Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – these are the swing states most pundits expect will decide the 2024 election. No one has deep-red Nebraska on that list. But a 48-year-old pipefitter and union organizer from Omaha is hoping to change that.
Three years ago, Dan Osborn led the Nebraska leg of a US-wide strike against the cereal giant Kellogg’s as the company pushed for concessions in a new union contract despite posting record profits during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now he’s taking on Deb Fischer, a Republican senator, who is running for her third US Senate term in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 18 years. Osborn is running as an independent and says he hasn’t yet decided who will get his vote come November but his pro-labor, pro-choice views are unlikely to sit well with conservative Republicans.
“This from the beginning was considered a long shot,” said Osborn. “I’ve enjoyed proving people wrong from the very beginning of this and I look forward to continue proving people wrong, that this isn’t impossible. I want to show that Nebraska has an independent spirit.”
Nebraska is historically a stronghold for Republicans. A Democrat has not won a US Senate seat to represent the state since Ben Nelson in 2006. An independent hasn’t won since George Norris in 1936.
Despite the odds, Osborn’s campaign is off to an impressive start. A November 2023 poll, the only one conducted so far for the race, put Osborn at 40% to 38% for Fischer, with 18% undecided. Osborn has also fundraised more than $600,000 so far, a record for an independent candidate in the state, primarily from small donors.
Osborn said he was approached to run by railroad workers in Nebraska who have been disgruntled with Fischer over her refusal to support the Railroad Safety Act.
The bill was drafted in response to the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster as railroad workers and unions have decried poor working conditions and safety issues driven by railroad corporations, which Osborn has pointed out are big donors to his opponent. In contrast, Fischer had introduced legislation to further deregulate the railroad industry.
Improving railroad safety is a part of Osborn’s campaign platform, along with cannabis legalization, enacting congressional term limits, lowering tax rates for small business owners and the middle class, and improving pay and support for veterans.
“We’re dealing with people like Deb Fischer who take corporate Pac money and they vote accordingly,” added Osborn. “They are not for the workers, for the people, they’re for corporations.”
His former employer Kellogg’s has also hit the headlines, with Kellogg’s CEO, Gary Pilnick, stating during an appearance on CNBC that poor families facing financial distress should consider eating cereal for dinner.
“This just goes to show how out of touch CEOs are with regular people,” said Osborn.
Osborn is a long shot for Nebraska but he’s hoping that his story will resonate with people who are fed up with business as usual and a 1% that seem to think “let them eat cereal” is an answer to income inequality. He cited a 2020 report that calculated the redistribution of wealth in the US from the bottom 90% of earners to the top 1% of earners, finding that $50tn has been taken in redistributed income in recent decades.
“How does that happen on everybody’s watch? It’s because the special interests and corporations own the politicians and they vote accordingly,” concluded Osborn. “I’m tired of it and I think people are starting to wake up to that fact because we’re all hurting right now. I’m hurting. I’m still working 40-50 hours as a steamfitter while I’m running for Senate and my dollar doesn’t stretch like it used to, I’m getting hurt at the gas pump, I’m getting hurt at the grocery stores and everybody else is too.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
