Why Republicans Are Suddenly Scrambling To Save A Senate Seat In Nebraska, Of All Places

Senate Republicans are unexpectedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in one of the nations most conservative states, trying to fend off a spirited challenge from an independent populist who could be laying out a new pathway to oust Republican senators or at least force the GOP to spend a whole lot of cash.

The candidate causing the GOP consternation is Dan Osborn, a union industrial mechanic who led a strike at the Kelloggs cereal plant in Omaha in 2021. His combination of populist economic views with a dash of social conservatism has him running strong against two-term GOP Sen. Deb Fischer, with several internal polls showing him within striking distance. Those polls were pretty easy to dismiss until Republicans decided Fischer a low-key, rank-and-file conservative needed the national cavalry.

Dan Osborn is a phenomenal candidate who could produce one of the biggest political upsets in years, said Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate who has since grown frustrated with the two-party system and has founded the centrist Forward Party. He appeals to Nebraskans of every background and the more voters see him the more excited they get.

A compelling independent candidate like Dan Osborn can enable competition in places that would otherwise go uncontested more and more Americans are identifying as Independent or unaffiliated, Yang added in a message to HuffPost.

An Osborn victory would throw a wrench into the GOPs plans to control the Senate come 2025. Republicans feel confident about picking up seats in West Virginia and Montana, but an Osborn victory would leave them with just 50 seats potentially not enough to control the upper chamber if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency.

Its hard to shake the feeling weve seen this movie before . Osborn is unlikely to prevail in a state that Trump won by 19 percentage points in 2020 he did better in just a dozen states and the independents usefulness may end up being limited to forcing Republicans to spend money in a state theyd sooner ignore.

But there are reasons Osborn may be different, and if he is, he could inspire other Democrats and independents to run more populist campaigns in the future. For starters, he is running truly independent of the Democratic Party, announcing in May he would not accept the endorsements of any politician or party. 

Thats an immediate point of contrast with former CIA officer Evan McMullins run in Utah in 2022 and orthopedic surgeon Al Gross  run in Alaska in 2020.

Gross told HuffPost he wishes he had not run in the Democratic primary   a race he won or sought the backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

While the decision gave Gross access to more funding, he said, It allowed the Republicans to paint me as a liberal. That ultimately made it much more difficult for him to take off in a head-to-head race with Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, Gross said.

Osborn has also rejected the kind of less-is-more, kumbaya-style centrism commonly espoused by independents taking on Republicans, in favor of an anti-corruption, pox-on-both-their-houses populism albeit one delivered in a soft voice with little audible emotion.

Osborns populist economic views and campaign against a Republican incumbent have endeared him to many Democrats, notwithstanding his promise not to caucus with either party. 

The U.S. Senate is a bunch of millionaires controlled by billionaires. My opponent Deb Fischer is part of the problem, says Osborn, who throws on an industrial mechanics work shirt at the end of his first TV ad . Shes taken so much corporate cash she should wear patches like in NASCAR.

The minute-long video then shows a fictional representation of Fischer wearing the corporate logos of Goldman Sachs, Facebook , Northrop Grumman, Google , and Lockheed Martin on the back of her blazer. 

Osborn concludes the spot by contrasting his independent campaign with Fischers reliance on corporate PAC donations, which he has forsworn. If you want someone who works for them, vote for Deb. If you want someone who works for you, consider me. Im Dan Osborn. I approve this message because the only thing on the back of my jacket is Nebraska, he says before turning around to reveal an illustration of Nebraska on the back of his work shirt.

The ad impressed some of Nebraskas veteran Democratic hands, including Paul Landow, a Democratic strategist turned political science professor at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who called the spot outstanding.

Nobody thought he was going anywhere, and nobody believed any polling that had him within the margin of error, Landow said. Neither did I, and I still am skeptical, but theres no question about the fact that hes got a lot of peoples attention.   

Thanks in part to $1.4 million in ad spending by Retire Career Politicians, a super PAC funded in significant part by a liberal dark-money group called the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Osborn has increased his name recognition and driven up negative sentiment about Fischer. 

To continue giving Fischer a run for her money, however, Osborn will have to overcome the inevitable suspicions that he is a Democratic stalking horse suspicions national Republicans hope to amplify with their newest cash infusions.

In September, Heartland Resurgence, a super PAC with ties to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), spent nearly $500,000 in TV and digital ads hitting Osborn. And last week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senate Republicans campaign arm, chipped in $172,000 to co-fund an ad with Fischer called Democrat in Disguise.

President Trump warned us about Dan Osborn, the ads narrator says. Trump says Osborn is a Bernie Sanders Democrat who supports Social Security for illegal aliens.

In fact, illegal immigration is the topic on which Osborn sounds most like a Republican, framing it on his website as a matter of protecting the earning power of every American worker from a pool of cheap labor with no rights.

Without borders, you dont have a country, he told  The New York Times in February. At the same time, he has blamed Fischer for failing to secure the border during her time in office, including by voting against the same bipartisan border bill Vice President Kamala Harris said she would sign. (Osborn has not said how he will vote in the presidential race.)

When discussing abortion, Osborn says on his website he would oppose extreme national measures to ban abortion, but uses language reminiscent of moderate former President Bill Clinton when he says, We need to focus on the root cause: on reducing unwanted pregnancies. 

But in other ways, Osborn talks a lot like a standard Midwestern, pro-labor Democrat. He wants to lower middle-class taxes and taxes on overtime pay, block private-equity takeovers of health care companies whose services Medicare covers, guarantee a right to repair cars and other equipment, stop giving Big Pharma huge subsidies, legalize marijuana, and limit members of Congress to two Senate and six House terms.

Senate Democrats, who came out in force for Gross, have publicly kept their distance from Osborn. Asked about Osborn in mid-September, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chairs the DSCC, replied, Hes not a Democrat and Im not engaged in that in any form.

But Republicans have found evidence of Osborns ties to Democrats that they are eager to use against him. A recent report in NOTUS found that the Retire Career Politicians super PAC is tied to Democratic donors and consultants. The article also reported that Christie Roberts, executive director of the DSCC, spoke positively about Osborn on a call with donors, saying his working-class message resonates and that he has exactly the kind of biography that can cut across party lines.

A Democrat with knowledge of the call said Roberts was responding to a question about the Nebraska race from a donor participating in the call and was giving her analysis of the contest without trying to solicit donations or other involvement on Osborns behalf.

National Republicans also point to evidence of Osborns liberal views, which have been popping up in conservative media outlets, in a bid to discredit his posture as an independent. In mid-September, the Washington Examiner reported on Osborn praising Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at an event in Omaha, even as he suggested he would need to keep his distance to appeal to more conservative voters. 

Dan Osborn is a liberal Democrat who praised Bernie Sanders, supports sex change surgeries for minors, and wants to change the rules of the Senate to pass his radical agenda, Phil Letsou, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. Nebraskans will reject Democrat Dan and his D.C. puppet masters. 

Osborns campaign has pushed back on these claims, noting that he only praised Sanders in the context of the Kelloggs strike, when the Vermont senator walked the picket line with striking workers, donated pizzas  and wrote op-eds in solidarity. 

Dan Osborn is building a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who are sick of the two-party duopoly, and this campaign reflects that broad coalition, said Osborn campaign spokesperson Dustin Wahl. Dan does not plan to caucus with either party. Hes a true Independent and doesnt want to answer to party leadership for how he votes. Hes not accepting endorsements from any politician or party, and hes not making endorsements of any politician or party.

The campaign also noted that several Osborn campaign aides and consultants have Republican experience. Osborns campaign manager, Evan Schmeits, previously worked for Nebraska state Sen. Mike McDonnell (R), albeit before McDonnell, a union firefighter and Omaha labor federation chief, became a Republican because of a dispute over his anti-abortion views. Wahl interned for Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) in 2017. And the campaign has paid Red Wave Strategy Group, which mostly serves Republican clients, for strategic consulting services.

In addition, Osborns anti-corporate, throw-the-bums-out message marks something of a strategic break with the Democrats who most recently won federal office in Nebraska. Those Democrats, including the late former Rep. Brad Ashford and former Sen. Ben Nelson, were fiscally conservative centrists.

But Crystal Rhoades, the Democratic clerk of court in Douglas County, Nebraska, believes Osborns message resonates in the onetime home of William Jennings Bryan, the populist presidential candidate and agitator at the turn of the 20th century.

Populism has always played in Nebraska, said Rhoades, whose previous stint as a member of Nebraskas public service commission made her the highest-ranking Democrat in the state. Its strategically very smart to tap into a value like that.

Landow noted that, as with many other down-ballot candidates, Osborns fate may ultimately come down to how well Harris can perform in the state, especially in the states Omaha-centric 2nd District. Democrats are optimistic about picking up a lone electoral vote from the state and helping state Sen. Tony Vargas knock off Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).

As Harris goes, so goes Vargas and possibly Osborn, because any Democrat that hopes to win anything statewide has to come out of a second district with a massive amount of votes, or theyll just get crushed, he said.