Omaha makes history...again

It's been three weeks now since John Ewing Jr. took the oath of office as Omaha's mayor...breaking the color barrier in the process of replacing Jean Stothert, the former City Council member who, in 2013, shattered the mayoral glass ceiling here in town.

I'm glad he's in there.

And I'm excited about Ewing surrounding himself with people who have a better grasp on how to handle the city's road reconstruction projects than Stothert and her people did. (I mean, if you're going to make a street repair, why not make sure the repair lasts a long, long time?)

A little bit about him:

Ewing turned 64 on 4-18-2025; he became the Douglas County treasurer in 2007 and had that job until he became Omaha's newest mayor. Before his stint as treasurer of Nebraska's most heavily-populated county, he spent 25 years in the Omaha Police Department...eventually becoming deputy police chief.

He could've been a US representative here in this House district (known as Nebraska's Blue Dot)...but in 2012, incumbent Lee Terry Jr. (he used to be on Omaha's City Council, too) nosed Ewing out by 4,197 votes.

High school sports fans around here might remember Ewing from his days at Northwest High School, where he was on the football and boys' basketball teams.

Just before the 6-9-2025 swearing-in, JWE talked about looking forward to being able to be mayor and wanting to "tell the people about the great progress we are going to make to economic development and addressing the issues we talked about, affordable housing." He believes in building good coalitions, because, to him, that's "the best way to get things done because then you're partnering with people who do the work and you're partnering with the people who are the beneficiaries of the work as well." Can't wait to find out what's in store for the Big O and its 52nd mayor!

Sources include Wikipedia and www.ketv.com.