Transphobic ad blitz fails (former) Omaha, Nebraska mayor in election

Omaha, Nebraska mayor Jean Stothert turned her back on the LGBTQ community and fully embraced transphobia with flyers (top picture) and television ads linking her opponent, John Ewing with the standard bigoted tropes. Ewing didn't distance himself from the trans community, while challenging Stothert's ad blitz head on (bottom picture). At the end of the campaign, Ewing easily won, becoming the city's first Black mayor.

A three-term incumbent mayor (now former mayor) in Omaha, Nebraska found out the hard way that scaring people about transgender Americans can only go so far.

From Queerty:

Jean Stothert governed as a moderate Republican during her tenure as the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, even creating an LGBTQ+ advisory board to improve her relations with the community.

 But in the waning days of her most recent campaign, the three-term incumbent leaned into anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. She ran a TV ad accusing her Democratic opponent, John Ewing Jr., of wanting “boys in girls’ bathrooms and sports,” tired transphobic lines that Republicans across the country have been trotting out for years. 

 When Omaha residents went to the polls Tuesday, they didn’t buy her fear-mongering. Ewing bested Stothert by more than 11,000 votes, becoming the first Black mayor in the city’s history. Though Omaha has more registered Democrats than Republicans, Stothert was popular and won by 27 points when she ran for re-election in 2021.

LGBTQ online publication THEM pointed out that the Ewing campaign met the ad blitz head on while not distancing itself from trans people and in one case, turning Stothert's ad blitz against her with a flyer of its own.

Stothert was generally favored going into Election Day, as a 12-year incumbent who won her last election with a whopping 64% of the vote. But in the final weeks of the campaign, Stothert and a conservative PAC blitzed Ewing and the Democrats with anti-trans ads similar to those seen in the 2024 presidential election. 

 One TV ad from the Stothert campaign claimed that Ewing “stands with radicals” in favor of “boys in girls’ bathrooms and sports,” according to the Omaha World-Herald. Separately, a mailer paid for by the newly-formed PAC Omaha Leadership Fund — itself funded by another right-wing, anti-abortion PAC called “Common Sense Nebraska” — claimed that Ewing wants to “transition minors without their parents’ consent” and is “backed by radicals who will allow men in girls’ sports and bathrooms,” as seen in what appears to be a photo of the mailer posted to the r/Omaha subreddit last week.

 Ewing’s campaign called Stothert’s claims “utterly false” and demanded that the TV ad be pulled, per the World-Herald. In a statement to the newspaper, Stothert said she had no knowledge of the mailer before it was released, but stood by the TV ad. The claims in that ad were not connected to any statements by Ewing himself, she said, but were instead based on his endorsements from the Nebraska Democratic Party and the Nebraska Stonewall Democrats, the party’s LGBTQ+ caucus. Stonewall Dems oppose LB89, a Republican bill in the state legislature that would ban trans students from using bathrooms or locker rooms, or competing on sports teams, that match their gender; legislators voted to advance the bill last month, after a similar version died as the result of a filibuster in 2024. 

 But though Ewing and the Nebraska Dems pushed back against the Stothert camp’s accusations, they also did not distance themselves from trans people . . .  On May 2, Ewing held a Q&A at Omaha gay bar Flixx hosted by local drag queen Jackie Oh Kennedy. And only a few days before the election, the Nebraska Dems posted an image to X declaring that “Jean is focused on potties,” featuring an edited image of Stothert’s face poking underneath a bathroom stall. (“Ultimately, Jean would rather focus on potties, while John focuses on fixing potholes,” Nebraska Democratic Party Executive Director Precious McKesson wrote in a May 8 press release.)