‘There's an appetite for this brand of politics': the independent politician making a bid for US Senate

The Guardian

a day ago

Dan Osborn is a man who does not like to lose, and if you had asked him on election night last year whether he would run again as an independent for a US Senate seat representing the very Republican state of Nebraska, Osborn would have told you to, in his words, 'pound sand'.
Yet the results of his first bid for elected office were alluring, so much so that he has decided take another stab at becoming only the third current member of the US Senate who is not in either of the two parties. While he did not beat Republican senator Deb Fischer last November, he did narrow her margin of victory to the single digits in a state that Donald Trump won by 20 points. Next year, Osborn will challenge the state's other Republican senator, Pete Ricketts, in a contest he characterizes as a struggle between the working class and the wealthy.
'I think there's an appetite for this brand of politics,' Osborn told the Guardian by phone from Omaha. 'It's so important they see the value in having somebody like me, who knows what it's like to put Christmas on a credit card, I suppose, versus somebody like Ricketts, who is probably just in it for himself.'
Osborn's campaign last year was a rare bright spot for many in an election that saw voters pummel candidates who were not on Trump's team.
Nebraska has only elected Republicans to the Senate since Democrat Ben Nelson's victory in 2006, but Osborn managed to outperform Kamala Harris by more than any other non-Republican Senate candidate. In next year's elections, Osborn may get a boost from the anti-incumbent sentiment that so often pervades midterms, but Ricketts, a former governor who is running for a full term after winning a special election last year, is one of the best-known Republicans in the state.
'I do think he's going to have a much tougher task this time around,' Dona-Gene Barton, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln who focuses on polling, said of Osborn. Compared to Fischer, Ricketts is 'much more popular in the state. He has incredibly deep pockets, and he's the sitting incumbent.'
Osborn believes he has a compelling argument. As a union leader, he organized Nebraska workers during a nationwide strike at cereal giant Kellogg's, and now balances campaigning with his day job as an industrial mechanic. The working class may have broken for the real estate mogul Trump last year, but he believes that further down the ballot, they'll vote for a candidate who is one of them.
'Our government doesn't look like me, so that's certainly what I want to get in there and change. And I think that's what's on most people's minds as well,' he said. Osborn draws a particular contrast to Ricketts, whose father founded stockbroker TD Ameritrade and whose net worth is estimated at $184m by stock tracker Quiver Quantitative.
Another potential advantage: he's not a Democrat. Last year, Osborn wrote in the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, on the presidential ballot, and said that if he was elected, he would not caucus with either party.
Independent lawmakers are rare in Congress. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine are the only two in the Senate, and both caucus with the Democrats, while the House has not had one since 2021. The last time Nebraska elected an independent federal lawmaker was in 1936.
Voters, Osborn believes, are looking for a candidate who will break the two-party logjam in Washington, stand up to the rich and not clash with Trump simply on principle.
'I'll work with anybody … the problem, I think, inherently, with our government right now, is they don't seem to want to work together,' Osborn said. Though Trump has bashed him on social media repeatedly, Osborn said: 'I'm not just going to be anti just for the sake of being anti.'
He criticizes how Joe Biden handled the influx of immigrants during his presidency, and repeats Trump's aphorism that 'without a border, we don't have a country'. Yet he does not like everything he sees from the new administration, such as the way it celebrates new detention centers for deportees, or how Elon Musk pirouetted with a chainsaw at the outset of his so-called 'department of government efficiency' initiative.
'I just don't understand the whole bragging about hurting people,' Osborn said.
While his relationship with the state Democratic party last year was touchy at times, this year, the party has decided to support his campaign, though a Democratic candidate could also still jump into the race. Jane Kleeb, the state party chair, said in an interview that they view Osborn as an ally for their causes.
'On the vast majority of issues, like the core issues that matter to working and middle class families, Dan is on the same side of where I think any of those votes would be,' Kleeb said.
'Protecting Medicaid, Medicare – he's not going to side with Republicans on that. Middle-class tax cuts, bringing back childcare credits, making sure that our American energy is diversified … protecting unions, name the issue.'
Rickett's campaign responded by arguing that Osborn was essentially a Democrat. 'Fake Dan Osborn can continue pretending to be an independent, but he is endorsed by the Nebraska Democratic party, funded by Democrats, and backs Democrats' most extreme policy positions,' said spokesperson Will Coup. (Kleeb said the Nebraska Democratic party does not endorse candidates, and has not endorsed Osborn.)
Now, Osborn's candidacy prompted the University of Virginia's Center for Politics to change its rating of the race from 'Safe Republican' to 'Likely Republican'. Another prominent forecaster, the Cook Political Report, kept their rating unchanged at 'Solid Republican', but noted they may reevaluate 'if Osborn's blue-collar messaging gets some traction'.
On the campaign trail last year, Osborn said he found himself appearing before crowds at campaign events where half of those in attendance were wearing Trump gear, and the other sported shirts from the Harris campaign. He sees recapturing that spirit as key to his victory.
'I would see people with both style shirts, grabbing yard signs before they left,' Osborn said. 'So I made it not about red versus blue. It's about uplifting everybody in the communities.'