Hahn pushes big change

As David Hahn moves through the breakfast crowd at the OK Cafe in Hastings, he hears some assuring words.

“Property taxes are too high,” Robert Siemsen of Fairfield announces as Hahn reaches his table.

“And we're suffering a big intellectual drain. Five years after our kids finish high school, they're all gone.”

Those are two issues Hahn has targeted in his uphill race against Gov. Dave Heineman.

With a laptop full of ideas, the Lincoln Internet entrepreneur has constructed a message of property tax relief, innovative economic development initiatives and college scholarships tied to launching young careers in Nebraska.

This month the Democratic nominee began delivering that message, launching his initial series of 30-second TV ads. First topic on the agenda: His signature pledge to substantially reduce property taxes, the tax levy Nebraskans most love to hate.

Now people are beginning to recognize Hahn in cafes, grocery stores and on the street as TV works its magic of transforming candidates into celebrities by repetitively displaying their image on television screens.

Visibility is not the only payoff, Hahn says.

“This lets people know they have a choice.”

With Heineman riding the momentum of an impressive Republican primary victory over Rep. Tom Osborne in May, and Hahn trailing far behind in published polls, the obvious question arises: Can he win?

“The clear differences between us are what gives me an opportunity to win,” he says.

Hahn points to distinct departures over property tax reduction; corporate tax advantages; utilization of the state's publicly owned electric utilities to deliver broadband Internet service throughout the state; Omaha school reorganization; and his opposition to legislation patterned after South Dakota's restrictive new anti-abortion law.

And something more. Leadership. Hahn argues he is a compass, Heineman a weather vane.

“These are not just shades of difference,” Hahn says. “These are polar opposites.”

There are choices to be made.

But for a candidate on his first political voyage, the path to the voters is long and hard.

As well as brutally expensive —especially when the most effective way to deliver the message to the most Nebraskans is through costly TV commercials, whose maximum impact requires more than a modest or short-term buy.

After downing several cups of coffee, a vegetable omelette and rye toast at the OK Cafe, Hahn walks from table to booth to table.

“I've heard of you,” one woman says.

“Don't give up,” one Hastings man encourages him.

But most of the diners this morning are in town from Kansas, Colorado, Arkansas and Utah, willing to wish him luck but unable to offer a vote. A stark reminder of the hit-and-miss aspect of on-the-ground trolling for voters.

It's cloudy and windy when the white GMC Yukon XL — equipped with a candidate-friendly interior featuring laptop, two cell phones, nighttime reading and western boots — pulls up in front of the Head Start Center.

Hahn has just finished fielding a call from Steve Loschen, his lieutenant governor running mate, who dialed seeking advice on a speaking appearance.

“How many acres of wheat are you putting in?” Hahn asks as he talks with Loschen, a Wilcox farmer who is speaking from the cab in his combine.

“I recognize the gift given to our family by a caring professional dealing with children at an early age,” Hahn tells about 30 members of the Nebraska Head Start Association gathered around a table.

Hahn is the father of an autistic son, Alex, who is now 24.

“I would be an advocate for investing in children,” he tells the parents and professionals. That's why he's already announced he would donate his $114,000 salary as governor to hire “an independent defender of children" reporting directly to him about children's programs, including the troubled child welfare system.

Hahn is an intellectual guy with a passion for theology. He spent two years studying philosophy and theology in Germany, drawn to Phillips University in Marburg because German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge, was teaching there.

Hahn's nighttime — or, in his case, pre-dawn — reading on this trip consists of “On Human Work,” by John Paul II, and “Jesus: A New Vision,” by Marcus Borg.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hahn was an attorney for Nebraska farmers in economic distress.

Now he's an Internet entrepreneur with the familiar risk-taking entrepreneur's story: Make a lot of money, lose a lot of money (think dot.com crash, in his case) then make a lot of money once again.

His gubernatorial bid reflects his risk-taking nature. Hahn is a Democrat challenging an incumbent Republican governor in a state with 200,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in a year when the Democratic Party's priority is protecting Ben Nelson's Senate seat.

Hahn seeded his campaign with $100,000 of his own money and, he figures, by now he's probably added about $100,000 more.

In terms of resources, his campaign entered October on an empty tank. Total cash on hand, as of Oct. 3, was $747.46, according to his latest campaign finance report.

Hahn keeps track of his business — New Digital Group, a Lincoln firm specializing in building online publishing networks — through a two-hour meeting with his managers every Monday and by scanning daily auto-generated reports for 10 minutes every morning.

Nighttime and morning are uniquely defined in Hahn's world.

He regularly awakens between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., which gives him time for reading. And, undoubtedly, a healthy chunk of alone time.

Sometimes, when he's in Lincoln, Hahn quietly slips from his headquarters to catch a late-afternoon movie. “Nobody knows where I'm at,” he says with a gleam of independent satisfaction.

Nebraska, Hahn suggests, is “slipping behind,” lagging in economic growth and opportunity, failing to develop quality jobs, watching its young people leave, losing its family farms, experiencing increasing poverty, especially in rural areas.

Stuck on dead center.

“Stagnant at best,” Hahn says.

“It's very important, especially in Nebraska with its nonpartisan unicameral legislature, to provide strong leadership,” he says.

“The governor needs to set an agenda, chart a course, not sit around and wait for a consensus to form.”

Instead of studying problems, Hahn says, it's time to act.

“I'd be an advocate. I'd set a course, but always be open to criticism and course correction. I'd chart a path. And it certainly wouldn't be going south.”

Hahn believes Nebraska has made a fundamental mistake in “succumbing to the notion that all we need to do is pander to large corporations,” showering them with generous tax breaks.

“It's bad strategy. It's waging economic civil war with other states, and it hasn't worked.”

Hahn would “close some of those tax loopholes" as part of his tax reform plan, perhaps recovering $100 million in biennial revenue in the process.

He says he'd spread broadband Internet service across the state through Nebraska's unique public power system, opening 21st century economic development opportunities in rural areas and small towns.

“We don't have the redundant fiber infrastructure" in place to take advantage of today's urgent demand for creation of data warehouses, Hahn says.

“That's a plum we could pick,” he says. “But our governor is placing the state's head in the digital dirt" when he supports legislation barring use of publicly-owned utilities to convey broadband Internet service.

Hahn says he'd focus on developing a renewable energy industry in the state. Not just ethanol, but biodiesel, solar, wind power.

“It's pretty clear our state is not growing,” he tells a luncheon gathering of the Lincoln chapter of the Association of Government Accountants.

“The measure of our economic momentum is very low,” Hahn says, framing his message to the world of numbers-crunchers. “We're not getting return on our investment in economic (tax) incentives.”

Standing in the dimly lit basement at Spaghetti Works, Hahn makes his case as servers move in and out, delivering food.

“I look at numbers. I look at the evidence.”

And it suggests Nebraska not only is slipping behind, but missing “tremendous opportunities" to move ahead.