Senator Merv Riepe Contact information

Mervin Merle Riepe, known as Merv Riepe, is an American politician from the state of Nebraska. He was born on July 16, 1942, in rural Griswold, Iowa. After graduating from Griswold High School in 1960, he served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy from 1960 to 1963.

Riepe pursued higher education after his service in the Navy. In 1968, he received a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He furthered his education by earning a Master of Arts in health policy and management from the University of Iowa in 1970.

After leaving the navy, Riepe worked in the field of health-care management. In 1964, he was named director of the Respiratory Therapy Department at Bergan Mercy Medical Center in Omaha. He eventually served, at various times, as chief operating officer and interim CEO of Bergan Mercy; as president of Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs, Iowa; and as president of Children’s Physicians, a joint venture of Omaha’s Children’s Hospital & Medical Center and Creighton University. After retiring from Children’s Health Network in 2008, he worked as a health-care consultant.

In 1974, Riepe married Janet Lee Anderson, a teacher at Benson High School in Omaha. The couple had one son. Janet Riepe was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1978, and died of pneumonia arising therefrom in March 1996. In November 1996, Riepe married Jody Gillispie.

Riepe made two unsuccessful attempts to win a seat on the Ralston Public Schools Board of Education. In an election during the 1990s, he ran as an announced candidate; in 2010, he ran as a write-in.

In November 2013, Riepe announced that he would run for the District 12 seat in the Nebraska Legislature. The district, located in southern Douglas County, included the city of Ralston and much of its school district, as well as parts of Omaha’s Millard neighborhood. Under Nebraska’s term-limits law, incumbent Steve Lathrop was ineligible to run in the 2014 election.

Riepe, a Republican, stated that he was particularly concerned about health-care issues, and opposed to the proposed expansion of Medicaid in Nebraska under the provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. He was elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 2014, representing a district in the Omaha metropolitan area. In 2018, he lost re-election to Democrat Steve Lathrop, but in 2022 after Lathrop decided not to seek re-election, Riepe was again elected to the Nebraska Legislature.