fiscal matters: reforming the tax system and shrinking state government. He wants to cut property taxes, eliminate the inheritance tax, and expand tax credits for job creation and business investment.

Because the state must balance its budget, any tax cuts must be offset by spending cuts or other tax increases - most likely, in the sales tax. That conundrum has bedeviled legislators for years, and hobbled the Legislature from making the sweeping changes Gov. Jim Pillen sought in his recent special session on property taxes.

Sorrentino doesn't want to hike sales taxes, though he said he might support removing certain exemptions. He wants to see a thorough study of state spending, with an eye on cuts.

"We need to start at ground zero, not step two or three," he said.

Heimes is making her second run for the District 39 seat. In 2020, she lost to Linehan, 56% to 44%.

Allison Heimes: Drive to improve mental health care, child care

Born in Omaha, Heimes grew up in Scottsbluff and Lincoln. She returned to Omaha in 2009 to earn a political science degree at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, then a master's degree and a law degree from Creighton University. She and her husband, Ben, have three young children.

A defining moment in her life occurred in 2017, when her younger brother, Matthew, a 23-year-old Missouri National Guard soldier, took his own life. He seemed lighthearted and cheerful. No one in her family saw it coming. Since then, suicide prevention has been a driving force - a way of squeezing something positive out of an unthinkable tragedy.

Heimes' desire to boost Nebraska's mental health services prompted her first legislative run. It is a tent-pole issue for her current campaign, too. She said hospitals and providers are overwhelmed, and wait times are too long for those who seek help, and police often bear the brunt of coping with people experiencing mental health crises.

"We just don't have enough mental health practitioners," she said.

Heimes wants to create incentives for new college graduates in the mental health field to stay in Nebraska and ease licensing restrictions for those moving in from out-of-state. She would also push for investment in crisis response programs and boost partnerships with nonprofits.

Improving child care affordability and availability is also a top priority. She wants to give businesses incentives to create in-house day care, and prod universities and community colleges to expand training for caregivers. At the root of the problem, Heimes said, is a severe shortage of workers, worsened by pandemic-era retirements.

She said Nebraska needs to be an enticing place for young people after high school or college, and where immigrants want to move. That means improving public transportation and establishing a property tax homestead exemption to reduce property taxes on owner-occupied dwellings.

"We need to be enticing people to come to Nebraska," she said.

Heimes was a registered Democrat when she ran in 2020. After her defeat, she changed her registration to nonpartisan - though she said her opinions on issues haven't changed.

"Party politics is limiting. It allows people to have a preconceived notion of how you're going to vote," she said. "What I'd rather people think is that I'm going to read the bill and look at the issue before I decide how to vote. The best way to give people that assurance is to be an independent."

Through the last reporting period in mid-June, Sorrentino held a $60,000 to $43,000 fundraising edge. The next reports are due Oct. 7.

Sorrentino's contributors include PACs representing Realtors, CPAs and bankers. He received $10,000 from U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Heimes' contributions have come from labor union PACs representing teachers and electrical workers, as well as $10,000 from Barbara Weitz, a philanthropist and University of Nebraska regent, and $3,000 from Susanne Shore, Ricketts' wife. The Nebraska Democratic Party pitched in $500.

In the May primary, Sorrentino edged Heimes by a slim 51% to 49% margin.

[email protected]; twitter.com/Steve Liewer