{"id":16720,"date":"2015-03-06T22:02:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T04:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=16720"},"modified":"2017-04-06T13:03:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:03:02","slug":"senator-finds-finish-line-at-the-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=16720","title":{"rendered":"Senator finds finish line at the Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. John McCollister and his wife Deb enjoy some quality time with grandsons David and Andrew Ledger.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marathon running provides valuable lessons in politics for new Sen. John McCollister.<\/p>\n

\u201cRunning for office is a marathon,\u201d said the Omaha senator. \u201cYou have to be tenacious. I knocked on over 11,000 doors during my campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having completed three full marathons, several half-marathons and countless 10K races, McCollister knows whereof he speaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t run as far as I used to, or as fast,\u201d he said, but the new senator has learned from experience that\u2014both in politics and road races\u2014life is about the long-term rather than any individual mile.<\/p>\n

His father, John Y. McCollister, served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. The younger McCollister took a semester off from his studies at UNL to campaign for his father, but said the experience didn\u2019t inspire him to want to follow in his dad\u2019s footsteps and serve in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw what he had to go through,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to spend at least a third of your time raising money in order to retain your seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, McCollister found ways to engage in public service closer to home, including 30 years on the Metropolitan Utilities District board of directors. He also was able to explore a wide range of public policy issues for four years as the executive director of the Platte Institute for Economic Research.<\/p>\n

McCollister credits the experience of working with diverse organizations such as the state and Omaha chambers of commerce, ACLU Nebraska and Nebraska Appleseed with broadening his perspective on a number of issues and nurturing an independent streak.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you work with a wide variety of partners with different political philosophies, you see sides of an issue that you may not have otherwise noticed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So far, McCollister said he\u2019s enjoying the fast-paced environment at the Capitol and looking forward to tackling tough issues like taxation, prison reform and reorganizing the state Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

When not focused on policy issues at the Legislature, however, McCollister said time with his family is a top priority. He and wife Deborah have three children\u2014Lauren, Daniel and Jeffrey\u2014and two grandchildren. McCollister said his wife helps him focus on what really matters in life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best day of my life was the day I married her,\u201d he said. \u201cShe is a remarkable woman and absolutely the world\u2019s best grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marathon running provides valuable lessons in politics for new Sen. John McCollister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21324,"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":[156],"class_list":["post-16720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-senator-features","tag-sen-john-mccollister"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MeetMcCollister_blog2017.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720","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=16720"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21673,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720\/revisions\/21673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}