Weekly Skews - Good Skews: Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, Jane Kleeb

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

On this episode of Good Skews, we interview Jane Kleeb, a seasoned grassroots organizer, author, manager, and political strategist in the Great Plains.Since December 2016, Kleeb has held the position of Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, and she is currently serving her fourth term, which extends until November 2026. She also holds the role of Chair of the Association of State Democratic Committees.Her leadership has fostered the creation of innovative programs such as Block Captains, 93-County Voter Guides, and the Candidates of Color Fund. She is the longest-serving Chair in the history of the Nebraska Democratic Party.Our conversation delves into the recent surprising upset in Omaha’s mayoral election, where longtime Republican incumbent Jean Stothert was defeated with 56–44 percent of the vote. Ewing’s victory marks a historic moment as he becomes the first Black mayor of Omaha and represents a strong rejection of anti-transgender campaign tactics.Support the show

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of GoodSkews. I'm producer Matt. This week on Goodskews, we're going to be talking with Jane Kleb. Jane is an organizer, an activist, and the state chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. Just recently in Nebraska Democrats won a. big race in Omaha. It's a good sign that things are moving in the right direction for Democrats. Jane is chair of the state chairs through the Democratic Party. She wears many hats, also involved with activism through the Bold Alliance. And we talk about all of the good news

happening in Nebraska. Jane, thanks so much for joining us. today on good skews. Do you want to just talk a little bit about all the hats that you wear? Yeah, yeah. It's too many some days, but here I am. I'm chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. I got elected in late 2016, and I'm still the chair there. I recently got elected as the ASDC president, which basically means I'm in charge of all the state parties across the country and the territories, which makes me then second in command at the DNC. So if you're mad at the DNC, come talking. to me. And then in my paying job, because all of those rules are actually volunteers, I run a

group called Bold. We're mostly known for stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, but we work in a lot of communities to stop pipelines and build clean energy. And in a lot of ways, Nebraska is leading on multiple fronts right now. But the one that we wanted to talk to you about today is this big win you just had in Omaha. Do you want to set the stage a little bit for folks? I I mean, a lot of our listeners come from places like Omaha or, you know, red states. But could you just give a little bit of context for the politics in Nebraska over the last 20 years or so? Yeah. You know, we used to be more of a purple state.

Ben Nelson was a senator in our state up until 2012 when he decided not to run for reelection. So, you know, he helped get. Obamacare passed, and that basically was the writing on the wall with the Tea Party of the real shift in Nebraska, as well as in the Dakotas and other kind of Midwest plain states. So it's been difficult for us to win kind of top of the ticket races in Omaha and in Lincoln over several years. Those are our two, you know, blue cities, if you will, where more Democrats live. We've made significant gains in Lincoln, including the mayor, and we have all these major, super majorities on the city council and county commission. But we were never able to kind of

get across the finish line in Omaha. I think, you know, for several reasons, I think, you know, there's a lot of big businesses there. It's also a lot of small businesses. The city is broken into quadrants of north, south, east and west Omaha. And, you know, African Americans live in North Omaha. Latinos live in South Omaha with unions, more kind of wealthy suburb people that work at Berkshire Hathaway and Union Pacific, kind of live in West Omaha. It's very general, stereotypical, but it's a pretty divided city. And we could never get everybody to come together, which always gave an opening to the Republicans, even though there's fewer Republicans in Omaha to win. And that's been the case for not only Congress for Don Bacon and then Gene

Stauffert, who John Ewing just beat in Omaha. This was the first year, I think, that all the kind of divided groups in Omaha put aside their differences. and said, we're coming together to beat Gene Stothert and to make history by electing the first African-American mayor in the entire state. And obviously, and of course, in Omaha. And we have resources. Like, I think, you know, you can't win these races on shoe leather alone. You need real financial resources. So we had a lot of financial resources at the table. You have really built, you know, your operations on the advocacy side of things and also on the parties from the ground up. Can you talk a little bit?

about what it takes. I mean, for a lot of people, you know, they see MSNBC news clip or something on blue sky where, oh, hey, this, this, you know, mayor flipped. And it's a big news for a couple of days. And then, you know, it sort of fades from the headlines. But you have been working on this constantly. Talk a little bit about what it takes to move a state like Nebraska forward and to start picking up some of these wins. Yep. That's right. So, you know, this wasn't, you know, by happenstance that John was able to win the mayor seat. When I became chair, just to set the table, when I became chair in basically January of 2017, we had 504 Democrats elected. We now have 1,025 Democrats elected. And we get beat by the Republicans constantly on social media and the news that I'm not able as chair to win one of the statewide or big congressional races. And that's true. Right. And I always say that's true, but watch out because we're building our bench. We've been very conscience and strategic about building up our party and building at the local level in order to get to the place where we are right now where we were able to win in Omaha. And I am very confident we're going to be able to win that second congressional district race in 2026. And I even think we have a shot at some of the statewide races. Governor, we have some of a really good candidate. who's considering running for governor in our state. And then, of course, Dan Osborne, who's going to run

as an independent. He's basically a mechanic versus the billionaire rickets that the Democratic Party will be supporting. So this took lots of grassroots mobilization. When I also became chair, we only had about 40 county parties. And some of those were barely hanging on. We didn't have a county party manual. We didn't have, you know, manuals for our staff positions. We didn't have a block captain or a precinct captain program. And so we put some of these very clear pieces in place. We now have a thriving block captain program. That's a program that one of my staff members and I created back in 2017 where we assigned 50 voters to you in your neighborhood and you canvass those doors three times during the year, even in non-election years. And we have over 600 block captains across the

state who are engaged in that program. So I think these, you know, these are the things that you have to do in order to build back. And we're also just like talking about real issues, Matt. Like we're not getting and not letting the Republicans sideline us. And we definitely let them do that in 2024 where we were like paralyzed when they were coming after the trans community. And when they tried to do that in the city elections in the Omaha mayor's race this past city election, we pushed back. We mocked them, right? We said that, look, Gene Stathler cares about potty's. And John Ewing cares about fixing potholes. And we stayed on that message and created fun social graphics to push back on it.

And I think as Democrats, we did not do that in 24. We kind of took this high-minded. We just need to ignore it. It's going to go away rather than confronting it head on. Yeah, I saw that meme about potty's versus potholes. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. And I think a lot of people, you know, I always think back to when I lived in Columbus, Ohio, there was a record store that sold t-shirts that said Columbus sucks because you suck.

But I think that there's a dynamic to that to what it means to be a Democrat where, like, if we're not happy with the Democratic Party, it's on us to get involved. And a lot of times I think so much of the focus is on Washington, D.C. or it's on, you know, what people are seeing on TV, that they forget that there's so much that can be done at the local level. And I think what you're showing in Nebraska really highlights that where, you know, these are people that are just getting involved. They're tired of sitting and watching the news and feeling bad about everything that they're seeing. But they're getting involved and having a big impact on the mayor's race. And that's the way, I mean, frankly, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, but that's the way it's supposed to work. And it seems like so much of the attention nowadays is focused on national politics. And that doesn't really seem to help Democrats.

No. And here's what I've learned, you know, Matt, you know that I'm an activist, right? I'm an organizer. I work on a lot of different issue campaigns in my career, whether it was AmeriCorps, helping pass Obamacare, helping get mental health parity across the finish line. And Keystone XL was clearly a defining moment in my career. And in all of those fights, it was about us mobilizing unlikely alliances to come to the table for some common ground and some common goals and giving people purpose in their lives and

making them feel that they were part of something way bigger than themselves. And that's what I've been trying to do here in Nebraska, the Democratic Party and what I'm now trying to do at the national level. And it's clearly what my message is to progressives, independents, Democrats, and kind of like-minded Republicans, that we are here to fix the broken political system. And it is broken. And I think it is true that baby boomers have dominated our politics, both at the local state and national level. And we haven't had the diversity of thought from Gen X and millennials in order

to bring our country forward and solve these big problems that we know still exist. Health care is still a problem. Public education still needs to be fully funded and needs to be expanded to include pre-K and community college, right? Climate change, we finally have Democrats admitting it, but are they taking action on it? So, you know, these are the big problems that I know we can fix. I get frustrated deeply. When I am on social media and I see people constantly bashing the Democratic Party or kind of outside groups that have sprung up thinking that, you know, they're going to solve the problem on the outside. It's going to take all of us. It's going to take the outside groups. It's going to take like the punk rock groups. It's going to take the established democratic groups, all putting their

shoulders down and saying, we have a real problem to solve in our country where people feel totally disconnected from the government and that there's no path forward. And it's our job to bring hope to the table. Yeah. So what do you think has been over the years like the best piece of advice that you've gotten as you're doing this work? I mean, because you mentioned in Omaha that the mayor's race and the results reflected the fact that people finally for the first time came together to, you know, unify across differences. Seems like you're doing that in your advocacy as well. So you have a lot of experience with that. But like for those that are out there trying to figure out just how to get involved in their local community or to, you know, turn the TV

off for a little bit and start making stuff happen, what's your advice to them or what advice have you gotten that you think you want to pass on? You know, I think folks need to figure out what they're passionate and feel real like comfort and love in doing and then do that for either the Democratic Party or a local group. So for example, if you love baking, then start holding bake sales and fun bake sales and create really fun names for the cupcakes and cookies about billionaires versus working class folks. Maybe you can have two sets of prices and raise money for your local county party or your local state party or a local candidate. If your thing is rallies and you're into making real fun creative science because you have an artistic, you know,

talent, then lean into that and start making really creative signs so people can hold those. You know, we really need more people in the county and state party infrastructure because this is the core and nuts and bolts of how we get more people and different people elected at the local state and national level. And I'm just warning you, if you go into your county party, your county party may be flourishing and functioning and awesome or your county party may be struggling. And it may be held down by a lot of older folks who have been doing their best to keep things on track. And they sometimes may even be resistant to you coming at first. But I'm telling you, if you keep on showing up, if you show that you have the party and the candidates

in your local community at your heart of doing good work, that's when you can start to change things internally. It doesn't happen in your first meeting. It might not even happen in your third meeting. But I'm telling you, by the fifth meeting you go to at your county or your state party, you're going to start to have built relationships and start to be able to see where your influence and your creativity and your ideas can impact change. Yeah, I remember the first time I went to a county party meeting was in Lyon County, Iowa. And it was in 2011, and it was right around the Occupy Wall Street time frame. And the county chairs were like, who is this guy? You know, they assumed that I was, like, coming to, like, occupy the meeting, but it took

them a couple of weeks and a couple of, frankly, a couple of months for people to warm up. And then, you know, after a while, it was just they were relieved to have new people there because they had been kind of carrying the load on their own. So you come at this also as an activist. How do you think your perspective is different from other folks that are in similar roles across the DNC or in state parties. What does it mean to come at this work as an activist? I think there's a couple of things. One, I'm constantly looking at the infrastructure that we need to reform. So I'm never happy with the current existing infrastructure. So thankfully, we have a partner in

Ken Martin who just became the DNC chair. And he's going to be rolling out a set of, I think, over 10 reforms, things like how do we get and ban dark money from our presidential primaries? How do we put the ban on superdelegates, which we were able to get done by resolution in the past two conventions. But how do we get that into the bylaws? How do we get into the bylaws? Something very common sense and that progressives had pushed during Bernie Hillary of making sure that our DNC officers do not endorse in D&D primaries. So we have a more neutral, no thumb on the scale. Let the voters decide who our nominees are at state and federal in presidential elections for DNC officers. So, you know, that's one thing that I'm constantly doing is constantly thinking

about how can we continue to improve our infrastructure so it's more accessible to voters. It's more fair. It's more transparent. The other thing is I'm constantly thinking about are there people that are maybe not in traditional campaign political work, but who have done politics and how do we bring them into the infrastructure? You know, I was happy, for example, when the Harris team, you know, brought you on to run their rural outreach. It wasn't, the runway was too short for you to make the full impact that you needed and can make. But we need more of you inside the building, inside political campaigns, because there's still some outdated thinking that's run by some consultants who, yes, have some real strong experience that we need to lean on. But, you know,

for example, the one thing that you and I agree on is that yard signs actually do matter. Right. And if you listen to like old school political operatives, they get so grumpy about yard signs. And they say yard signs don't vote. And it's a waste of money and it's a waste of time when I'm sorry, like that is the one clear grassroots action. And as an activist, I know this. Right. So it's like, that's a perfect example of something to bring in that that is the one clear example that I is a voter in an individual. If I don't have time to be volunteering or donating, that I can show I. I am on team Democrats, and I'm proud to do that. It makes me feel proud as a voter and more likely to have conversations and actually turn out to vote. So those are the types of thing. It's like bringing more creative outside actions into the party and infusing a different type of energy. And I think there's, I mean, for one, I think there's a lot of people who can relate to being the only Democrat in a community, not even just if you're in a small town or whatever. but it sucks when every sign around you is a Trump sign and it makes a difference when people are willing to be out and, you know, vocal, whether it's about issues or about candidates or about the party or whatever. But I think that that's something that has been really interesting to see.

And I think a lot of times people feel like their their feedback to the party isn't being heard or that, you know, the party, the Democratic Party is just too big or too, it's just, It's a ship that's too big to steer, but you're so connected with all of the state parties and all the state parties are connected to the county parties. When people think Democrats, they immediately go to like Chuck Schumer in New York City, which is one piece of the Democratic Party, but there's so much other infrastructure out there that makes up the Democrats. Yeah, that's right. It's so easy to just say, look, the Democratic Party is so big, it's so broken.

I'm going to go do my own thing. but the reality is the Democratic Party is you. It's me. It's the local county party. It's the candidates, you know, that are running for school board and in our state public power board or governor and, you know, legislature. And it's all those party committees too. And those party committees are made up of individuals. So I think, you know, let's, for me, it's like let's put the kind of, you know, 2004 hatred against the party to the side and bring up more energy and realize. that we are the ones that actually do need to change the party and finally making space for younger leaders, including Gen X, which when I say younger, I mean, I'm 52, and that is younger in our Democratic Party infrastructure. You know, I think one thing is it's not easy to kind of break into, I think, democratic politics. In some communities it is and sometimes it's not. But if you're willing, we need you. And I think if you are hitting a brick wall asking to sit down with the executive director of your state party or the chair of your

state party and say that, look, you know that they have a million things on their plate and you're trying to help and share your talents, rather than going at them on social media saying that they suck and they didn't return your first phone call. You know, we also have other areas that people can get involved in. One of the biggest obstacles that we are facing is that we don't have enough people registering as Democrats. We have more and more young people registering as independence. And a lot of that is because the Democratic Party and their donors decided to give voter registration money to nonpartisan groups. And so they can't advocate because they're not a partisan group to become a Democrat. So when they're doing voter registration drives, which they

are and they're doing a good job at, but they're not able to say, this is why you should be a Democrat. And this is why we want you on our team. So if you're willing, that's one big piece if you're listening to this podcast, so something you could do is start a voter registration program at a local concert, a rodeo, you know, a county fair, and advocate for people to become Democrats. That is desperately needed. For the rest of this year, do you have, what's your big elections coming up for 25? And then as you go to 26 and 28, what's giving you the most hope? Yeah. So for us in Nebraska, our big elections were Lincoln and Omaha. So those are under our belt. We swept every single race in Lincoln. Eight offices were up. Democrats won all of them.

And then we won all but two races in Omaha, almost a clean sweep there as well. So huge bright spots leading into 26. For the rest of the party, Democrats have big races in New Jersey and Virginia for governor and a lot of other kind of key down ballot races. Those are happening this November. So a lot of resources are being spent there. You know, I'm looking forward to reforming and revising the way that we elect our presidential nominee. So right now, folks know the state of plate is basically, you know, I'm trained to say Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan. Those are the current primary states. But, you know, Chair Martin has basically said, look, we're going to wipe the slate clean and figure out what should our primary

process B. I'm advocating for more of a regional perspective, meaning on day one of our primary, we have one state in each region go. And then on the second set of dates, we have another set of one state per region. So you're really electing somebody that reflects America, not just one state. Because I think that's been not great for us as a party. And I don't think it's been proven over the last couple cycles to really give us the strongest nominee we need. I am super excited about the 26th cycle. I think, you know, we've won basically every special election except the two in Florida, and those were such huge voter reg gaps of like 30 points. That was hard to combat. But the definitely momentum is on the Democrats side. Now, we have to make sure that voters understand when Democrats are

in office, economies are always better, right? Democrats over the last several years have created 50 million jobs, Republicans have created one million jobs, corn prices, cattle prices, always higher when Democrats are in office. We haven't done a good job just telling voters the basic. We get so bogged down in like a 30-page summary of our positions with footnotes rather than just say, look, here's how people's lives are better when Democrats are in control. And that's what I'm excited about is kind of reforming and rebranding the way that we are operating as a party. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking some time here to chat. And where can people follow you and learn more about your work?

So you can find me on X and Blue Sky, Jane Cleb. I'm also, of course, on Facebook and Instagram. Nebraska Democrats is our website. And we have some pretty cool swag like billionaires can't buy my vote and stuff like that on Nebraskademocrats.org. And of course, Democrats.org is the big headquarters site where you can find my work in the Democratic Party, the national. level. Excellent. Well, Jane, thank you so much for chatting. Thanks, Matt. Well, that's all the time that we have for this episode of GoodSkews. Thank you so much for tuning in. We're so glad to talk with Jane Cleb of the Nebraska Democrats. We look forward to lifting up more stories of good news here on GoodSkews.