A Dan Osborn flyer in a bar in downtown Lincoln on July 24. 2025. (Juan Salinas II/Nebraska Examiner)
LINCOLN — On the same July day that registered nonpartisan labor leader Dan Osborn announced his bid against Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts in the 2026 midterms, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a digital ad saying a social media account with ties to Osborn had liked gay porn.
And Osborn, known for leading the pandemic-era strike for Kellogg’s workers in Omaha, argued that his working-class background makes him ideal to stand up to Ricketts and the billionaire class now running the country, alluding to the wealth of a family that created the company that became TD Ameritrade and owns Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs.
The tone of the NRSC ad and the Osborn rollout offer a stark contrast to the 2024 race between U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Osborn — and could signal the type of race to come between the industrial mechanic and a former two-term governor with Nebraska’s dominant political operation behind him.
Osborn’s bid against a senator with access to personal, political and Senate-incumbent money to campaign comes in an election year when Republicans, like most of the time when a party is in power, could lose seats and control of Congress. And it hits when some voters are losing faith in institutions and seeking alternatives.
Attention paid
Osborn, who formally kicks off his campaign in Omaha this weekend, has Team Ricketts’ full attention after running a closer-than-expected bid against Fischer, who largely ignored him until he built a populist brand by barnstorming the state.
Populism, the political approach of appealing to ordinary people by saying their concerns have been ignored by the financial and political elites, is a driving force in modern politics. It was how President Donald Trump took over the GOP. And it feeds much of the populist left, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Sanders, who stopped in Omaha to kick off his effort to motivate Democrats and independents after the re-election of Trump, figures prominently in some of the attack lines likely to be used against Osborn. Osborn said during his last race that as a labor leader he sometimes agreed with Sanders.
Dona-Gene Barton, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who studies political behavior, including how people react to political messaging, said the race will get negative sooner this time around.
“Fischer wasn’t really taking him seriously at the beginning of the campaign,” Barton said. “[Osborn] didn’t have as much name recognition, so she didn’t think that this was a serious contender.”
U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, former Nebraska governor, is running for re-election against longtime Omaha labor leader Dan Osborn. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)
Ricketts told Lincoln ABC affiliate KLKN, that he and his campaign team “are going to continue to talk about and expose how left Dan Osborn really is.”
When Fischer engaged later in her race against Osborn, she labeled him a Democrat in sheep’s clothing.
John Dolan, Osborn’s campaign manager, said the message of the campaign against Ricketts is “fundamentally the same, but much easier to understand.”
“Pete Ricketts is the living embodiment of everything we talk about. Billionaires own our political system,” Dolan said.
Osborn flew under the radar against Fischer, Barton said. who treated him like an “unserious” candidate, employing a common strategy of not giving him free media coverage by discussing them during the early stages of the campaign.
But Osborn, with a blend of economic populism and tough talk on some issues, including border security, devised an unorthodox platform that yielded one of the best performances for any nonpartisan Senate candidate in Nebraska.
Fischer and her campaign “were caught a little flat-footed,” Barton said.
He attracted an extraordinary fundraising haul for a federal candidate in Nebraska without direct ties to a major party, of $14 million. Fischer and Nebraska Republicans alleged that many of the millions that poured into Osborn’s 2024 campaign came from Democrats and Democratic-leaning donors.
Fischer still beat Osborn by about six percentage points. But the race raised Osborn’s political profile. He launched a political action committee to support working-class candidates and encourage more “plumbers, carpenters, teachers, nurses, and factory workers to run for office.”
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Some U.S. Senate strategists and Nebraska Republicans said Osborn could already have had his “one bite of the apple” as an independent candidate.
The Ricketts campaign team has relentlessly criticized Osborn, pointing out that he uses ActBlue, a fundraising tool often used by Democrats, and criticizing him for paying himself and his wife a salary with fundraising money, according to the latest campaign finance filings.
Candidates who aren’t incumbents can receive a salary, and campaign funds can be used to pay them salaries as long as the pay represents a “fair market value” for “bona fide services,” according to the Federal Election Commission. Osborn paid himself while running against Fischer, too, saying he needed to be able to campaign without shorting his employer and co-workers by constantly leaving work.
Ricketts, as expected for an incumbent senator and a former governor, significantly outraised Osborn in the second quarter of 2025, according to campaign finance filings.
Osborn reported raising $196,541 since his July announcement, while Ricketts raised $901,113 and his separate Pete Ricketts Victory Fund raised $1.2 million. His victory fund can be used for multiple races, political parties, and causes.
Avoiding same mistakes
Ricketts has been a dominant political force in the state. He has used his own money to influence Nebraska politics. His endorsement carries weight. Some Republicans who crossed him in the Legislature have lost seats. And his operatives have a reputation for bare-knuckled brawling in political mailers.
One example came in 2020, when the formerly Ricketts-steered state GOP set its sights on long-time GOP volunteer, Janet Palmtag, because she ran against a fellow Republican, State Sen. Julie Slama of Dunbar in 2020.
Ricketts, who was then governor, appointed Slama to the Legislature in 2019 after former State Sen. Dan Watermeier left to become a member of the Nebraska Public Service Commission.
The state GOP at the time paid for mailers that claimed Palmtag “broke the law” and “lost” her real estate license and was unfit to become a state senator. The claims were based on a 2017 case before the Iowa Real Estate Commission in which Palmtag, the owner of a real estate firm that operated in Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa, agreed to pay a $500 fine on behalf of her firm to resolve a mistake made by one of the firm’s agents.
The agent, who had been gravely ill, failed to obtain all the necessary signatures to transfer an earnest deposit for the sale of a home in Iowa, and Palmtag owned the real estate firm, so she was responsible for the firm’s work.
Palmtag sued the party for defamation in 2020. This year, a jury agreed with her that she had been defamed by the mailers and awarded her $500,000. The new post-Ricketts leadership of the state GOP did not appeal the verdict.
Some regional and national Republican strategists, including one from the group responsible for policing Osborn’s likes on social media, said the “same mistakes” made by the Fischer campaign would not be repeated this time around.
“Pete Ricketts is a conservative champion who is working in lockstep with President Trump to protect the Good Life and put America first,” said Joanna Rodriguez, the communications director for the NRSC and a former Ricketts staffer.
Will Coup, a Ricketts campaign spokesperson, told the Examiner, “Senator Ricketts has consistently worked for and voted to secure the border and cut taxes for Nebraska workers, families, and seniors.”
Rodriguez described Ricketts as a “strong messenger to call out Dan Osborn’s collusion with national Democrats to try to infiltrate Nebraska with their radical agenda.”
Osborn’s relationship with Democrats in the state is complex. He flirted with seeking Democratic support in 2024 until it was too late for the party to run its own candidate, which led to some Democrats grumbling at Osborn and his supporters for trying to minimize the number of names on the general election ballot for his Senate race, other than his and Fischer’s.
Many Democrats kept the independent at arm’s length until later in the campaign. But he has many Democratic supporters, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee gave him money once national leaders saw his momentum.
State voting records show Osborn as a registered nonpartisan since at least 2004, as the Examiner previously reported. Osborn said he has maintained independence from the Democratic Party and, if elected, won’t caucus with either party.
“I didn’t ask for that money,” Osborn said. “This time around, I’m not going to ask for it again.”
The Nebraska Democratic Party has indicated that it has no plans to recruit a Democratic candidate to the race, saying in a statement that, “Breaking up the one-party stranglehold on our state is going to take an unlikely alliance of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents coming together to fix a very broken Washington, D.C.” A Democrat could file to run anyway.
Osborn told the Examiner that Democrats and Republicans are “going to do what they do,” but he wants to show people that a candidate without a party can win in Nebraska or any state. He plans a retail campaign, centered around the “old school politics” of hosting about 300 public events around Nebraska.
The “secret sauce,” he said, is to meet people and learn about the issues that voters face the most, because he is “applying for a public service job.” He said he knows winning, especially against Ricketts, would require strong fundraising numbers.
Voter turnout in midterm elections is often lower than in presidential years. which could benefit Democrats as the party out of presidential and congressional power, Republicans have benefited more from high-turnout elections when Trump is on the ballot.
Osborn says he wants to drive up turnout, because he’s at a “stronger” starting point now than in 2024 — with more people in the state who know who he is. They know that he’s “unapologetically for the workers and their issues.”
‘Does this guy have a shot?’
Another difference in this race is that Ricketts just won a special election to hold the Senate seat in November. So, the former governor could benefit from having been recently on the ballot, where he overwhelmingly defeated Democratic challenger Preston Love Jr., an Omaha civil rights activist.
Barton, the UNL professor, said Ricketts also is polling higher than Fischer in early polling compared to 2024.
Osborn’s exploratory committee released a poll earlier this year, indicating he is statistically tied with U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts. The Ricketts camp called it “fake polling” meant to generate hope.
Barton said she was one of the few Nebraska political observers who said Osborn had a chance in 2024. This time around, she said it would be a tall task for the former Omaha labor leader.
“Does this guy have a shot? I would say no,” she said. “We have the results from that election that help us see what might happen this next time around.”
The nonpartisan Center for Politics, the home of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, changed the rating of Nebraska’s 2026 Senate race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican after Osborn’s announcement, a hint that Ricketts could be in for a fight. The Cook Political Report has the race listed as solid Republican.
“Senator Ricketts will work as hard for this election as he has for every election,” Coup said. “He’s taking nothing for granted and will earn the trust of voters.”
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