This independent candidate is worrying Republicans in the deep-red Senate race in Nebraska

BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) – In the back room of a brewery in southeastern Nebraska, more than three dozen people gathered…

BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) — In the back room of a brewery in southeastern Nebraska, more than three dozen people gathered this summer to listen to Dan Osborn, a former grain mill worker and independent candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The standing-room-only crowd in the small town of Beatrice was larger than Osborn expected, but was notable for its size. Attendees ranged from supporters of former President Donald Trump wearing “Make America Great Again” hats to voters staunchly supporting Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats.

Osborn’s message to all of them was that America’s two-party system has failed them.

“There is no one like me in the United States Senate,” he told the crowd. “Right now, the Senate is a country club of millionaires working for billionaires.”

Osborn has crafted a campaign in deeply conservative Nebraska that rejects both major political parties as part of a broken system. For someone who held his first campaign news conferences from the garage of his suburban Omaha home, he has surprised pundits by emerging as a serious challenger to the two-term Republican Party. Senator Deb Fischer in what was considered a safe Republican seat just months ago.

The contest has generated $21 million in spending from outside groups in Osborn’s favor, and even Fischer’s campaign acknowledges the race is closer than expected. There is no Democratic candidate, but a victory for Osborn could disrupt Republican plans to regain a Senate majority. Osborn has said he will not consult with either party.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from openly supporting him. During the first 16 days of October, after the national spotlight increased on him, Osborn raised more than $3 million, almost all of it from individuals and most of it through the Democrats’ Act Blue fundraising site, Federal reports show. Election Commission. That was almost six times the $530,000 Fischer raised.

Osborn has raised a total of nearly $8 million to Fischer’s $6.5 million, and just under three weeks before the election he had $1.1 million in cash, twice as much as Fischer.

Osborn has succeeded not only by rejecting political parties, but also by running statewide campaigns, supported by clever advertisements – in one of which he notes, “I don’t even have a suit” – that contrast with his working class roots. with a system in which he says politicians are ‘bought and sold’.

Osborn is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Nebraska Army National Guard and industrial mechanic who earned national recognition three years ago when he successfully passed led a labor strike at Kellogg’s grain millsthus providing higher wages and other benefits. That background informs his view that working families are being wiped out by a growing wealth gap, he says.

An Osborn victory would be a huge upset in a state where Republicans hold all statewide offices and all congressional districts.

Fischer is a rancher from Valentine, a town of 2,600 in northern Nebraska, about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northwest of Omaha. She was a little-known state lawmaker when she ran for office as an outsider in 2012, he won a competitive primary and went on to defeat Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic governor and U.S. senator. Her campaign ads that year featured her leaning against fence posts, calling her “sharp as barbed wire, stronger than a cedar fence post.”

“Nebraskas support me because I have gotten results,” Fischer said this week, citing national defense and highway projects as areas where her state has done well. “I have a long, conservative record that has helped build Nebraska and keep America strong.”

Fischer’s pollster, John Rogers of Torchlight Strategies, a longtime Republican Party contributor, recently argued that the apparent closeness of the race is a “mirage.” Her campaign expects Osborn will not be able to build a large enough margin in Democratic areas of Omaha, the state’s largest city, to overcome the votes Fischer will win in the vast rural areas.

The pollster also predicted that Trump’s endorsement of Fischer in September will pull Nebraska voters back into her corner in a state he is expected to win easily. “She won’t let you down!” Trump posted a message on his social media site Truth.

Trump labeled Osborn a “radical left” and compared him to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who runs as an independent but caucuses with Democrats and has become a leading spokesman for liberals. Fischer and her supporters amplify that message.

Still, Osborn has gained national attention, complicated Republicans’ ambitions and heard calls to dissolve the country’s two-party system. This has broad appeal in an era when aversion to politics continues to increase.

“At least as an independent you’re an open book,” said Jim Jonas, who managed Greg Orman’s independent campaign for U.S. Senate in neighboring Kansas a decade ago. “You have the opportunity to trap yourself, map out the race and run as a refreshing, different choice than the two fractured sides.”

That’s exactly how Osborn pitches himself.

“Congress is completely misrepresenting the demographics of our voters,” he told the crowd in Beatrice. “Less than 2% of our elected officials in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are working class.”

Osborn has received donations from political action committees that support independent parties, such as the Wyoming-based Way Back PAC, along with groups that support Democratic candidates.

Its independence has not prevented immigration from becoming a key issue, as it has across the country. Osborn has said the U.S. border with Mexico is too porous. But he also says he supports some form of amnesty for immigrants who have been in the US illegally for a long time, if they work and have not committed violent crimes.

Like Orman in 2014, Osborn supports the right to abortion. That could help him in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or rejected efforts to restrict them in statewide voting over the past two years. Fischer has claimed that Osborn will not support any restrictions.

But the core of Osborn’s appeal to his supporters seems to be that of an ordinary working-class man.

He has support from at least a dozen unions. Two weeks before the election, the national AFL-CIO brought top officials to Omaha to head up a phone bank in support of Osborn. About 30 union members and officials — including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler — worked the phones to drum up support and donations for Osborn.

“His message of supporting working families really resonates with people,” Shuler said.

As she spoke, volunteers from the neighborhood phone bank called out donations of up to $3,000 and new pledges of support from the Nebraskans they called.

“People are so cynical about politics now,” Shuler said. “And he gets a hold on those people because he’s one of them.”

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.