After Failed Electoral Vote Ratf*ck, Sure Would Be Funny If Nebraska Were Key To Dems Holding Senate
It's a long shot, but way more interesting than Nebraska usually is.
Nebraska sure has been insistent on making news this week, what with its now-thwarted flirtation with changing the national electoral map right before the general election, which had news anchors fumbling over the word “unicameral” and saying “unilateral” half the time anyway.
And now, while the Cornholer State remains as “red as the bristles of a sow’s ears,” as Chaucer put it even though he’d never been to Omaha, it looks like one of the state’s two elections for the US Senate this year could actually be competitive, as independent candidate Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and union leader, is polling surprisingly close to Republican incumbent Deb Fischer, who has been in the Senate since 2013 without anyone much noticing.
(The other Senate election, to fill the remaining term of former senator and now former University of Florida President Ben Sasse (R-Grifty), will easily go to former Gov. Pete Ricketts, who was appointed to fill the seat. His Democratic challenger, Preston Love, is a terrific guy who’ll be rolled over like a semi hit by a tornado.)
A month ago, a SurveyUSA/Split Ticket poll showed Fischer and Osborn in a virtual dead heat, with 39 percent of those polled choosing Osborn, 38 percent going with Fischer, and 23 percent undecided. Now, that could just mean that Deb Fischer is as unknown to her constituents as to the rest of the country. Fischer did at least manage to make Morning Consult’s list of 10 least popular senators in July, so she has that going against her.
So maybe, since we love a good fight, it means that Dan Osborn might pull off an incredible upset against long odds.
Thing is, it wasn’t just the one poll. This week, a new Survey USA poll — sponsored by Osborn, so there’s that — showed Osborn ahead of Fischer by one point again, 45 percent to 44 percent, but with undecideds down to only 11 percent. The earlier poll found 47 percent of respondents didn’t know enough about Osborn to have an opinion on him; that was down to 24 percent in the most recent poll. And I seem to have picked just the right day to write about this race, since the Cook Political Report on Wednesday shifted its forecast for the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
A Slate profile of Osborn called him a “Navy veteran who looks and sounds as if he were designed in a lab to reverse Democrats’ fortunes with non–college educated white voters.” He’s pro-Second Amendment and a border hawk, but also solidly pro-union and in favor of abortion rights. He has the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, and also, go figure, of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Since she’s only a fictional vice president, that didn’t break his policy of not accepting endorsements from any political parties or elected politicians.
The Nebraska Democratic Party wanted to endorse Osborn, but he said thanks nah, and that may have helped his chances, especially when the Democrats held back and didn’t run anyone as a write-in, which would have split the opposition to Fischer. Osborn even refuses to say which party he would caucus with if elected, though if he did knock off Fischer, you’d think Republicans wouldn’t send him an engraved invitation — unless he could give them 51 votes in the Senate.
Osborn told Omaha TV station KETV the new polling wasn’t surprising to him. “This is the most competitive Senate race in the country right now,” he said. “And we can win this thing.”
Fischer has so far refused to debate Osborn, which at least gave him the chance to run the always-fun “debate with an empty chair” play at a brewpub. But while Fischer’s own polling has her well ahead of Osborn, her campaign’s messaging seems a tad defensive, using hyperbole to stir up Trumpian panic. In response to the new polling, Fischer’s campaign said in a statement,
Dan Osborn claims to be an independent. But Osborn is funded by out-of-state Democrats, supports giving illegals social security, and loves Bernie Sanders. The more people learn about Dan Osborn, the more they learn he's no independent at all.
No, we aren’t going to chase down where that ridiculous line about Social Security came from, yeesh.
As Rolling Stone reports, the Republican Money Machine is coming to Nebraska to help Fischer paint Osborn as a wild-eyed radical, with a $479,000 ad buy in the state from the rightwing super PAC Heartland Resurgence. It’s the first out-of-state spending on Fischer’s behalf, so of course it’s accusing Osborn of being a puppet of out-of-state Democrats, you see.
One ad from Heartland Resurgence repeatedly denounces Osborn as “Democrat Dan.”
“He wants Nebraska to think he’s an independent who will fight for you,” says the ad. “But he’s really just another liberal Democrat who’ll fight with them.”
An ad from Fischer’s campaign describes Osborn as a “dangerous Trojan Horse” who would be a “rubber stamp” for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Osborn has campaigned against Fischer for supporting a national ban on abortion, so of course Fischer claims in one of her ads that Osborn “supports abortion up until the moment of birth,” although that is not a thing that happens, ever.
And yes, Nebraska does have its 12-week abortion ban on the ballot this fall, in the form of two competing constitutional amendments: One would protect the right of abortion “until fetal viability” or to protect the life or health of the patient, while the other would ban all abortions in the second and third trimester except when the pregnancy results from rape or incest, or in cases of medical emergency. No telling how those ballot measures may affect turnout.
Update: Also too, per a question in the comments, which we don’t allow: Yes, both amendments could conceivably pass (heh-heh, conceivably). If that’s the case, if the state Supremes find them in conflict with each other, the one that got more votes would become law.
As every story on Osborn’s polling surge points out, independent challenges to party nominees tend not to succeed, particularly in red states, and not when a ton of money comes into the state from rightwing PACs. In the bigger picture, though, as New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore notes,
By forcing Republicans to deploy resources they’d prefer to utilize in Senate battleground states like Montana or Ohio, Osborn could help Democrats nationally even if he loses while disdaining the Donkey Party.
If you’d like to help make Republicans sweat a little more, you could do worse than to send a few Ameros Osborn’s way. Even if he loses, his late surge could help other Dems, and if he somehow won, he’d not only make history, but then Yr Wonkette could look forward to six years of typing and then deleting an unnecessary e at the end of his name. Totally worth it.
[The Hill / Slate / New York / KETV / Nebraska Examiner]
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Also updated with a note on what happens if both abortion amendments pass, because I am not afraid to be servicey
Hit me with your long shot, fire away