I was muting the TV and I snapped. So I looked up the name. Then I found out who she was married to.
Political season. Every commercial break I’m reaching for the mute button. Ad after ad. I don’t even know who half of these people are and they’re asking me to vote for them or against someone else. I snapped.
Muting it never made it go away. I knew that. But this time when I unmuted it, something was different — I had a name. A specific name I wanted to look up. Susanne Shore. Running for University of Nebraska Board of Regents, District 4. She had also texted my phone directly a few days earlier.
So I went to Ballotpedia. And I did my homework. Again. And that second pass is where things got interesting.
I found the primary results. Shore won District 4 on May 12, 2026. 34.7%, 9,846 votes, certified. Justin Solomon came in second at 24.8%. Both are on the November general election ballot.
Then I kept reading. And there it was.
Susanne Shore is married to Pete Ricketts. U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE). The same Pete Ricketts who gave $100,000 to Jim Pillen’s 2022 campaign for Governor. The same Jim Pillen who then appointed Ricketts to the United States Senate in January 2023.
She uses her maiden name. That is her choice. The connection is not hidden; it is just not in the ad.
I had already built a full TaaS page on the Pillen-Ricketts appointment with the NADC filings, the timeline, and the quotes. I did not know, when I built that page, that Ricketts’ wife would be on the same November ballot as Pillen. Now she is. The records connect.
That is the record, in order, sourced. None of that is my conclusion. It is what happened.
That was my honest first question, and I sat with it. Then I let it go, because it is not mine to answer. People keep their names for their own reasons: professional history, personal choice, family reasons. She filed as Susanne Shore. The ballot will say Susanne Shore. Her campaign says Susanne Shore.
What I will say is this: running under a different name from your spouse when your spouse is a sitting U.S. Senator does make it less obvious. Not hidden — it’s on Ballotpedia, one search away. But not in the TV ad either. Muting does not make it go away. Looking it up does.
We publish the record. We do not publish the adjective. The timeline above is more useful to you than anything I could call it. You read it. You decide.
Shore texted me first, on September 24. That does not change the rule here: if one candidate in a race gets a question, all of them do, the same day. Shore and Solomon will each receive the same letter from this site — same five questions, same day — before the November 3 ballot.
When one answers, the response runs here in full, word for word, unedited. Same for the other one when they do. That is the rule this site runs on for every race it covers.
Their answers — or the fact that there are none — will be on Before You Vote and on In Their Own Words.
I mute TV ads because I do not want to hear them. That is my choice. What I saw on September 14 at the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission meeting in Lincoln was a different kind of muting, and it was not anyone’s choice but the Commission’s.
I drove to Lincoln. I sat in the room. I heard testimony from people who have been waiting for medical cannabis access since Nebraska voters approved it in November 2024 — 71% in favor. I heard a woman describe 3,517 days of going to the Legislature to advocate for her son. I heard about a person having a seizure at the August 17 meeting. I heard names of 49 advocates who died during the wait.
The Commission heard it too. I watched. There was no visible reaction. The meeting moved on. I documented it on this site’s own MCC tracker.
The Commissioner presiding over that meeting is Lorelle Mueting. Governor Pillen appointed her. She is Prevention Director at Heartland Family Service in Omaha.
Before her appointment, she was on the public record twice on this exact subject. First: in written comments against LB 705 (a 2025 medical cannabis bill), her agency stated it “does not support legalizing marijuana in any form for medical purposes” without federal approval. Second: she opposed LB 677 — the bill meant to implement the voter-approved regulatory system that 71% of Nebraskans passed — at its legislative hearing. Both facts are from Nebraska Examiner, Zach Wendling, May 9, 2025. Primary source, on the record.
My spell check wants me to add “Mueting” to my dictionary, same as it flags “Hilgers” (the Attorney General who ran a law enforcement campaign against LB 677 in May 2025 and led the court challenge against the voter-approved cannabis laws). I refuse to add either one. The red underline means I notice the name every time. That is not a coincidence. It is a reminder to look it up.
What the record shows, in order: 71% of Nebraska voters approved medical cannabis. Pillen appointed two people to the Commission who had records opposing the bills those same voters were fighting for. One of them — Monica Oldenburg — resigned in February 2026. The other — Mueting — has presided at every meeting since. As of September 14, there is still no patient registry and no published count of how many practitioners have written a recommendation.
That is not a verdict. It is the sequence. You read it. You decide.
The October meeting is already scheduled: October 19. I plan to have more of this site’s homework done by then.
I was muting the TV and I found Susanne Shore. That led me to Pete Ricketts, which led me back to Jim Pillen, which led me back to the September 14 meeting I already went to. These are not separate stories. They are one record.
I did not plan to find any of this. I was muting the TV. Muting did not make it go away. Looking it up did.
The Cannabis Commission’s next meeting is October 19. The November election is November 3. Both are on my calendar. I plan to go to one of them.
I built this site because I realized I did not know my own ballot. Not really. I had been voting for years and muting commercials and assuming other people were keeping track. They were not. Or if they were, they were not putting it somewhere I could find and verify.
So now I do it myself, in public, with my homework showing. That is what this site is.
wethepeopleoftheusofa.com is the civic Help Desk I wish had existed when I was muting the TV and wondering who these people were. Type your ZIP, meet your decision makers, see who paid them, and check the claim yourself.
The name on the ad is not always the whole story. The record is. And the record is checkable, dateable, and yours to read — for free, always.
#PROOF — trust, but verify.