How independent Dan Osborn cornered Nebraska's Deb Fischer

As Nebraska voters go to the polls, Dan Osborn, a rising independent challenger to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, has a chance to pull off the most shocking upset of the 2024 campaign. A recent New York Times poll puts him just two points behind Fischer, and other polls show him within striking distance.

If he wins, he could help keep the Senate out of Republican control. Nevertheless, the National Democrats want nothing to do with Osborn – and that's completely fine with him. In perhaps the most intriguing race this year, Osborn ran a truly independent campaign against a Republican incumbent — while steadfastly distancing himself from the Democratic Party.

The reason is not difficult to figure out. Ari Kohen, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska, told me, “If Dan were a Democrat, he would lose by 20 points.”

Barry Rubin, president of Heartland Strategy Group and former executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party, shares Kohen's sentiments. A “D” next to the candidate’s name is a “scarlet letter in the western part of the state,” where Republicans traditionally dominate, Rubin says.

Osborn has steadfastly refused to say which party he would align with if elected. But if the Senate is split between 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats after Election Day (and Democrats win the White House), Osborn could be the deciding vote in control of the Senate – and, in short, the most powerful politician in Washington. Given the state's Republican margin and the presence of former President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, it's good to see Fischer pull out a win. But Osborn's remarkable campaign in a solidly Republican state presents a tantalizing possibility for Democrats: Has he cracked the code for how a progressive candidate can run a competitive race in red-state America?

Although Osborn has renounced the support of the Democrats, he represents a progressive political platform that is strongly influenced by economic populism. In September, Trump endorsed Fischer and called Osborn “a Bernie Sanders Democrat” — a claim that in many ways isn’t far off.

On his campaign website, Osborn attacks “private equity firms,” calls for ending “subsidies to super-profitable pharmaceutical companies,” and promises to protect Social Security. He rails against the “millionaire and billionaire class who are being inoculated by the laws they enact” and recently told the New York Times: “We are at the head of a corporate-run government.”

He also supports raising the minimum wage and corporate taxes and has made passage of the PRO Act, a top priority for unions, a centerpiece of his political agenda. The latter priority is no surprise given Osborn's biography. Before entering politics, he was an industrial mechanic at the cereal company Kellogg's, where he led a strike against the company in 2021 (he was fired in 2023, which he described as retaliation).

Osborn regularly portrays Fischer as a tool of her corporate donors, calling her a “creature of the D.C. swamp.” The incumbent “has made so much corporate money,” an Osborn ad says, “that she should wear badges like NASCAR.”

Since he's running in a state that Trump won by 19 points in 2020, Osborn isn't shy about appealing to the former president's voters. He ran an ad in which ordinary Nebraskans say they will vote “with one finger” for Donald Trump and with the other for Dan Osborn. In the same ad, he says Fischer has more in common with Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. He even accuses Fischer of “stabbing Trump in the back” after she asked him to drop out of the 2016 election campaign following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape. But when you look under the hood of his campaign, it's hard to find a single theme Osborn openly sides with Republicans. For example, he calls for strengthening border security and even runs an ad saying that his background as an industrial welder could be useful in building Trump's border wall. However, like Vice President Kamala Harris, he has criticized his Republican rival for not supporting the immigration deal negotiated by Republican Senator James Lankford.

On the issue of abortion, he says he opposes the procedure but believes it should be legal and calls for the codification of Roe v. Wade in federal law.

In a statement that would warm the heart of a social libertarian, Osborn said at a recent campaign rally: “I don't believe it's my job or the government's job to tell people when to start families or not, and that includes neither.” IVF and contraceptives.” Even on the issue of guns, which typically trips up Democrats in red states like Nebraska, Osborn has said he supports the Second Amendment but also supports “common sense gun safety measures.”

While Osborn's unique style of politics has paid off, he has also benefited from Fischer's missteps. Even after two terms in the Senate, she is not particularly well-known in the state and is one of the most unpopular senators in the country. For most of the campaign, Fischer ignored Osborn, a decision that backfired. “The Osborn campaign has basically been campaigning for a year without being controlled by Fischer,” Rubin said. “He held hundreds of public events and was able to define himself before Fischer.” When she finally started running ads against him, it had the perverse effect of raising Osborn's profile even further. While fellow Republican Pete Ricketts (who wants to finish former Sen. Ben Sasse's term) is nearly 20 points ahead of his Democratic rival, national Republicans have been forced to pour money into the state to bail out Fischer.

Osborn has also benefited from the strangeness of Nebraska politics. Although the state is currently considered all-Republican, Nebraska has a long tradition of bipartisanship. The unicameral state legislature (the only one in the country) is nonpartisan because candidates do not run for office under party names. And it wasn't long ago that Democrats were competitive in the Cornhusker State. As recently as 2012, the state was represented in the Senate by Democrat Ben Nelson – and he succeeded Democrat Bob Kerrey, who served two terms as a senator. But as in much of red-state America, with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the takeover of the GOP by more extreme voices (first the Tea Party and then Trump's MAGA), Democrats were simply unable to prevail in Republican-dominated states states to compete.

Osborn's success is a direct result of his candidacy as a true independent – and the rejection of the cultural and social baggage of being a Democrat in a red state like Nebraska. Unsurprisingly, Fischer has tried to paint him as a closet Democrat, but that's a hard sell when Osborn was never a member of the Democratic Party. “He is an honest and impartial person,” says Kohen. “You can’t call him a party person. That makes it very unique.”

Democrats have done their part to respect Osborn's independence. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, recently said Democrats are “not engaged in any way” in Nebraska, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not commented on the emerging candidate . The state Democratic Party chair even criticized Osborn as “phony” and compared him to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona. Nonetheless, Osborn's potential path to victory may give Democrats hope. “The message of this race is that their political agenda can resonate in red America,” Kohen says. “If you separate things from the party, that’s what you end up with.”

Rubin agrees that while Osborn's success is something of a “perfect storm,” his success in making this race competitive “can be a model for other states.”

“There are a lot of people in the middle” who are not represented by either party, Rubin said. “For any non-MAGA Republican, Osborn is a good fit.” We'll have to see if it's enough to win on Tuesday night, but if Osborn somehow wins, the political earthquake could reshape American politics.