I got to the Good Life in September 2001. Today I learned where TD Ameritrade came from, and how one family’s record runs from a 1975 brokerage in Omaha to two names on the same 2026 ballot.
I came to Nebraska in September 2001, from Lynwood, California. Nebraska calls itself the Good Life. I did not know who ran it, who paid for it, or how any of them got there. I just lived here.
Twenty-five years later I am building a civic help desk, the Nebraska Homework Project, and today my homework took me somewhere I did not expect: the history of a stock brokerage.
This post is what I found when I laid two public timelines side by side, one for U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts and one for his wife, Susanne Shore. Every line below has a source. None of it is my opinion.
The full version, with every source, is on two pages: One Signature, One Senator and One Ballot, Two Names.
The one time voters had his money and him alone on a ballot, in 2006, they said no by 28 points. Eight years later they said yes twice. In 2023 a governor he had funded picked him for the Senate, and in 2024 voters kept him there.
His sister gives to Democrats. His wife is running as one. He gives to Republicans. All three are in public filings.
I did not have to add a single adjective to make any of that interesting. That is the point of this whole site.
On September 28 I sent Susanne Shore and her opponent, Justin Solomon, the same five questions, one minute apart. She answered all five within 24 hours and attached her campaign finance report. That is where the Laura Ricketts line came from: the document she handed me.
Solomon has not answered yet. His space is held open on In Their Own Words, same offer, same rules.
Earlier coverage reported a second Ricketts contribution of $1,275,000 to a PAC called “Conservative Nebraska.” I checked Nebraska’s own records and the FEC’s. No committee by that name is registered in Nebraska, and no contribution that size shows up in either. So it is not on my timeline.
I also checked a headline that said a Ricketts PAC funded Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign in Texas. The FEC shows it did: $5,000 from American Excellence PAC on June 17, 2026. The same filing shows the same PAC sent $5,000 each to two other Republican Senate campaigns that day. One of three, not one of one. Three checks, one day.
Pete Ricketts’ own words on medical cannabis. I believe I know where he stands. Believing is not a source. Until I have read a primary document with his words on it, a statement, a veto message, or a filing, it stays off my timeline.
Also not sourced yet: the date he was sworn in as Governor, and his 2018 re-election numbers.
You stop needing anyone to tell you what to think. You see a brokerage founded in Omaha in 1975, a $12 million loss, a one-point win, a $100,000 check, a signature, a sister’s check to a sister-in-law, and two names on one ballot. Then you decide.
I did not know any of this when I got here in 2001. Now it is on one page, sourced, free, in English and Spanish. That is what this Help Desk is for: type your ZIP, meet your decision makers, see who paid them, and check the claim yourself.
#PROOF — trust, but verify.