While running for US Senate in Nebraska, working-class candidate Dan Osborn characterized the Senate as “a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires.”
In November, he almost crashed their party.
Osborn, a forty-nine-year-old former local union president who helped lead a multistate strike against Kellogg’s cereal company, was recruited by railroad workers to challenge two-term incumbent Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican. Rail is a major industry in Nebraska, and Fischer had voted to break the 2022 national railroad strike. She also opposed the Railway Safety Act.
Osborn’s labor-backed independent campaign was, for many months, ignored by the mainstream press and even progressive media outlets.
The Nebraska Democratic Party, which ended up not fielding a candidate, was miffed by Osborn’s decision not to participate in its primary or seek the party’s endorsement. Still, by October, the Senate Majority PAC had shifted $3.8 million to an independent expenditure committee supporting him.
Osborn’s candidacy was initially given little chance of success by national and local experts because he was, in their view, a complete unknown. Union political directors in Washington, DC, were skeptical as well.
But Osborn’s campaign clearly hit a chord among working people. Last fall, the New York Times reported, Republican Super PACs and national party operatives were forced to launch a $15 million advertising blitz to blunt Osborn’s homestretch momentum against Fischer. On election day, Osborn’s 47 percent showing against Fischer — in a state Kamala Harris lost by 59 to 39 percent — confirmed the crossover appeal of Osborn’s blue-collar agenda among voters in Nebraska.
This unexpectedly strong showing drew postelection praise from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and others. As Sanders told the Nation, Osborn ran as a strong trade unionist who “took on the corporate world” in an “extraordinary…
Auteur: Dan Osborn
