{"id":33653,"date":"2023-03-03T18:56:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-04T00:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33653"},"modified":"2023-03-03T19:05:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T01:05:52","slug":"legislature-gains-energetic-spirit-in-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33653","title":{"rendered":"Legislature gains energetic spirit in Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Jana Hughes (front row center, with mummy) and her cycling class in October 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

For a fitness-minded lawmaker like Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward, serving in the Legislature can present many pitfalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood, food, food and sitting, sitting, sitting,\u201d is how she jokingly describes her typical day.<\/p>\n

But Hughes, a fitness instructor at the YMCA of Lincoln for more than a decade, is finding ways to stay active as she connects with fellow senators over their workout routines and settles into her new role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I do get a lot of steps in here because you\u2019re going to meeting rooms [for] this and that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Hughes also rises early each morning for a basement workout before heading to the Capitol. She\u2019ll return to her normal schedule leading strength training, cycling and other classes at the YMCA when session ends.<\/p>\n

Hughes said she loves the social aspect of her classes and incorporates themes whenever she can \u2014 in past years, she has led Christmas and Fourth of July themed bootcamps.<\/p>\n

\u201cGive me a chance to dress up, and I\u2019m all over it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her flair for performance dates back to her high school days, when Hughes joined swing choir and show choir after being cut from the volleyball team.<\/p>\n

As a teen with a knack for math and science, she decided to study engineering at Texas A&M, whose weather she preferred over Nebraska\u2019s.<\/p>\n

After graduating with a degree in industrial engineering, she took a job designing warehouses and distribution centers, moving around the country to live near projects in Virginia, Minnesota, Tennessee and Florida.<\/p>\n

She returned to Nebraska in 1996 when she married her husband, John, who had been a year ahead of her in high school. The two had reconnected when she took an internship at John\u2019s family\u2019s business, a Seward company that manufactures hardware for the electric utility industry.<\/p>\n

Hughes left the consulting firm in 2000 and became a stay-at-home mom to Lena, Anna and Hank.<\/p>\n

In 2018, she won a seat on the Seward school board after an informational session held by the school\u2019s superintendent piqued her interest in property taxes and school levies. Now that Hughes is a member of the Legislature, she hopes to continue working on education policy at the state level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am only here to do what\u2019s best for Nebraska,\u201d she said. \u201cI needed to leave [the state] and come back [to] realize it, but I wouldn\u2019t want to raise my kids anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a fitness-minded lawmaker like Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward, serving in the Legislature can present many pitfalls. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33661,"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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[282],"class_list":["post-33653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-jana-hughes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Hughes1_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33653","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=33653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33690,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33653\/revisions\/33690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}