Profile: Senate Candidate Larry Marvin

April 24, 2018, 6:45 a.m. ·

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A Fremont man is one of four Democrats running for U.S. Senate this year. We profile Larry Marvin for our NET News Campaign Connection 2018 election coverage.


Larry Marvin’s been a fixture in recent Nebraska U.S. Senate campaigns, on the primary ballot for every race since 2008. Twice he finished with less than five percent of the vote, but did tally 32 percent while losing the 2014 primary.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Larry Marvin (Photo by Mike Tobias, NET News)


Other Resources

Marvin for Senate Ballotpedia page (note: Marvin does not have a campaign web site)

KETV "Chronicle" interview with Marvin


Other Senate Race Profiles

Chris Janicek (D)

Jane Raybould (D)

Frank Svoboda (D)

Deb Fischer (R)

Jack Heidel (R)

Dennis Macek (R)

Jeffrey Stein (R)

Todd Watson (R)

(Note: Since Libertarian candidate Jim Schultz is uncontested we are not including him in our primary profiles, but plan to include him in our general election coverage.)


Related Story

GOP officials in Nebraska's two largest counties excluding some candidates in voter information (April 17, 2018)


Other Senate Candidate Web Sites

Democrats

Campaign Connection 2018 is the home for NET News coverage of the 2018 elections.

“I figure that nobody's really representing my views and the views of a lot of other people,” the 79-year-old Marvin said, when asked why he’s running again this year.

Issues important to him include raising the Social Security death benefit from less than $300 to more than $4,000, and ending the use of the term and designation “middle class.”

“To me, that's very insulting,” he said. “These arrogant traitors to our Constitution or whatever, where do they get the idea that we're third or fourth or fifth-class citizens because we're supposed to become, work hard and become. Well, I'm an American citizen, and my family, we were born equal. We're equal before the law. We each have one vote, and we're all first-class citizens. So if we're first-class citizens, why are they insulting us, and nobody calls them on it.”

Marvin graduated from Long Pine High School in north central Nebraska, and earned bachelor's and master’s degrees in education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was in the Air Force, serving as a translator in West Germany in the late 50s and early 60s. He’s mostly retired now, but has been a hardware store owner, language teacher, real estate broker and landlord, volunteer firefighter, and meat packing facility worker over the years.

“I think I’m the best morality and I’m the best educated and the best military veteran, and I'm a real estate owner, business owner, and I watch my money very closely and I'll watch your money very closely,” he said. “I'm interested in bringing these issues out, and all my life I've done that. I've stood up for the little guy.”

When it comes to money and the federal budget, Marvin said he doesn’t like to borrow and is concerned about the amount of debt being passed on to future generations. “I'm very frugal, very tight. I don't have my first dime I ever earned, but almost. I would be watching the budget and looking for pork barrel legislation where things could be trimmed and cut.”

Marvin thinks the extra money he said workers will take home as a result of the GOP tax changes passed last year could help the economy. “We're going to have money to take home. We workers are going to have more money to take home, and, like I say, to me, it's helping the economy a certain amount, but if the people that take their money and invest it in foreign countries, it's negative.”

On trade, Marvin called tariffs “part of the negotiations.”

“Because if I'm trading with you, and I'm spending $100,000 with you and you're only spending $50,000 with me, that's a lopsided deal. And if my markup is $300 profit so I'm making more profit than you are, then that's fine, but if you're the one with all the profit and then you have all the gold, the politics is ‘he who has the gold makes the golden rule,’ and so that's how business operates and so that's how everything is,” he said. “If China is dumping anything, toys or steel or whatever, if they're dumping on us and taking our money, then they're the ones that's going to have the gold and make the rule for us.”

Marvin also believes the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, provides guidance on immigration policy, saying that trade relationship with Mexico, for instance, lays the groundwork for a pathway to citizenship for individuals in the DACA program who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children. “You can call it NAFTA pathway to citizenship, that's what I'll say, NAFTA's pathway to citizenship.

“We accept 100 percent of all birth certificates, all driver’s licenses, wedding licenses, baptism, everything, universally. One paragraph, you stick it into one of those bills that they're appropriating all this money for that is basically secret because my newspapers don't report it and my radios don't report it. I don't hear it. Well, we're spending billions of dollars on NAFTA as merging our Constitution and, I think, merging our citizenship, so I think that's already taken care of,” Marvin said.

When it comes to guns, Marvin is against bump stocks that make semi-automatic weapons fire faster, but values the Second Amendment and says other restrictions should be left to local governments. He calls the Affordable Care Act a “stepping stone” toward improving health care.

Marvin said while he doesn’t like abortion, a woman should have the right to make that decision. “It's a very emotional thing, and too many of these people that are pro-life are anti-women. If you ask them if they're going to give 100 percent of all their money to protect all the rights of women, you're going to see them shaking their head ‘no.’ So they’re already a traitor to our Constitution because they don’t want to give women rights.”

Marvin said he’s been an active Democrat for several decades, serving in leadership positions and regularly attending state conventions.

“To me, it's people that support the working family and the small business and the small farmers. The independent people that have the initiative to get out and work for a living,” Marvin said, when asked what he thinks currently defines the Democratic Party. “We want the qualities of life. We want good schools and good streets and good everything. We want Nebraska, the good life.”

Marvin, in a news release, said if elected he would offer jobs working in his offices to the other three Democrats in the race, “in appreciation for them offering their services to better our government.”

He also said he can work with Republicans, calling himself “bipartisan by birth,” with siblings and parents from each major party. “I think I can work with anybody, and if I see stuff that isn't, I'll point it out to them.”

Marvin is running a minimal campaign, with no paid campaign staff and no web site or social media presence. But he said he’s better known than the other Democrats, and that name recognition will help him win the primary in May.