Populist independent candidate Dan Osborn has lost his bid for U.S. Senate in Nebraska to two-term Republican incumbent Sen. Deb Fischer. The result helps solidify the GOP’s control of the chamber, which it secured for the first time in four years on Tuesday.
Osborn is a union leader, Navy veteran, and industrial mechanic who worked for nearly 20 years at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha, where he was president of the union.
Osborn has very deliberately avoided alliances with either party, declining calls from senators who have tried to get in contact with him. “Washington, D.C., is broken, and we need somebody to fix it,” he said. He added: “I don’t want to get in line with anybody. I’ve never been good at that.”
Earlier this year, the Nebraska Democratic Party was considering an endorsement, but Osborn told The New York Times that he was “not sure he wants that.” Osborn ultimately, specifically, rejected support from the Democratic Party, a decision that infuriated state party leaders. He did not endorse a presidential candidate.
“Only 2% of Congress is from the working class. The Senate’s a county [sic] club of millionaires who work for billionaires, with no one fighting for us,” Osborn posted on X on Election Day.
Fischer disparaged Osborn over his refusal to ally with either side. “You know, people have said to me: ‘What do you think of him saying he’s not going to caucus with Republicans or he’s not going to caucus with Democrats?’ And I said, ‘I think he needs a civics lesson’ because I just think that shows a lack of understanding,” she said during a campaign stop in Omaha.
Nonetheless, Fischer and Republicans attempted to paint Osborn as a liberal. A conservative Super PAC, Heartland Resurgence, has run ads calling him “Democrat Dan.”
“He wants Nebraska to think he’s an independent who will fight for you,” says the ad. “But he’s really just another liberal Democrat who’ll fight with them.”
Osborn’s platform straddles both camps. He is in favor of legalizing cannabis and supports the Second Amendment. He has opposed “extreme national measures to ban abortion,” arguing that it’s not the federal government’s job to legislate abortion.
He campaigned against “illegal immigration,” arguing on his website that it “creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker.” Osborn said in a campaign ad that if Donald Trump “needs help building the wall, well, I’m pretty handy.”
Early this year, Osborn said his campaign advisors told him to put out a statement on Israel’s war in Gaza, but he did not want his campaign tied to the issue.
One of Osborn’s key goals is to improve union protections and make it easier for workers to unionize. As such, his campaign had strong support from organized labor. “I think it would be huge, and I think it would send notice to both parties that they better get on board with working-class people” if he was elected, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain told The Nation.
“There’s kind of a contrarian vibe to politics in the state,” Mike Helmink, a railroad employee and labor leader, told Rolling Stone in July. “The Independents, or nonpartisans, are becoming a larger and larger group. We’ve got a large group of people that feel like their voice isn’t being heard.”
In 2021, Osborn led the Kellogg’s strike. “You sign on at a place like Kellogg’s, and you know they basically own your life,” he told Rolling Stone at the time. “There’s been times during Covid when we were 100 workers under what we should have,” he explained.
Osborn and his coworkers went on a 77-day strike. “During Covid, we were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day,” Osborn said. “At one point in time, 50 percent of our workforce was forced to quarantine and/or [was] sick, but we kept the plants running at full capacity. [Kellogg] made record profits that year — they went from $19 billion to $21 billion. The CEO gave himself a $2 million raise. The board enriched themselves, the stockholders enriched themselves, [but] at the same swipe of the pen, after they gave themselves a raise, they tried to take from their workers, so we went out on strike.”
The workers won increased pay and improved benefits. Osborn was then fired for watching Netflix on his work computer, although he believes it was really because he was the union president. Still, he admits that he was indeed watching Netflix. “I had three computer screens, and on my third screen I would usually have a comedy concert on as I ran my reports,” he told Bloomberg.
The Associated Press called Nebraska for Trump on Tuesday.