Candidate hopes to restore 'practice of law' to AG office

When it comes to the Republican River Compact dispute, Mike Meister would apply his platform of bringing the practice of law back to the Attorney General's office by getting the clients involved.

"If you want the client to be happy with the results, you have to get their input," Meister said. The candidate said those who live with the issues in dispute know best what it will take to solve those disputes.

In contrast, the Scottsbluff resident said panhandle residents didn't know what the Platte River settlement with Wyoming included until it had already been settled.

Because of this year's drought, we still don't know whether it is a good settlement or not, Meister said.

He said he is offended as a taxpayer that Attorney General Don Stenberg didn't lay out for Gov. Mike Johanns what the problems were with Nebraska's death penalty laws in time for the issue to be dealt with in the last special session, thus saving the taxpayers money.

There is adequate case law allowing the Legislature to deal with both the budget crunch and the death penalty in the same special session, he said.

The next special session, called in response to the murders in a Norfolk bank, should be "most fascinating" because not only are Sen. Ernie Chambers and Mike Foley ardent death penalty opponents, but half of the legislators are "lame ducks," because of term limits.

Meister said a recent poll of registered voters put him within 9 points of his opponent, which he said was encouraging.

"I'm afraid if I'm not elected, we will have four more years of the same old stuff," Meister said.

That would be a shift from the legal model which has served Nebraska well over the years, to the political model in states such as Arkansas where "A.G." is said to stand for "aspiring governor."

While Stenberg's response to crime has been to call for stiffer penalties, Meister called for better investigation and more successful prosecutions.

The likelihood of conviction is a far higher deterrence to crime than tougher penalties which have little chance of being enforced, he said.

He said the attorney general's office should work with county attorneys to improve prosecution of crimes such as methamphetamine production and distribution.

He said law enforcement should work to make the general public more aware of signs that a drug problem exists, an approach he said worked when he was a prosecutor in the military.

"You can expand the circle of people who can recognize the problem," Meister said. That helps make "more eyes helping us do law enforcement, and making people more aware of what's going on."

He said he as "no compunction with putting a dealer away for a long period of time." He called for treatment of ordinary users, however, and he likes concepts like the Work Ethic Camp.

The key, he said, is the prompt reaction of authorities to crime.

"If there is a real consequence, people tend to react," he said.

Meister, who is running ads favoring telemarketing "do not call" lists, admitted the Attorney General is "not a policy-making guy," and while he hoped to help the Legislature do its job to keep telemarketers from "trespassing into your dinner," any such action was "not going to kill the industry.

Meister was born in Omaha and lived in Kimball until he was 7, when he and his family moved to Scottsbluff. He earned his undergraduate and law degree from Creighton University, and entered the Army were he attended the Judge Advocate Basic Course and served in Germany and New York, before leaving active duty to practice law with his father and a partner in Scottsbluff.

He and his wife, Julie, who is from Imperial, have three children, Molly, 11, Ryan, 8, and Morgan, 4.