{"id":16130,"date":"2015-01-30T20:25:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T02:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=16130"},"modified":"2017-04-06T13:04:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:04:57","slug":"senator-leaves-farm-for-new-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=16130","title":{"rendered":"Senator leaves farm for new field"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Dan Hughes and his wife Josie pose in front of the famous faces of Mount Rushmore.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Sen. Dan Hughes\u2019 uncle ran for the District 44 legislative seat in 1974, he figured he was known well enough in the area that he didn\u2019t need to campaign.<\/p>\n

Herb Hughes\u2019 defeat taught his nephew a valuable lesson about how to run for office that stayed with him for 40 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to make that same mistake,\u201d said the new lawmaker from Venango. \u201cI\u2019m fortunate to have advanced to the job that he came just a few votes short of getting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughes said his uncle\u2019s political pursuits and his parents\u2019 community service\u2014including his father\u2019s more than 30 years of service on the Venango school board\u2014set examples that helped put him on a path to the Unicameral.<\/p>\n

In the agricultural community, Hughes said, helping neighbors and friends is a way of life, and serving on organizations such as the Nebraska Wheat Board and the Nebraska Farm Bureau is how he gives back to the agriculture industry. Serving as a state senator continues that effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get a lot of enjoyment helping my fellow farmer,\u201d he said. \u201cI just like being busy. I\u2019m not happy unless I have about six balls in the air at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those \u201cballs\u201d is the farm Hughes runs with his wife of 37 years, Josie, and his two adult children, Tyler and Ashley. A third-generation farmer, Hughes lives a half-mile from where he grew up in Imperial and names farming as his sole passion.<\/p>\n

Although Hughes said it was a tough decision to leave the farm for the Legislature, his absence gives his children the opportunity to maintain the operation \u201cwithout having dad looking over their shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to follow my dreams and it allows them to begin the transition of the farm for the next generation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For now, his transition from farmer to senator is made a little easier, Hughes said, because the Unicameral conducts its business in the winter when life slows down on the farm. Despite knowing the farm is in good hands, Hughes said it will feel a little awkward when the weather warms and he\u2019s conducting the state\u2019s business rather than the family trade.<\/p>\n

A self-professed \u201cfarm boy,\u201d Hughes said that he’s had more difficulty dealing with Lincoln\u2019s nighttime traffic noise than with the legislative process. Having testified before committees on behalf of the wheat industry, Hughes said he now enjoys seeing how laws are created and finds the inner workings of the Legislature fascinating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to know how things work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sen. Dan Hughes\u2019 uncle ran for the District 44 legislative seat in 1974, he figured he was known well enough in the area that he didn\u2019t need to campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[167,18],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-16130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-senator-features","tag-sen-dan-hughes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MeetHughes_blog2017.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16130"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21678,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16130\/revisions\/21678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}