{"id":20857,"date":"2017-02-24T17:30:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T23:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20857"},"modified":"2017-02-24T17:30:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T23:30:23","slug":"quick-negotiates-new-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20857","title":{"rendered":"Quick negotiates new role"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Above: The extended Quick family gathered at the farm near Hordville where the senator grew up.”<\/em><\/p>\n

One would assume that Sen. Dan Quick, a former labor union president, would be a confident public speaker. In fact, there are far more dangerous things he would rather do than give a prepared speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could hang me upside down and tell me to weld something and I would think nothing of it,\u201d he laughed. \u201cBut you put me on a stage and ask me to give a speech and I immediately get stage fright.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick grew up on a farm outside Hordville with one sister and three brothers, helping his parents raise hogs and cattle. Starting his own small farm was not an option just out of high school, so he turned to the local grain elevator for work.<\/p>\n

He spent nearly three decades at the Platte Generating Station in Grand Island, beginning as a coal handler and eventually going to community college to become a certified welder and then boiler inspector.<\/p>\n

Quick\u2019s quiet but diligent work at the power plant did not go unnoticed by his union president.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe kept asking me to run for vice president but I kept putting him off. I felt a little selfish, but I wanted to wait until my kids were older and I\u2019d have more time,\u201d he said. \u201cThe day my daughter graduated from high school, there was a knock on my door.\u201d<\/p>\n

His work fighting for the membership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1597 \u2014 he served both as vice president and president \u2014 has evolved into a new role as state senator, fighting for his constituents.<\/p>\n

Quick believes the most important way to affect change is to simply have a seat at the table, which is what led him to run for office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to turn away any constituent,\u201d Quick said. \u201cWe may not always agree on the issues, but it\u2019s important to listen and to make sure they know they are being heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Grand Island we have the poorest of the poor living next door to some of the wealthiest citizens in town,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to address property taxes, but we also need to make income and sales taxes fair and equitable for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

His resume shows a man willing to work his way up from the bottom in an industry, acquiring new skills along the way. A brief, three-month detour into women\u2019s shoe sales, however, turned to be one of his more fruitful career choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cA coworker told her sister that her friend Alice should come down and meet the new guy she worked with,\u201d he said. He left the job still owing the company money for the dress clothes he bought for work. \u201cBut I did get a wife out of the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple married in 1980 and have three children: Michael, Stephen and Christy. Eight grandchildren keep him pretty busy in his free time, although he does find time to cheer on his beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers.<\/p>\n

Quick said he\u2019s unlikely to reach for the spotlight during his time in the Legislature, but he continues to develop new skills in service to his constituents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting better at giving public speeches, but it\u2019s going to take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One would assume that Sen. Dan Quick, a former labor union president, would be a confident public speaker. In fact, there are far more dangerous things he would rather do than give a prepared speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20876,"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":false,"_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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[181],"class_list":["post-20857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-dan-quick"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/MeetQuick_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20857","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=20857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20859,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20857\/revisions\/20859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}