(Picture credit UNL)
The University of Nebraska is an outlier among Republican-dominated state institutions in Nebraska. That’s no surprise. But as technology changes faster than ever and elections approach, it is natural to assume that while faculty and students would be at the cutting edge of change, like most Nebraskans, this election season they’d be focused on our political battles right here at home.
To check that out, The Plains Sentinel built a database of local college students, most of them with ties to the University of Nebraska, and the faculty, administrators and staff at our state’s biggest public universities through their Federal Election Commission records of donations through the Republican online political donation platform, WinRed, and its older and more popular Democratic counterpart, ActBlue.
The data, totaling more than 10,000 donations spanning 2025 through 2026, shows that their interest in local politics is less than one might think.
First, the obvious. The majority of kids and adults connected to the University of Nebraska are liberal. More than 90% of the over $150,000 raised on the two platforms went to progressive candidates and causes. There are thousands of donors connected to the University of Nebraska who back Democrats on ActBlue.
But there are some things that are a bit of a surprise. There were only about 30 such donors on WinRed. That’s not enough to fill a campus bar at UNL. Even then, that overstates the enthusiasm of Republican donors on the digital fundraising platform. Of the roughly 1,600 WinRed donations, over 850 were given by a custodian in the university system while nearly 700 of them were made by just one professor in Lincoln.
That’s the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Raul Barletta. The expert in mycobacterial pathogens who teaches basic and advanced microbial diseases, did not respond to calls and emails to ask about his, unique in Nebraska, relationship with WinRed.
Outside of Barletta, no professor in the university system has given over $100 through WinRed.
There is no clear cause or candidate that the rest of the Republican donors back, but the biggest is a national PAC that spends most of money on fundraising, not politics.
The much more numerous Democratic donors seem to be focused on Nebraska, but they make some interesting choices. The University of Nebraska Democrats give the biggest chunk of their online donations to a candidate who isn’t a Democrat, Nebraska’s Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn.
That’s all the Nebraska there is for a while. Next most popular are the Washington, D.C.-based Democratic National Committee, ActBlue itself, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a D.C. outfit connected to the DNC that focuses on electing people to the House.
The Democratic Party of Nebraska follows but then, judging by the cash flow, University of Nebraska Democrats care more about New York City’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than Omaha’s Denise Powell.
For the most part, the top ActBlue donors whose federal filings reported they are employed by the University of Nebraska are old. And, they aren’t actually employed by the University of Nebraska, at least not anymore. They’re retired. That’s true of three of the top donors to ActBlue who remain listed on University of Nebraska web sites that give university emails. Kenneth Nickerson is a retired microbiology professor. Herbert Detloff taught engineering. David Henderson is a former philosophy professor.
Detloff, who made 731 donations so far this cycle even surpassing Republican Professor Barletta, didn’t respond to emails asking for an interview. Neither did Henderson. Together the retired trio gave $13,000, FEC records show.
Nickerson, declined an interview, too, but in an email he wrote, “I’m civic minded and consider myself middle of the road politically.” He used to be a Republican, but now, “I happily support candidates who support science and public education.”
One donor who is still on the payroll is University of Nebraska Medical Center Associate Dean Eleanor Rogan. She says she is proud of her donations to Osborn, but also enthusiastic about donating to Ohio’s former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown who is trying to take his seat back in November.
But, she says, “I am kinda frustrated that digital donations have made everyone think they are running a national campaign.” She says that just before she picked up the phone for the interview she deleted 55 text messages asking for money. Some days she reports getting more than 200. “I’ll be really glad when this is over.”
— David Mastio is a Papillion resident and a former National Columnist for The Kansas City Star and Deputy Editorial Page Editor of USA TODAY.
With 90% of political contributions from UNL facility & students going to progressive candidates, aka Democratic Socialists, is it any wonder this county is rapidly drifting toward Communism. "You will own nothing and you will be happy". What a dismal future if this continues.