Nebraska Senate May Be the Race No One Saw Coming

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The last time Nebraskans voted for a Senator who wasn’t a Republican, George W. Bush was an unpopular President leading a deeply divisive GOP. Which is why it’s so curious that Republicans are suddenly rushing to make sure Republican Sen. Deb Fischer keeps the seat for a third term and Democrats are holding tepid optimism that the deep-red state might be at least open to backing a union boss who is running as an independent.

National Republicans have booked roughly a half-million dollars in advertising time in this last month of campaigning. An outside group with ties to one of the state’s richest families is adding another $2 million to that kitty to boost Fischer’s late-emerging nail-biter against neophyte Dan Osborn. Meanwhile, national Democrats are publicly denying any involvement but are privately flagging polls—albeit limited in number—suggesting Nebraska may be closer than any state with a 2-to-1 Republican voter registration advantage should be. Late last month, the most respected political handicapper in the game moved its rating for the race from a GOP gimme to a click closer to the middle. And a New York Times/Siena College poll of three other Senate races drawing the eyes of Democrats released on Thursday suggests Nebraska might be the last vestige of hope for the party to hold any sway over the Senate.

Put plainly on the Plains: Nebraska’s Senate race stands to become this cycle’s out-of-nowhere shocker that neither side saw coming.

“This was not on my BINGO card,” says one Democratic strategist working on other Senate races.

A Republican strategist who is a veteran of the Senate game adds, “If Deb Fischer is in trouble, then [Senators] Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Bob Casey are toast in an anti-incumbent year.”

Democrats, who have an unbelievably difficult Senate map to defend this year, know the drill in Nebraska. Ben Nelson was the most recent Democrat to win a Senate race in the state, but that was in 2006. Other Democrats like Bob Kerrey, Jim Exon, and Edward Zorinsky previously were sent by Nebraskans to represent them in the Senate, but their kind are decidedly from a different era. Democrats this year didn’t even bother with a nominee and instead assumed their efforts were better spent defending incumbents in places like Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

Nebraska, for good reason, was not atop the places where strategists in both parties spent much time. Democrats expected Fischer to run away with the race like she did in 2018 by 19 points. President Donald Trump carried the state by the same margin two years later. It was, frankly, a bad investment for Democrats. In fact, unseating incumbent Republicans in GOP-favoring Florida and Texas seemed like better targets than anything in the vast sea of Republican voters that stretches across the center of the nation.

And yet, with less than a month before Election Day, the GOP cavalry is heading to Omaha airwaves to protect Fischer, a keep-your-head-down lawmaker with plum assignments on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees. A cattle rancher in her life before politics, Fischer often steps out of the spotlight to focus on local issues dear to her constituents like agriculture subsidies and rural Internet access. Mainstream to her core, no Republicans credibly put her race in trouble. This is why panic has seeped into the GOP bloodstream so late, with control of the Upper Chamber in the balance. A competitive race in Nebraska was nowhere near a reality six months ago.

For his part, Osborn has done his level best to keep national Democrats at an arm’s length. He has vowed he would not caucus with either party, a break from the four independent lawmakers who are currently in the chamber and join Senate Democrats for organizing purposes. Osborn, who led a union strike in Omaha against Kellogg in 2021, has rejected links to national liberal figures like Bernie Sanders or Chuck Schumer, and neither is exactly trying to link Osborn’s fortunes to their individual brands.

“People are just thirsty for a change, on both sides of the aisle,” Osborn told The Washington Post. Fischer, meanwhile, has labeled her independent opponent a “Trojan horse” for Democrats.

The race’s surprise competitiveness is the product of a confluence of events, and more than $4 million in liberal dark-money ads. Part of the draw is the fact that Nebraska is one of just two states where the statewide winner in the presidential race doesn’t automatically grab all of the state’s Electoral College votes. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states to apportion some electoral votes by congressional district. That fact has made Nebraska’s second district a plum target for national Democrats, and there’s been a surge of action in that Omaha-area edge of the state. So intense is the interest, a Midwest printing shop is even selling shirts advertising Omaha as the region’s “Blue Dot.” (Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama carried that district.)

So as this campaign heads into a final sprint between a cattle rancher and union organizer, both parties are left with a late-breaking worry about a Plains state race that no one expected. Other campaigns, too, are watching with more than a little trepidation: if a latent anti-incumbent seed is blooming so late in Nebraska, where else might shockingly tight contests emerge?

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