Independent candidate Dan Osborn came about 63,000 votes short last year of unseating Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, losing Nebraska’s Senate race by fewer than 7 percentage points while President Donald Trump won the state by more than 20 points.
But next year, as another Nebraska Senate seat comes up for reelection, Osborn is once again considering a challenge — and he seems to think this race could end differently.
If Osborn runs this time, it’ll be against Sen. Pete Ricketts, the wealthy businessman and son of Joe Ricketts, who founded TD Ameritrade.
Pete came into office after Sen. Ben Sasse resigned in the middle of his term at the start of 2023. A week after Sasse officially vacated the office, Ricketts — who had just left the governor’s mansion — was appointed senator by his gubernatorial successor. (Ricketts went on to win a special election in 2024 to serve out the rest of Sasse’s term.)
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Despite a strong electoral showing in 2024, there’s already a sense that Osborn could pose a real threat to Ricketts, particularly because the midterm elections have traditionally served as a referendum on the president.
“There’s probably going to be at least some shift in the Republican base because I just don’t believe that all of them still like what’s going on in D.C. currently,” said Mike Helmink, a co-founder of Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety, a PAC that backed Osborn last cycle. “And I think the frame of the race with a working-class guy like Dan against Pete Ricketts the billionaire is going to have a little more resonance.”
That economic message could prove to be especially potent, with at least three Democratic Senate candidates already preparing to run on those ideas.
One of them is Nathan Sage in Iowa, who told NOTUS in April that his campaign to unseat Sen. Joni Ernst was partially inspired by Osborn.
“I’m kind of in that same boat,” Sage said. “I wanna work for the working class just like he did and, at the end of the day, I wanna be a different Democrat and a Democrat that makes people wanna actually be a part of the Democratic Party.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent himself who has advocated for more working-class progressives to run as independents, told NOTUS Osborn’s campaign was “a good model.”
“Dan ran a great campaign in Nebraska,” Sanders said. “He showed that a working-class trade union leader can do very well.”
Republicans, of course, maintain that their party is taking action for working-class voters. A spokesman for Ricketts’ campaign emphasized the first-term senator’s record on issues like renewing the Trump tax cuts. And a national Republican strategist pointed to Ricketts’ strong ground game in the state.
“He really does love parades,” the strategist said of Ricketts. “He’ll walk the whole parade route and say hi to everybody.”
For his part, Ricketts told NOTUS that this campaign was no different from any other.
“You have to go out and earn it each and every time, and that is what I’ve done in every one of my elections,” Ricketts said.
But Ricketts could have his work cut out for him this cycle. In a town hall last week, constituents booed Ricketts over his support for Trump’s cuts to federal programs. And as much as Ricketts’ unwavering support for the president is a strength in a Republican primary, it could be a liability in the general election in 2026.
“At least to everybody’s face, he is 100% behind what Trump and his team are doing,” Helmink said of Ricketts.
While Osborn is still “weighing” whether to jump into the race, Dustin Wahl — who was the communications director for Osborn’s 2024 campaign — suggested his old boss would have a real shot.
“In addition to the economic populism narrative that Osborn pushed last year, he also talks about breaking the two-party doom loop,” Wahl said. “That narrative can resonate with red hat wearers in western Nebraska in a way that not a lot of other things can, breaking up the duopoly in politics.”
Of course, Republicans contest that Osborn isn’t really an independent, and they note that, for all of the swing voters in Nebraska, the state is still solidly red. Osborn, they say, is solidly blue.
National Democrats overwhelmingly donated to Osborn’s campaign last year, and Osborn is fundraising on ActBlue.
Wahl dismissed those facts as an obvious consequence of Osborn’s opposition.
“What’s a Democrat going to do?” he said. “Donate to Deb Fischer?”
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Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Alex Roarty, who is a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this report.
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