{"id":21826,"date":"2017-04-13T15:22:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=21826"},"modified":"2017-04-13T15:22:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T21:22:14","slug":"mcdonnell-suits-up-for-legislative-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=21826","title":{"rendered":"McDonnell suits up for legislative heat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above:\u00a0Sen. Mike McDonnell, his wife Amy and their son Ryan attend a football game at the University of Notre Dame.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mike McDonnell was born and raised in Legislative District 5 in South Omaha. The home he shares with wife Amy and son Ryan is just four blocks from the house his parents built in 1957.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like a pheasant. I\u2019ve never moved more than two square miles from home,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

His parents were pillars of their neighborhood and community, helping to build the St. Thomas More Catholic Church and elementary school. Raising eight children in a working-class neighborhood was not necessarily glamourous, he said, but it did instill a robust work ethic in the McDonnell children.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not a neighborhood where we had everything we wanted, but we had everything we ever needed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Following his graduation from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, McDonnell followed his father\u2019s footsteps, joining the Omaha Fire Department in 1989. Despite appearances, he jokes, McDonnell is not the reason his father retired the next year, following 40 years of service.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him if he thought I could do the job,\u201d McDonnell said. \u201cHe said it\u2019s a great job where I could really make a difference. The first time a person says \u2018thank you,\u2019 it really touches your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spent nearly 25 years as a firefighter, six of those years as fire chief. Representing his fellow firefighters for 10 years as union president taught him invaluable negotiation skills.<\/p>\n

Serving in the Unicameral is not so different from fire service, he said. Sure, there are metaphorical fires to put out, but McDonnell says the similarities do not stop there. You will not be successful without hard work and a willingness to cooperate with people of all ages and backgrounds, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou train together, eat your meals together. You discuss politics together,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople can get so worked up and then the bell rings and you\u2019re a team. At the end of the day, you\u2019re all trying to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He understands that a divisive political climate can make it difficult for elected officials to earn the trust of their constituents, but that has not deterred him from jumping in head first. McDonnell serves on the Legislature\u2019s Appropriations Committee, a group of nine senators currently tasked with resolving a $1 billion budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think government gets a bad rap. There are people working here that have dedicated their entire adult lives to this institution,\u201d he said. \u201cI do believe the Unicameral is the best legislature in the country. We\u2019re not perfect, but it\u2019s a special place.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDonnell understands that change does not happen overnight. He said it will take considerable compromise, making progress in small increments on the key issues facing Nebraska. At the end of the day, however, it is about the simple things, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that good neighborhoods build good cities, which build good states,\u201d McDonnell said. \u201cWe can achieve that by securing high-paying jobs, supporting high-quality education and ensuring public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he considers what his legislative legacy might be, McDonnell thinks of his son. He knows he has 300 legislative days in his first term to do as much as he can to leave the state a better place.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs many opportunities as my parents made for us, I hope I can do the same for him,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to make Nebraska a place where he wants to settle and build a family. If I can\u2019t do that, I\u2019ve failed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike McDonnell was born and raised in Legislative District 5 in South Omaha. The home he shares with wife Amy and son Ryan is just four blocks from the house his parents built in 1957.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21827,"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":[194],"class_list":["post-21826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-mike-mcdonnell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MeetMcDonnell_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826","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=21826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21829,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826\/revisions\/21829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}