Len’s Political Note #765 Dan Osborn an Independent for Nebraska US Senate

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November 9th   2025.         Len’s Political Note #765 Dan Osborn Nebraska US Senate

2026                                          General Election

Dan Osborn

The United States Senate currently has two independents.  Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.  Both were elected as independents and both caucus with the Democrats.  For the second time, Dan Osborn is running to represent Nebraska in the US Senate.  He would join those two New Englanders as a third independent Senator.

In 2024, Dan Osborn lost his race to incumbent Senator Deb Fischer 53.2% to 46.5%.  That was a margin of 72,631 votes.  Was 2024 a high point for Dan Osborn’s independent effort?  Or was it an introduction to a persistent man who will do better his second time around?

Especially since Dan Osborn has been clear that he would not caucus with the Democrats in the Senate, the Nebraska Democratic Party has decisions to make.  In 2024, there was no Democratic primary, no Democratic nominee, and no Democrat on the ballot.  There were 2,719 write in votes constituting .3% of the votes.  Some of those votes may have been for Democrats.

For 2026, Senator Pete Ricketts may have a primary opponent, but there are still no Democrats who have announced their candidacy.  There are no Democrats yet running for statewide office, not even for governor. Dan Osborn will be on his own.  Except for the Congressional candidate for Nebraska 02 he will be the reason that Nebraska Democrats come out to vote.

Don Osborn is a union guy.  He was president of Local 50G of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union.  On October 5, 2021, the union (BCTGM) went on strike in plants in four cities.  The labor contract had expired in 2020, but had been extended.  Negotiations continued with the company that wanted to retain a two-tiered pay system.  Newer employees were paid at a lower rate and did not escape that lower rate for four years.  The union wanted to eliminate the two-tiered pay scale.  Kellogg wanted to expand it by removing a 30% cap on the number of employees who could be in the lower tier.

Kellogg threatened to move some production outside the country.  Dan Osborn responded on behalf of the union saying “A lot of Americans probably don’t have too much issue with the Nike or Under Armour hats being made elsewhere or even our vehicles, but when they start manufacturing our food down where they are out of the FDA control and OSHA control, I [and other Americans] have a huge problem with that.”

A preliminary agreement was achieved by December, but was voted down by the membership on December 5.  The situation became tense and political.  The company announced plans to hire 1,400 contract workers. That would not have been easy to achieve.  As the country was moving out of the pandemic, we discovered that fewer people were planning on working. President Biden weighed in, denouncing the plan for contract workers.  The union held a rally and planned a bigger one with Senator Bernie Sanders as the main attraction.  BCTGM and other unions began talk of a boycott of Kellogg’s breakfast cereals.  People would find breakfast alternatives to Corn Flakes and Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks.

The union voted approval of a revised proposed contract on December 21.  The two-tiered contract remained, but the difference between the tiers was narrowed.  The four years remained as did the 30% cap.   Pay increased in a way that was consistent with the new conditions of labor scarcity.  And unions saw that successful strikes were possible.

Dan Osborn is from Omaha.  He went to Roncalli Catholic High School in Omaha.  After graduation, he joined the Navy, which his father had done.  In 2004, home after four years on the USS Constellation where his work included tasks such as fixing fire safety equipment, he joined the National Guard and went to work for Kellogg.  At the factory, depending on your terminology, he was an industrial mechanic or a steamfitter.

Dan Osborn was a leader during the strike.  He knew a little about politics.  His dad had been a County Commissioner.  He got his talk about the issues straight.  During the 2024 campaign, he said Nebraska has produced leaders who think about issues rather than political parties.  “The divisions in this country are threatening our great democratic experiment.”  He could, “bring people together around common goals.”

Dan Osborn’s campaign website has more goals than a typical candidate has.  These goals serve, not so much to describe a plan to achieve all of them, but to describe who Dan Osborn is.  No goal is more characteristic of him than the “right to repair,” which would return us to the day when every farmer could fix his own farm equipment and every garage could fix your car (and you might even be able to do a lot of that yourself). Now, he says “farmers and ranchers are effectively locked into costly lifetime contracts” and “multi-nationals have shut independent repair shops and consumers completely out of the repair market.”

Here is Dan Osborn’s list

  1. Cut taxes for small businesses and the middle class
  2. Maintain a secure border
  3. Protect social security for every citizen,
  4. Ensure that first responders have the resources they need to protect their communities.
  5. Create a “Right to Repair.”
  6. Pay soldiers what they deserve and keep the cost of military equipment within bounds
  7. Make family farms possible by enforcing anti-trust, country of origin labeling, and more.
  8. Protect senior health care by preventing private equity firms from buying out elder care facilities and fund enforcement of elder abuse laws.
  9. Fund public schools properly and ensure that they are not platforms for partisan division.
  10. Legalize cannabis
  11. Prevent billionaires from buying elections
  12. Target Big Pharma’s huge profits as a result of federal give aways.
  13. Protect middle class jobs and wages with pro-labor laws and higher minimum wages
  14. Reform railroad safety which has been eroded by decades of cost cutting and lax oversight
  15. Keep government out of our private lives – ranging from gun safety to women’s health care
  16. Create term limits – 2 terms for Senators, 6 terms for Members of Congress
  17. Make elections more democratic through ranked choice voting

Incumbent Republican Senator Pete Rickett’s campaign website has six items he wants to tell us all about:

  1. Tax cuts: When he was governor, he cut taxes and as a Senator he supported the largest tax cut in American history. The items he particularly notes are ending taxes on social security, on military benefits, and lowering income taxes. No word on tax reductions for millionaires and billionaires or for corporations.
  2. Public Safety: When he was governor, he passed a comprehensive law enforcement bill. In the Senate he notes that he voted for funds to hire 16,000 more border agents, resources to combat fentanyl, and has proposed harsher penalties for crimes.  No word on masked ICE agents rousting, placing in detention, separating children from their parents, and deporting long term residents of this country – in Nebraska and elsewhere.
  3. National Security: No “when he was governor here.” He boasts of opposing the Chinese Communist Party, investing in better weapons, and supporting the ICBMs at the Offutt AF Base in Nebraska. No word on tariffs, no word on China rejecting Nebraska’s soy beans, and, perhaps to be expected since it is so recent, no word on Trump’s craven agreement to allow China’s continued access to US technology for another year.
  4. Government efficiency: When he was governor, he cut the growth in Nebraska’s spending in half and cut DMV wait times in Omaha from 29 minutes to 8. In the Senate, he says he is a member of the DOGE caucus that is cutting waste and abuse and holding “states like California and New York” accountable for SNAP fraud.  No word on the end of USAID, the closing of Voice of America, or the crippling of the US Department of Education.  Nor is there anything about the Republican battle to preserve cuts in Medicaid and cuts in the support for the Affordable Care Act that will leave many without health insurance.
  5. Nebraskan solutions: As governor, Nebraska phased out state taxes on social security and military retirement income and made SNAP work better for people who need it. Not a word about his thoughts as Senator about the use of the SNAP emergency fund to continue SNAP during the government shut down.
  6. Defending our Values: As governor (he doesn’t say it out loud this time) Nebraska is the best place to live the American Dream. He prevented Joe Biden from taking 30% of Nebraska land for conservation, is protecting the 2nd amendment, and protecting women in sports from having to compete with men. Not a word about the right of women to control their health care and their bodies; not a word about meat packing plants employing immigrant children.

Pete Ricketts Dad founded Ameritrade.  Joe Ricketts pioneered electronic trading. He and his successors expanded their Omaha based corporation by acquisition after acquisition including TD Waterhouse and Charles Schwab.

Pete Ricketts may rail against coastal elites, but his schooling, his BA and MBA at The University of Chicago, was at a school you would call elite.  After school, he worked a little bit elsewhere, but mostly for his father’s businesses.  His idea of fun was, in 2006, to run for the US Senate.  That did not work out so, in 2007, he founded The Platte Institute – a think tank that some call “conservative,” that he calls “free market,”

While the Platte Institute was in Omaha, Pete Ricketts’ other idea of fun was in Chicago – the Cubs, which the Ricketts family purchased in 2009.  Give him credit.  During the ten years Pete Ricketts was on the Board, the Cubs won the World Series.  In 2016 they won that prize for the first time since they won the Series consecutively in 1907 and 1908.

Pete Ricketts had resigned from the Platte Institute in 2014, from the Board of Ameritrade in 2016, and from the Cubs in 2019.  He focused on politics.  He had been elected governor in 2014. He won the multi-candidate Republican primary by a point with 26.6% of the vote.  He outspent the Democratic candidate, an expert on rural issues, $6 million to $2.5 million and earned 57% of the vote.

Perhaps Pete Ricketts was right in noting what he did as governor in his campaign website for the Senate, We should know the things he did:

  • Vetoed a repeal of the state’s death penalty
  • Vetoed a repeal of the state’s prohibition of driver’s licenses for certain undocumented aliens
  • Vetoed an increase in the gasoline tax to pay for the repair of roads and bridges
  • Vetoed a bill to create an independent board of citizens for redistricting purposes
  • Vetoed a bill to allow certain undocumented aliens to get commercial and professional licenses
  • Supported passage of anti-abortion bills, bills that ranged from creating a “choose life” license plate to creating information about perinatal hospice care for women with non-viable pregnancies to creating commemorative certificates for nonviable births – that is, for miscarriages.
  • Opposed mask requirements during the Covid pandemic including withholding of state funds to communities that imposed such requirements.
  • Supported construction of a canal to gain access to water from the South Platte River flowing into Nebraska from Colorado.

Term limits prevented Pete Ricketts from running for governor again in 2022.  A week after his chosen successor, Jim Pillen took office, Pillen appointed Rickets as the US Senator to replace Ben Sasse who had resigned from the US Senate.  Parallel with Dan Osborn’s race against Deb Fischer, Pete Ricketts as the incumbent won a special election in November 2024 to remain in the US Senate.

Let’s elect an Independent as Senator from Nebraska.  Elect the leader of a local union instead of a multimillionaire ideologue who believes in self-reliance and his father’s money.  There are not many greater contrasts among the 2026 races.  DONATE to the Dan Osborn campaign.

OTHER NEBRASKA RACES

Nebraska 02. I count five Democratic candidates for the OPEN formerly Republican seat.  Businesswoman Denise Powell ended September with nearly $500,000 cash on hand, the most of any Democrats.  The leading Republican City Councilman Brinker Haring had a little more than $400,000.  She stresses protecting Medicaid and social security, has led the organization Women Who Run, and with the open seat, has decided to run herself.  Financial support for Denise Powell could further separate her from the crowd. DONATE

KANSAS RACES

Sharice Davids

US Senate and Congressional races

The incumbent Republican US Senator Roger Marshall had $3.3 million cash on hand on September 30.  None of the prospective Democratic candidates reported more than $100,000 cash on hand.  Nor did any of the Democratic candidates for any of the three Republican held Congressional seats.

Sharice Davids, the Democratic Congresswoman from Kansas 03 has $1 million cash on hand.  She will run for reelection unless Kansas joins the great redistricting challenge and makes her seat impossible to win.  In that case, she will run for the US Senate.  Sharice Davids is a Native American, a former mixed martial arts fighter, a graduate of Cornell law school, and former advisor supporting Native American business. She can intensify a fight rather than back down.  DONATE to her campaign – whether it is to return to the House or to run against Roger Marshall for the Senate.

 

Governor

With Incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly term limited, several Democrats and several Republicans are running.  The likely Democratic nominee is State Senator Ethan Corson – a graduate of Washington University of St Louis – both for his BA and JD.  In Kansas, before running for the State Senate he led he state party and was a visiting fellow at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas.  Before that, he worked in Washington including time in the Commerce Department.  DONATE to Ethan Corson.  Kansas could elect a second Democrat in a row as governor, especially if the Republicans nominate one of the followers of former Governor Sam Brownback, a low tax ideologue who nearly destroyed Kansas’s economy.

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