The independent populist from Nebraska, who came close to winning in 2024, is running to unseat one of the Senateâs wealthiest and most self-serving members in 2026.
Dan Osborn, the Nebraska steamfitter whose unexpectedly strong independent US Senate campaign drew national attention in 2024, is running once more against not just a sitting Republican senator but the corruption of billionaire-bought politics.
Osbornâs name will appear on an independent ballot line in November 2026, opposite that of wealthy Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts. But in many senses, the real target of the former union leaderâs candidacy is the corruption of American democracy that has allowed filthy-rich campaign donors to buy influence within both major parties. âIâm tired of being ruled by billionaires who donât know what life is like for normal working people, says Osborn, expressing a frustration that has been mounting among Americans who are struggling to pay their bills while a new class of oligarchs is accumulating so much wealth that there is now open speculation about which billionaire will become the worldâs first trillionaire. The volume on that discussion went up considerably last week after Congress passed the so-called âOne Big, Beautiful Bill,â which hands massive tax breaks to the super-rich while gutting funding for Medicaid and programs that feed the hungry.
One of the Republican senators who took the lead in supporting the largest upward transfer of wealth in US history was Ricketts, the eldest son of billionaire Joe Ricketts. After engineering his own appointment to an open Senate seat in 2023, Pete Ricketts is now preparing to seek a full six-year term in 2026. A win could give the scion of a family that has long been associated with high-stakes investments and financial speculation a prime opportunity to expand the already vast fortunes of the billionaire class. That doesnât sit right with Osborn, who says, âI donât believe private financiers should run the American economy,â and who illustrates his concern with a simple question: âDo you really think Pete Ricketts, whose family has amassed billions by financial speculation, wants to rein in Wall Street?â
Osborn is betting that Nebraskans will agree with him and reject the absurdity of handing one of Americaâs most identifiable plutocrats an extended opportunity to make the rich richer. So the veteran union activist announced Tuesday that heâll challenge the incumbent senator. And, unlike when he launched the 2024 bidâwhich ultimately earned him 47 percent of the vote against the stateâs senior Republican senator, Deb Fischer, political observers and Nebraska voters are taking Osbornâs challenge to Ricketts a lot more seriously.
âI feel like there is still an appetite for my brand of politics⊠I still believe that we need more champions for people who work for a living. I donât think we have enough of that,â Osborn told The Nation in an exclusive interview prior to his announcement.
True to his Nebraska upbringing, Osborn might be just a tad modest about the growing appeal of his unapologetic economic populism. Â The fact is that, since Democrats lost the presidency and the Congress in 2024, with a campaign that was widely accused of failing to place sufficient emphasis on working-class concerns, thereâs been a spike in interest in Osbornâs brand of politics. Thatâs because he takes on the failure of both major parties to stand firmly on the side of working Americans of all races, backgrounds and regions.
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Osbornâs leaning into his populism as he prepares to challenge a son of privilege in 2026. âI think Ricketts kind of embodies [the empty promise that] âthe billionaires are going to come save us,â trickle-down economics, all of this stuff that doesnât work,â he says. âI feel like weâre in a race to the bottom, and these guys are just [creating a situation where there is] that migration of wealth going to the top. Theyâre carving it out for themselves.â
That reality has been well illustrated during the first months of Donald Trumpâs second term. The billionaire president packed his Cabinet with other billionaires, and briefly ceded control over the reorganization of the federal government to Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world. For tens of millions of Americans, the stark evidence of elite self-dealing and corruption has created an insatiable hunger for a politics that challenges billionaire power. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who has spoken enthusiastically about Osbornâs populist approach, recognized that mounting frustration among Americans in general, and Nebraskans in particular, last February, when he launched his national âFighting Oligarchyâ tour in Omaha. And the biggest political story of the first months of Trumpâs second term was the overwhelming rejection of Muskâs upwards of $25 million âinvestmentâ in a campaign to tip Wisconsinâs state Supreme Court to support a Trump backed conservative.â
Speaking as the Senate was rushing to approve massive tax cuts for the rich, Osborn observedâagain with a measure of understatementâthat 2026 might be a very good year in which to campaign on a platform that focuses on making billionaires pay their fair share, raising wages for workers, removing barriers to organize unions, helping family farmers stay on the land, protecting Main Street small businesses, and holding multinational corporations to accountâas the US Navy veteran did when he served as president of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 50G and led a high-profile 2021 strike at the sprawling Kelloggâs plant in Omaha.
The prominence he achieved as a strike leader led Nebraska union activists and their allies to urge Osborn to run for the Senate in 2024. The fact that he mounted a dynamic campaign that almost defeated Fischer, a veteran Republican politician who had deep roots in a very red state, shook up the politics of Nebraska and drew significant national interest. It wasnât just that Osborn got as far as he did as an independent who mixed his economic populism with a somewhat libertarian approach to many hot-button issues: supporting abortion rights, expressing skepticism about gun-control measures, and decrying what he called the âtwo-party doom loop.â It was that his message connected across lines of partisanship with Nebraska voters who gave Fischer only a six-point margin, as opposed to Trumpâs 20-point win. The 2024 campaign made Osborn well-known across Nebraska and gave him something that is rare for an independent candidate â a statewide network of supporters.
Polling shows that, as voters begin to consider their 2026 prospects, Osborn is effectively tied with his Republican rival. âRicketts is a different kind of candidate. I think the contrast is better [than in his 2024 contest with Fischer],â says Osborn, who argues that the uber-wealthy incumbent in this yearâs race is the face of what people donât like about Washington: âthe millionaires working for the billionaires and doing their bidding.â
âWeâve seen a migration of wealth since 1980 â$50 trillion migrate to the top half percent, the biggest migration of wealth in human history. I talk about that any chance I get, because itâs real,â says Osborn. âAnd Ricketts signing on for âthe big, beautiful billâ just continues that trend. I want to stand with working people and create a level playing field: similar to the way people in 1900 started voting against the candidate who the robber barons were supporting.â
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