The back room of the bar where he was holding a public event in the small town of Beatrice, in southeastern Nebraska, was quite empty when Dan Osborn walked in on Saturday, November 2. Unperturbed, the independent candidate, who is running for a seat in the US Senate, invited the handful of men in caps and plaid shirts who had come to listen to him to sit around a table. He asked for their questions, before railing against the weight of economic interests and money in American politics.
A conversation ensued, about the source of his campaign funds and the massive tariffs promised by Republican candidate Donald Trump, which he believes could be a solution to keep jobs, provided they are calibrated so they don't fall back on the consumer.
Osborn, a mechanic and union member, who previously served in the Navy and his state's National Guard, is a vital link in the electoral machine that could enable the Republican Party to regain control of the Senate in Washington. When asked, he asserted that, if elected, he will remain "independent" and that he will take a position based on the content of the bills, so that his voice retains the most weight.
The candidate, who speaks as plainly and simply as the clothes he wears, is more than just a token vote-getter against incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer. Fischer was expecting a comfortable re-election, having forgotten her promise not to run for a third term. Although the Republican remains the favorite, the presence of the independent candidate is upsetting her camp and delighting the Democratic Party, which did not field a candidate and is watching this unexpected battle from the sidelines.
The Republican strategists of the Grand Old Party (GOP) know that the partial re-election in the Senate (34 seats out of 100) on November 5 is particularly favorable to them. The first piece of good news came in November 2023, when Senator Joe Manchin decided not to run again. The former Democratic governor of West Virginia, with iconoclastic positions, particularly on energy, had been re-elected in 2018 in a solidly Republican state.
The withdrawal of Manchin, who haggled hard for his vote during Joe Biden's tenure and finished his term as an independent, ensures that the GOP will gain a seat. That would place the two parties on equal footing, with 50 senators each.
Other incumbent Democratic senators are also particularly exposed. This is especially true for Jon Tester in Montana, where Trump won by more than 15 points in 2020. Sherrod Brown also faces a perilous re-election in Ohio, another Republican state where Democrats nonetheless clearly won a referendum protecting abortion in 2023.
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