OMAHA – Video from a South Omaha CD2 Meet and Greet held by the Nebraska Democratic Party shows Precious McKesson, the party’s executive director, getting into an altercation with a protester outside the event.
The event held Saturday at the Hispanic Art Center of Omaha featured four of the Democratic candidates looking to replace Republican Rep. Don Bacon in his second district congressional seat. The event was crashed by members of The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), who were attempting to get into the event to ask the candidates about the war with Iran.
The video posted on Twitter by online conservative influencer Comfortably Smug shows McKesson in mid-argument with one of the members of the PSL group, Anthony K. Rodgers-Wright, a climate activist and racial justice policy consultant.
“If you get us arrested, you are going to lose the election,” Rogers-Wright told McKesson. The confrontation was winding down when McKesson accused Rogers-Wright of being “a plant” as she started to re-enter the event. Rogers-Wright shot back an accusation that McKesson, who is Black, is working for and is a “white supremacist.”
“You work for Jane Kleeb a white supremacist,” he said to McKesson as she walked away from the protesters. “You are a literal white supremacist.” In response, McKesson rejoined the group where she got animated at Rogers-Wright’s remark.
“You know Anthony,” she replied. “Now you about to have another side of me. I don’t f— with you on that level.” At which point a police officer intervened as McKesson shouted “you have a f—ing problem.”
In an interview with The Plains Sentinel, Rogers-Wright said the confrontation was “nothing personal” between himself and McKesson. He said that he and McKesson had came “to a consensus” when Nebraska Democratic Party Communications Director Jose Flores Jr. “said something to the effect of ‘getting arrested.’”
Rogers-Wright said he told Flores that it would be a bad look for the Democratic party to have “a veteran, Black and brown people, and constituents” arrested at one of their events.
He added that things continued to escalate following McKesson’s remark accusing him of being “a plant.”
“It’s a very, very charged term for anyone who knows about the Civil Rights movement,” he said.
In clarifying his white supremacist remark, Rogers-Wright said that “Miss Kleeb and I have had a long history.”
He accused Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, of having a conflict of interest in leading the party while also working for an environmental group, Bold Alliance, that she founded. Rogers-Wright, who acknowledged he was a part of a competing group, said he believed Bold Alliance was “trying to benefit themselves” and that was what prompted his remark to McKesson.
He said that after the dust cleared, the event organizers were willing to allow a veteran, Katie Eilers, from the group into the event, but not the whole group. Eilers ended up declining the opportunity.
Rogers-Wright said that the goal of the group showing up was to figure out where candidates stood on the Iran war issue. “This is a larger problem with the Nebraska Democratic party,” he said. “We have literally had no opportunity to speak to the candidates in a forum.”
“Yes, the questions were going to be hard and salient, but that’s the price of running for office,” he said. “You may not always get the questions you want.”
The video was met with reactions from conservatives on Twitter. “Nebraska Dems are out of control!” the UNL Republicans said. “If you don’t agree with them they will threaten you with violence.”
Tony Conner, the former president of the Omaha Police Officers' Association, responded to the video by calling McKesson a “terrible human being.”
The Plains Sentinel has reached out to the Nebraska Democratic Party and McKesson for comment on the story.
John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.
Rogers-Wright has called me names too.