Last week something shocking and disappointing happened at the Nebraska Legislature: a Democrat endorsed by Our Revolution from a progressive district, Justin Wayne, cast the deciding vote that allowed a terrible NRA bill to advance. If he had voted to allow the filibuster to continue the bill would be dead.

Justin Wayne during his 2016 campaign. Wayne received significant financial support from the Ricketts family and was managed by a rightwing campaign firm.

LB68 is a firearm preemption bill, and it would wipe out local gun laws — including one requiring anti-theft devices in Omaha gun stores and one keeping guns out of domestic abuse secret safe houses in Lincoln, just to name a couple. It would also lower the age to purchase a handgun to 18 in Omaha, which will lead to more straw purchases supplying gangs, and will mean that many high school seniors in Omaha would be able to purchase handguns without parental knowledge.

What’s more, the bill specifically entitles the NRA to sue any Nebraska municipality — and there are many — that have local gun ordinances on the books, potentially decimating town coffers, as has happened in Pennsylvania and Florida. We’re not here to address all the awful ramifications of this bill, but suffice it to say that the Omaha City Council, Omaha Police Department, City of Lincoln, and League of Municipalities are all opposed to these changes. There is no public policy defense for this bill. It only makes sense to gun ideologues and sellers.

In fact, this bill failed at the legislature last year, when it was known as LB289. With limitless resources at their disposal, the gun lobby brought it back this session through their servant, Mike Hilgers of Lincoln, who is literally trying to wipe out his own city’s gun ordinances and set up the NRA to profit from his constituents’ tax dollars in a lawsuit.

Knowing this bill would not fly through the Judiciary Committee, where it faces well-known opposition, the gun lobby got it assigned to the friendly Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, where several members were co-signers. On February 10, the gun lobby sent six advocates for the bill. Thirty more Nebraskans showed up to oppose it, speaking as law enforcement, lawyers, rape survivors, teachers, and advocates for local government. The testimony lasted three hours. This strong opposition has not been transcribed or shared with the Unicameral despite the fact that the bill is now at a floor debate. Knowing the committee would smother the record of the hearing, Nebraskans Against Gun Violence recorded the proceedings for the public to watch. (Highlights here.) To nobody’s surprise, the committee passed it through.

Wayne won a Democrat vs. Democrat race in North Omaha, where he ran as a Democrat who was not going to do the establishment’s bidding and was eager to stand up to special interests.

Excuse us, but LOL.

While Nebraskans Against Gun Violence was organizing opposition to this bill, Wayne presented himself as friendly to our cause and asked for relief from phone calls — after all, why badger someone who is on your side? And of course he would be on our side, right? Why would an anti-special-interest senator from a progressive district in North Omaha vote with the NRA to decimate local gun laws?

Why indeed.

When Wayne cast his deciding vote with the NRA, we started doing a little digging. It turns out that Wayne’s campaign was managed by Northstar Campaign Systems, run by a self-described “Republican activist.” The company boasts on its website that it has run the successful campaigns of some the worst anti-democratic, pro-Trump, pro-NRA candidates in the country, including Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Jon Bruning (our former attorney general who made headlines when he compared welfare recipients to wily raccoons), Lindsay Graham, Deb Fischer, Ted Cruz, Steve King, and David Nunes.