Gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts stops in Kimball

At the heart of Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Ricketts campaign is a focus on education.

Ricketts, who previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of TD Ameritrade and national committeeman for the Republican National Committee, decided to run for governor, because he feels that it will give him the opportunity to bring about change and address issues that may have fallen by the wayside in recent years.

“As governor, you actually have an opportunity to work with people and make a difference in people’s lives. We have a great history here in Nebraska of coming together to solve our common problems. It’s just a great opportunity to build upon the foundation that Governor Heineman and former Governor Johanns have put together to work with folks to make life better here in Nebraska,” Ricketts said.

One of the issues that he would like to turn his focus on is the problems facing the school systems. Ricketts believes that education can serve as a gateway to creating job growth and tackling several of the issues that Nebraskans have faced in recent years.

“Nebraskans want to make sure their child or their grandchild gets a great education and then what kind of goes along with that is that they have the chance to grow up, live, work and raise their family right here in Nebraska and find the job of their dreams right there. Education is the first start of that and making sure that we can have good outcomes for all of our kids,” Ricketts said.

Along with ensuring that students are given a proper education, Ricketts believes that we have to make sure that students coming out of high school or the university will have jobs available to them by instilling the right skills and capabilities in order to prepare them for the workforce.

“Employers have to have access to the right skill set for people so there’s workforce development that goes in here. Also, we need to make sure that we have enough kids coming out of school to supply those employers. They’re kind of jointly linked, the jobs and education,” Ricketts said.

It is also Ricketts focus on job growth that has led him to support the Keystone XL pipeline. Though there has been much protest of the pipeline due to concern over both safety issues and the potential for a spill which would possibly leak into the Ogallala Aquifer, Ricketts believes that many of the safety risks have been mitigate by TransCanada, which owns the pipeline, and that the pipeline will be the safest way to move oil across the state, citing the incident that occurred in Quebec earlier this year where oil cars sitting on a rail broke loose and came down in the middle of town and exploded.

“Pipelines, I think, are the safest way to transport oil, and we need to have oil to supply our energy needs. I think you have to balance off those risks and the benefits, and the pipeline is the best trade off there for risks and benefits when it comes to this particular project,” Ricketts said.

When asked about issues concerning the fears of residents about the potential for a spill that would contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, Ricketts stated that he believes that, even in a case of a spill, it would not lead to great detriment to the environment.

“We have 36,000 miles of pipeline that run across Nebraska. We have had some spills, but they haven’t caused major environmental damage. We’ve cleaned those things up. I think that’s probably what we see out of this pipeline which TransCanada says will be their safest pipeline going through Nebraska,” Ricketts said.

Along with a focus on job growth and education, Ricketts, is also keeping a watchful eye on the rural economy, believing that agriculture is the backbone of the state’s economy.

“Making sure that we have a strong Ag economy is important. There’s been no better place to weather the recession than right here in Nebraska. A large part of that is the fact that agriculture has been so strong. We need to open up additional Ag markets for our Ag products. Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers lie outside of our borders. We have to go get them,” Ricketts said.

Along with many Nebraskans, Ricketts is a strong supporter of the second amendment. Concerning the recent tragedies in Aurora, Colorado, Newtown, Connecticut and the navy yard shooting in Washington D.C. and the strong push to add stricter restrictions to obtaining a firearm, Ricketts believes that the focus should lie in ensuring that people in need can get proper mental health treatment in order to prevent further tragedies.

“If you look at what’s happened, it’s not so much the screening of the people when they’re buying guns. It’s their access to mental health care long before they decide to buy a gun. The real issue here is mental health. It’s not about the guns. The guns are tools just like anything else. It’s about helping the people by making sure they have proper access to mental health care,” Ricketts said.

Ricketts is also a strong pro-life advocate. However, he also supports the use of the death penalty. Though these may seem like conflicting beliefs, Ricketts explains that it lies in the difference between the innocent life of a child versus the life of somebody who has committed a heinous crime.

“I think there’s a big difference between innocent life which doesn’t have a voice to defend itself. That’s why I’m very pro-life and want to protect the rights of the unborn. I also believe the state has a right to defend itself and, in fact, a duty to protect the people of the state, and the death penalty ought to be part of that defense of the people if we need to use it,” Ricketts said.

However, for special cases when the life of the mother is at risk, Ricketts understands if efforts to save the mother cause the death of the unborn child.

“What I believe is in the principle of double effect. If you’re trying to treat the mother’s life and the treatments end up killing the child, that’s a tragedy, but you ought not to purposefully take the child’s life. It ought to be in the context of trying to treat the mother,” Ricketts said.

When it comes to the household, Ricketts is an advocate for traditional marriage.

“I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. That’s the foundation of society and has been forever. That’s just how we should be approaching the way that we want to found society. Not that I’m trying to hurt anyone else’s feelings. That’s just kind of the way that natural law for 10,000 years has been,” Ricketts said.

He also believes that a man and a woman have qualities that are necessary for the optimal development of a child and that children should be placed into traditional homes, whether through natural birth or through adoption.

“I think that the priority ought to be that children are placed into homes with a man and a woman. I think that’s the most stable form of family that you can put a child into. That’s the ideal. That doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be there, but I think that ought to be the first priority,” Ricketts said.

In the coming months, Ricketts, who just launched his campaign approximately seven weeks ago, plans to travel across Nebraska and listen to the concerns of residents in order to better inform what needs to be done throughout the state to make ‘the good life’ even better, particularly concerning the topic of education.

“At this part of the campaign, I’m going out and listening to folks to see what their feedback is. I’m just listening to a lot of folks to see what they think the ideas are for how we can improve education and then I’ll put together a plan for that as we get into next year,” Ricketts said.

He believes that what truly separates him from the rest of the candidates is his background of serving as the COO of TD Ameritrade, which was started by his father J. Joseph Ricketts, and the responsibilities and experiences that the job entailed.

“I managed large budgets, set spending priorities, and made tough decisions about how we were going to prioritize our spending and our resources to be able to grow the company. That’s the kind of experience you want to have in a governor, and I’m the only person in this race that has that experience,” Ricketts said.

If elected, Ricketts plans to keep the lines of communication open with the public and take the request and concerns of the people into consideration when making decisions.

“In business, you’re successful because you get the most out of the people in your organization and that isn’t about commanding or telling them what to do, but it’s about working with them to get their ideas and develop that. As governor, that’s the way I would operate,” Ricketts said.

Ricketts was born in Nebraska City and was raised in Omaha. Ricketts currently lives in Omaha with his wife Susanne and their three children, freshmen Roscoe and Margot and seventh grader Eleanor.

Residents interested in getting more information about Ricketts can visit his site at petericketts.com.