CNN
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Former independent US Senate candidate Dan Osborn announced Tuesday that he will make another run for office next year, this time against GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.
Osborn, a longtime industrial mechanic best known for leading a 2021 strike against Kellogg’s, ran a stronger-than-expected 2024 campaign against Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. While he lost by less than 7 percentage points, he received 66,000 more votes than former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the state in the presidential race to Donald Trump by 20 points.
Though Osborn has said he wouldn’t caucus with Democrats, his campaign could boost the party’s efforts to make a difficult 2026 Senate map more manageable in a long-shot attempt to cut into the Republicans’ majority.
Republicans, who hold 53 seats, are defending a seat in blue-leaning Maine, where moderate Sen. Susan Collins is up for reelection, as well as a newly open seat in North Carolina following Sen. Thom Tillis’ decision to retire.
Democrats are seeking to hold on to Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia, which is expected to be a marquee 2026 race, as well as open seats in Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Osborn previously ran on a populist platform that combined conservative stances on border security and gun rights with more liberal views on abortion and campaign finance reform while still aggressively distancing himself from Democrats.
He rejected an endorsement from the state Democratic Party, insisted he would not caucus with either party if elected, and dismissed attacks from Fischer and her Republican allies that he was a “Democrat-in-disguise.”
Though national Democrats kept their distance for most of the election, the Senate Majority PAC, an outside group that backs Senate Democrats, donated $3.8 million to groups supporting Osborn in the final weeks of the campaign.
Osborn is seeking to draw a contrast with Ricketts based on his wealth — the former two-term Nebraska governor is the son of billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts — and his vote for Trump’s sweeping domestic policy and border security law.
“People that are paycheck to paycheck, he just made their lives a heck of a lot harder to give himself a tax cut,” Osborn told CNN. “I got a problem with that.”
Ricketts is running for his first full term. He was appointed to the seat in 2023 after former Sen. Ben Sasse left office, and won a special election to finish his predecessor’s term last year by 25 points.
Trump endorsed Ricketts’ reelection bid in April after Osborn announced he was exploring a second run.
“Pete is one of the strongest Senators in the Country on Border Security, whereas his potential Opponent, Dan Osborn, is a Radical Left Open Border Extremist, who will put our Country, and Safety, LAST,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Pete, on the other hand, will ALWAYS put Nebraska, and America, FIRST.”
Republicans have held both of Nebraska’s Senate seats since 2013, after Democratic former Sen. Ben Nelson declined to seek reelection.
To have a chance of winning back the Senate, Democrats would need to put states in play such as Texas, where Democratic former Rep. Colin Allred is making a second run for Senate. Some Democrats also suggest that, under the right circumstances, the party could also expand the map into Iowa and Alaska.
“When maps get expanded, it usually ends up being in states that in July of the off-year aren’t thought about as toss-ups yet,” said Justin Barasky, who ran former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s successful 2018 reelection bid.
