After defeating incumbent Lee Terry, who had held Nebraska’s second congressional district House of Representatives seat for 16 years, Nov. 5, Brad Ashford was sworn into office yesterday, Jan. 7. Today, Jan. 8, Pete Ricketts was sworn in as the Governor of Nebraska after he defeated Chuck Hassebrook to take retiring governor Dave Heineman’s seat Nov. 4.

Politically, these two are at opposite ends of the spectrum: one is a Democrat (Ashford) and one is a Republican (Ricketts). As far as their high school alma mater, though, these two are the same: both are Westside alums. If you’re counting, that makes two of the six most important elected officials in Nebraska (three House representatives, two senators and the governor) Westside graduates.

Ashford (Class of 1967), whose son, Tom, is a senior at Westside, found tremendous support from his alma mater in beating Terry. Ashford represented a part of District 66 in the Nebraska state legislature for 16 years, and the popularity he gained tipped the scale in the election.

“[Westside] was critical,” Ashford said in a November interview. “We carried most of the precincts in — in fact, I think all of the precincts — in the Westside district, and that was the difference in the election.”

The congressman also benefited from Westside students volunteering for his campaign.

“The Westside students and all the volunteers were critical to the race,” Ashford said. “We made 230,000 telephone calls, and I don’t know that that’s ever happened before in a Congressional race in Omaha, so that was critical. And for me, having some of those volunteers be Westside students is very important to me, so that was great.”

Along with aiding him in actual votes, Ashford said his time at Westside played an important role in his success as a politician.

“I credit Westside for educating me in many ways,” Ashford said. “First of all, I took many courses in government and political science when I was at Westside…so I learned a great deal about just the process of government… Secondarily, getting to be able to play basketball…that expanded my horizons a lot as I learned about the city and just about playing basketball for Westside.”

In the House of Representatives, Ashford plans to continue his focus on education and jobs to help students just like Westsiders across the country.

“I think throughout my career in the legislature, education and jobs have been two of the most important things I’ve worked on, so I think we need to continue to work on making sure that college is affordable, that students have choices and that they have jobs available when they leave a university or if they choose to go to community college or whatever they do,” Ashford said. “So I think that my job will be to support policies that expand our horizons as a country so that more and more jobs are available.”

The congressman mentioned his son’s ambitions as an example for what he hopes to do in Congress.

“Tom wants to be in engineering, so I want to make certain that there are enough engineering jobs out there in a few years so that Tom can get a good job,” Ashford said. “I think [it’s] really a critical part of our job in Congress [to] not stifle development, to keep development moving forward, to make sure education is top-notch by helping school districts like Westside get access to new technology and new support services for the teachers. So, I think it’s a big part of my job — if not the biggest, actually — to provide a platform for our kids to do better and our students to do better in life.”

Ricketts was sworn in during a 2 p.m. ceremony at the state capital. He graduated from Westside in 1982. His son, Roscoe, goes to Creighton Prep. One of his daughters, Margot, goes to Duchesne. He has another daughter who is not yet in high school.

Ricketts won 57.6 percent of the vote on his way to election. He is the first Westside graduate to become governor of Nebraska.