OMAHA – Susanne Shore and Justin Solomon, both of Omaha, are facing off in a special election for an open seat on the NU Board of Regents. Shore, a former Nebraska first lady, and Solomon, a former UNL student regent, are seeking the final four years of a six-year term for the University of Nebraska Board of Regents District 4 in Douglas County. Both are registered Democrats.
Either would succeed appointed Regent Joel Makovicka, a Republican whom Gov. Jim Pillen appointed to the officially nonpartisan seat in February. The eastern Douglas County district includes the University of Nebraska Medical Center and University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Appointed NU Regent Joel Makovicka declined to seek election after succeeding former NU Regent Elizabeth O’Connor of Omaha, who resigned in January. Former NU Regent Elizabeth O’Connor was reelected to a second six-year term in 2024. She resigned in January as she faced a felony charge of driving drunk and causing serious bodily injury connected to a May 2025 crash. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison in August.
Five Democrats ran for the open seat in May, including Shore (who received 34.6% of the vote) and Solomon (who received 24.8% of the vote). The candidates share many goals, including, as Shore and Solomon each put it, that the university must rebuild trust, focus on affordability and empower faculty, staff and students. Each also wants to take on a more active role as a regent in getting out to communities.
Both candidates sat down with the Nebraska Examiner in Omaha this month to discuss how they would approach NU’s budget, tuition, community outreach and more if elected.
Susanne Shore, 62, said her experience working in the community and for universities, understanding healthcare as a former nurse and getting to know the state better as first lady of Nebraska (2015-23) has prepared her well. “There’s not a lot that ties our state together the way the university system does, so if it’s not a strength, our whole state falls apart,” Shore said. “It is such a jewel and a value for the state. It needs to be treated like that.”
Justin Solomon, 38, served as the student regent for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the 2010-11 academic year. He is COO for Integrated Life Choices. He said he is so “deeply ingrained” in his Omaha community, it’s who he is. “I feel like now is really a moment where you need that type of leadership that understands that frugality is actually a differentiator, not a cross to bear, that has had to make really tough decisions that impact thousands of lives and has had to go make that case to people and still get them to feel respected,” Solomon said.
‘Breakdown in trust’ Solomon said part of the “breakdown in trust” he sees is an inability to justify academic cuts while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate Memorial Stadium, for instance. While he understands the different pots of money, he said the optics come amid a general concern that in a changing economy, attending college might be out of reach for some. He said some in federal and state politics are also “trying their best” to get people to distrust institutions like NU. “It is our job – I feel a real pull, a real responsibility – to be the counterweight to those forces that want to get people to
