Candidate field grows for 2025 Omaha mayoral race
Democratic and Republican candidates are lining up to challenge incumbent GOP Mayor Jean Stothert in the nonpartisan April primary.
Republican state Sen. Mike McDonnell is the latest candidate to mount a challenge to Republican Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert as she seeks a record fourth four-year term. Two Democrats had already joined the race.
The city will hold a nonpartisan primary on April 1, 2025, for mayor and all seven seats on the Omaha City Council. The top two candidates in each race will advance to a May 3 general election.
Here’s who is running:
Democratic Douglas County Treasurer John Ewing Jr.
Ewing, who spent 24 years with the Omaha Police Department and has been the Douglas County treasurer for 17 years, announced in April that he would run in the mayoral race. “I’m a guy who unifies people and brings people together so we can get great things done,” he told WOWT News, “and I believe I’m uniquely qualified for that.”
Ewing’s campaign website is johnewingforomaha.com.
Democratic nonprofit executive Jasmine Harris
Harris is the director of public policy and advocacy for RISE, a program that helps people who complete prison terms reenter the community. She announced her candidacy on Oct. 1, promising to prioritize “public safety, healthy communities, affordable housing, providing economic opportunity and inclusive development that benefits everyone in our city.” Harris unsuccessfully sought the position in 2021.
Harris’ campaign website is: voteforjasmine.com.
Republican state Sen. Mike McDonnell
McDonnell, a longtime labor union leader and two-term state senator, announced his mayoral candidacy on Nov. 21, saying: “I’m not a perfect person. I can promise I will listen to you. I will work hard. And I will tell you the truth. That’s why I’m announcing I’m running for mayor.”
McDonnell was elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 2016 and 2020 as a Democrat, but switched parties in April 2024 over his opposition to abortion. He made national headlines in September for helping to thwart a push by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and other Nebraska Republicans to switch the state’s system of awarding Electoral College votes to a winner-take-all model.
McDonnell’s campaign website is www.mikeforomaha.com.
Republican Mayor Jean Stothert
The 12-year incumbent Stothert announced in March that she would seek an unprecedented fourth term as Omaha’s mayor. “I love my job,” she told reporters. “We have such great momentum. A fourth term is all about trust. It’s about momentum. And it’s about results.”
Her tenure has been controversial. Despite promising in 2017 not to do so without a public vote, she approved an unpopular plan to spend more than $300 million on a streetcar project. Her multimillion dollar redevelopment project on the site of the former Crossroads Mall, which was supposed to be complete by 2024, has encountered significant delays. She faces an ongoing federal sex discrimination lawsuit, filed in November 2023 by deputy city attorney Michelle Peters. Peters alleges that Stothert passed her over for the city attorney job, instead choosing a “a less qualified male candidate.”
Stothert’s campaign website is jeanstothert.com.
Douglas County Democratic Party chair C.J. King told the Nebraska Independent in an interview that McDonnell’s announcement indicates that he and the Republicans “have done the polling and that Jean Stothert is vulnerable, and people are kind of done” with her.
“Mike getting in is because he believes it’s time for a change, and I do too,” King said, “but I also believe that we’ve got two good Dems in the race and that they’re the folks that are going to have the vision and the actual change to lead us forward.”
Omaha City Council president Pete Festersen, a Democrat who reportedly was considering a mayoral bid, said in October that he will instead seek reelection.
