How this page was made, before you read a word of it
On September 7, 2026 I opened both campaigns’ own websites and asked each one the identical question: what does this candidate say about themselves, and what specific claims or numbers do they make? Same day, same question, same depth. Then I looked for any claim on either site that a public record could settle, and I checked it.
Everything in the two columns below is what a campaign says about itself. That is a real and legitimate thing to publish — a candidate’s own site is the primary source for their own stated position. It is not evidence that the position is correct, and this page never treats it that way.
What each one says, in their own words
| Lynne Walz (D) | Jim Pillen (R) — incumbent | |
|---|---|---|
| Background, as told | Grew up on a small hog farm outside Fremont; father a union carpenter, mother worked at a hospital. Caretaker, then ran an in-home daycare, worked multiple jobs through Midland Lutheran College. Degree in education; taught 4th and 5th grade. | Grew up on a farm in Platte County raising pigs with his father. “Two-time First-Team All-Big Eight defensive back for the legendary Coach Tom Osborne.” Animal science degree (UNL), doctor of veterinary medicine (Kansas State). Founded Pillen Family Farms in 1993 and DNA Genetics in 2003. |
| Public office | Nebraska Legislature 2016–2025. Says she was “elected by a bipartisan coalition of colleagues to chair the Education Committee.” | Nebraska Board of Regents 2013–2023. Sworn in as Nebraska’s 41st governor January 5, 2023. |
| Taxes | “Cutting taxes.” As Governor, will “keep property taxes in check.” No figure given. | “Giving Nebraska families a break by fixing our broken tax system.” Claims “the overall tax burden on Nebraskans is LESS than it was before” and that homeowners saw property tax decreases “for the first time in a generation.” Checkable — see below. |
| Education | “Strengthen public schools.” Passed legislation on “teacher recruitment and retention.” | “Banning phones in schools.” As a regent, led efforts to “control university spending, keep woke politics out of classrooms.” |
| Economy / agriculture | “Business development, supporting small family farms, lowering the cost of housing and daycare.” | “Growing value-added agriculture.” “Standing up for Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers,” incl. alternative-meat labeling. |
| Named separately | Opposed calls to defund police; “stood with law enforcement”; says she earned Legislator of the Year from the Fraternal Order of Police. Infrastructure: “accelerating long-delayed highway projects” and “expanding rural broadband.” | “Protecting our daughters and granddaughters with the Stand with Women Act.” Bringing back “Winner Take All.” “Eliminating red tape and redundancies.” |
| Campaign line | — | “We’re Not Done Yet!” |
Sources: lynnewalz.com/about and jimpillen.com/about plus jimpillen.com, all read 2026-09-07.
The one claim a public record could settle
Jim Pillen’s campaign site:
Nebraska homeowners saw property tax decreases “for the first time in a generation.”
The Nebraska Department of Revenue’s own Table 1 says he is right about 2024. Total property taxes levied statewide:
| Year | Total property taxes levied | Change | Average statewide tax rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $5,307,865,387 | — | 1.6691 |
| 2024 | $5,301,852,703 | −$6,012,684 | 1.5326 |
| 2025 | $5,587,369,523 | +$285,516,820 | 1.4738 |
2024 is a real decrease, and “first in a generation” is fair: reading the same table backwards, the previous year total property taxes levied fell was 1998. That is a 26-year gap. The claim is accurate about the year it describes.
The same table, one row further down: property taxes levied in 2025 rose $285,516,820 — about 47 times the size of the decrease that preceded it. The 2024 dip lasted exactly one year.
Neither of those facts cancels the other. Both are in the same official table, and a page that printed only one of them would be doing what this site exists not to do.
Why your rate went down and your bill went up
The most useful thing in that table is not either total — it is the last column. The average statewide tax rate fell every single year: 1.6691 → 1.5326 → 1.4738. Rates went down while the total collected went up. Both are true at once, and the reason is the column not shown above:
That is the mechanism behind a thing this site already documented from a real Douglas County parcel: a bill that rose 21.7% in 2025 — with the LB 34 credit already applied to it. One house is not a state. But the state’s own table explains exactly how a rate cut and a bigger bill arrive in the same envelope. Six years of that real bill, and all 93 counties →
What Walz claims, and what checked out
lynnewalz.com/about:
Won in 2016 by “defeating an incumbent Republican in a district Trump carried by 33 points,” and was “reelected in 2020 by 19 points.”
Both track. She defeated sitting Sen. David Schnoor in Legislative District 15 in 2016 with about 51% of the vote, and won again in 2020 against David Rogers. Corroborated against Ballotpedia’s record of both races — a cross-reference, not the Secretary of State’s certified canvass, which is the stronger source and is the next thing to pull.
This page checks one hard number from Pillen and one biographical claim from Walz, and those are not equally heavy. That is not editorial choice — it is what the two sites contain. Walz’s site makes almost no numeric policy claims. “Keep property taxes in check” and “cutting taxes” have no figure attached, so there is nothing a public record can confirm or refute. An incumbent has a record to point at and therefore more surface to check; a challenger running on intentions offers less. Saying so out loud is fairer than manufacturing a false balance — and if her campaign publishes a number, it gets the identical treatment the same week.
Nobody is graded here. One claim was checked and held up for the year it describes. The following year moved the other way, in the same table. Both are printed. What you do with that is the entire point — you have the table, the source, and the link.
Sources
Nebraska Department of Revenue, Property Assessment Division —
2025 Annual Report, Table 1: History of Assessed Valuation, Total Property Taxes Levied & Average Rates (primary source for every tax figure above)
jimpillen.com/about and jimpillen.com — read 2026-09-07
lynnewalz.com/about — read 2026-09-07
Ballotpedia, Lynne Walz — cross-reference only, labeled as such
Related on this site: Nebraska’s homework page ·
One real Nebraska property tax bill