Nebraska senatorial candidate Dan Osborn is attempting to toe the line between Left and Right. Credit: Getty
Dan Osborn, the independent making a bid for Nebraska’s junior Senate seat, is confused — or wants to appear to be. I’ve just asked him if he’d vote to confirm an education secretary who believes Title IX should include “gender identity” — and he doesn’t know what I mean. “That was a mouthful,” Osborn stammers. “I’m not even quite sure what you just said.”
Though he’s running as an independent, Osborn is so far the most promising of the progressive-backed, working-class coded candidates whom the Left hopes will take seats from Republicans in the midterm elections. Incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts is still widely perceived to be the frontrunner in the Cornhusker State, but Osborn is polling in a dead heat at 46.9%, according to Flipr, Nate Silver’s polling site, perhaps in part due to his refreshing perceived distance from the culture wars. He’s maintaining that distance — or the pretense of it — despite audio leaked this month from three separate private meetings that revealed him assuring progressives behind closed doors that he’s campaigning as a social conservative and border hawk only in order to win votes.
I explain to Osborn that if gender identity is included as a protected category under Title IX, as was decreed by executive order by the Obama administration, though subsequently suspended by President Trump, it means biological boys in girls’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms. “I can’t see myself voting for that,” Osborn answers easily. “I don’t really understand it. I certainly don’t focus on that. I mean, as far as education concerns, that’s at the very bottom for me. We’ve got to teach civics in school. We should be teaching our kids finance.”
Osborn is a 51-year-old Navy veteran who worked as an industrial mechanic for the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha, and became president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers Union Local 50G. He first appeared on the national political radar while leading a 77-day strike at Kellogg’s in 2021. Following that, he ran for Senate against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in 2024 — and shocked the Beltway by winning 46.5% of the vote, despite getting very little attention from the chattering class.
Of the many red-state candidates Democrats have tried to promote in the Trump era, Osborn has long stood out as the most genuine. Unlike John Fetterman and Graham Platner, he actually is an Average Joe with no pedigree to speak of. Strategists are betting that the pros of being a regular guy will outweigh the cons of his lack of polish.
In our discussion, Osborn quickly pivots to quality rather than ideology in education. “We are definitely falling behind,” he contends. “They had a record amount of people apply to be a plumber at the Union Plumbing Local 16 in Omaha, and over half the kids that applied failed the math test. I think that’s what we should be talking about.”
This is a savvy example of the balance Osborn needs to strike: agree with the Right on the underlying policy, but downplay its importance to remain palatable to the Left. Nobody else is doing it quite like he is, because he’s actually representative of the median Nebraskan independent voter, who is paying an average of $4.33 for a gallon of gas, isn’t supportive of the Iran War, and is unconvinced by socialism but is looking for some reprieve.
These frustrations make 2026 fundamentally different from his failed campaign in 2024, Osborn says. Blanket tariffs, an unpassed farm bill, competition from Argentinian beef imports, and the war are major frustrations now bubbling up in conservative ag communities. “I’m starting to see a significant change in rural Nebraska,” he says, “specifically anybody that’s agriculture adjacent.”
Such voters, he believes, will be responsive to the pitch he shares with me about punching a clock for 20 years, going to work “sick and sore … because that’s what you got to do for your family” and so on. “You know you’re always an injury away from going into the red,” he says. “It’s about being able to connect with the people throughout Nebraska who have the same shared experience through work, hard work.”
Such voters, however, also have plentiful reason to mistrust him.
Incumbent Ricketts, a multimillionaire businessman who bears more than a passing resemblance to Daddy Warbucks, has successfully branded Osborn “Democrat Dan.” A national GOP operative with knowledge of the race explains Ricketts’s strategy this way: “the main point is always to get back to ‘Dan is a Democrat,’” for two reasons. First, “it’s true,” and second, because it calls attention to him being “wishy-washy” and “untrustworthy.”
On Sept. 1, Nebraska’s The Plains Sentinel published a report based on a leaked recording that showed Osborn pushing back on demands for him to go Left on trans sports. “The state is made up of 50% Republicans, 26% Democrat, and 24% Independents. So my win numbers, mathematically, I need to get 10% to 15% of Republicans to win this race…. How am I going to do that, by fucking saying, ‘Oh, I love trans people, and they should be able to play in sports?’”
Then Politico obtained audio of Osborn telling Democrats that Donald Trump’s border wall is “a symbol of racism” and “does nothing.”
“I knew the wall — it’s a joke. It’s a symbol of racism, really, is what the wall represents. It does nothing, you know,” Osborn told a questioner. Pressed further, he added, “There’s the campaigning side to get elected, and then there’s once you get into office, what are you going to do?”
Shortly thereafter the Omaha World-Herald got its hands on another leaked recording. This time, Osborn appeared to be denigrating Trump voters. “Billy Bob in fucking Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the fucking Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the flag, all he knows is that he’s on the winning team,” Osborn said on the tape, later adding, “[Trump’s] been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them … you’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so fucking bad.” Team Ricketts immediately tried to frame the recording as Osborn’s “deplorables moment.”
The GOP operative I spoke to said the sports recording is proof Osborn is a “fake independent.”
“It blows up this whole narrative that he’s an independent guy who’s going to vote for Nebraska in the Senate,” the source said.
Republicans have a point on this. Osborn has run twice against GOP candidates, and was recruited into politics by high-profile progressives tied to Bernie Sanders. He’s been advised by political strategist Morris Katz, known for his work with Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner. Osborn’s campaign also received contributions from Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Montana Sen. Jon Tester.
“I’d like to thank the banks, big tobacco, foreign lobbyists, and chemical manufacturers funding Ricketts’ campaign for not donating to mine…. The only money I accept is from those who support working people and are tired of the partisanship in Washington,” Osborn says, though he admits that it’s “frustrating” to explain this heavy support from the Left to voters who want to make sure he’s really independent.
“I would love to see certainly more funding come in from the people who lean to the Right,” he tells me. “Actually, one of my biggest individual donors is a Republican business owner in Nebraska. Both he and his wife have double-maxed to the campaign on my stance on right to repair.”
“It’s not about Republican or Democrat,” he insists. “I happen to be running against a Republican. If I was in New York and I was running against a Democrat, most of my money would probably be coming from the Right.” Osborn argues that he’d be raising gargantuan sums like State Rep. James Talarico (D-Tex.), currently the Democratic nominee for Senate in the Lone Star State, and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), currently running for reelection, if he actually were a Democrat.
This is also true. Osborn’s $5.7 million cash haul pales in comparison to fundraising by Talarico and Ossoff, according to Open Secrets data.
Regardless of the gotcha tapes, there is still a lot of daylight between Osborn and the Democrats. On immigration, he says that we need reform that won’t “undercut American workers.” There isn’t a Democrat in the country that would lead off that way.
“I saw it firsthand at Kellogg’s when we went out on strike. They immediately tried to replace us and we had some very strong suspicions and some evidence that a lot of these folks were undocumented workers from Texas, and that shouldn’t happen,” he emphasizes. This, of course, is not the best way to rack up donations on ActBlue — if that’s your goal. Osborn mitigates his stance by describing himself as a “humanist” who believes “we’re all human beings just trying to get through our days in some semblance of peace.”
“It’s just about having some dang common sense and not using this as a political football,” he says.
Such is the life of a Left-leaning independent trying to prove that the political elite can be toppled by a union mechanic in a state Trump won with 60% of the vote. Osborn clearly isn’t Mamdani and he clearly isn’t MAGA. That means he’s like a lot of Americans, a record number of whom — 45% — now identify as independents.
Most people aren’t trying to decide whether they have the politics of Pete Ricketts or the politics of the Democratic Socialists of America. They’re trying to decide who’s going to bring down gas prices and healthcare costs while maintaining a sense of normalcy in the culture wars: no open borders, no boys in girls’ sports.
When all is said and done, Osborn sounds like a guy who’s still trying to figure that out himself. All while navigating the choppy waters of America’s expensive and messy electoral process. The leaked recordings don’t exactly reveal that Osborn is a secret Brooklyn barista so much as that he’s dealing with economic populists who also demand fealty on cultural issues. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say where Osborn stands on those issues apart from the reality that he’s clearly not a puritan and is clearly very frustrated.
So is he a relatable character torn between the divisive forces of corruption tearing American politics apart or a progressive sleeper cell trying to seduce MAGA into giving up a vote in the upper chamber? That’s for the voters of Nebraska to decide — and Osborn, too.
