Dan Osborn, the independent Senate candidate from Nebraska who gave Republicans some headaches last year, outpacing Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign more than any non-Republican senator in the country, is coming back for another try, challenging Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) for Nebraska’s other Senate seat. As in 2024, there will be no Democratic candidate in the race, according to state Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb. So Osborn will have a shot in a more treacherous year for Republicans to take down Ricketts.
The announcement video for Osborn literally begins with a scripted radio report, noting that “Billionaire politician Pete Ricketts votes for historic tax cut for the 1 percent.” The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is front and center in Osborn’s messaging, as it will be in races against Republicans all over the country. The political moment and the pushback to the law fits with the populist stances Osborn took last year and wants to take again.
I “love the ideas America is supposed to stand for, and right now, I feel like that is under threat from corporations and billionaires carving it up for themselves,” Osborn told Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times.
Osborn will be able to use the fact that the first hospital closure as a result of OBBBA is right in his home state.
Community Hospital, a regional network in Nebraska with four treatment centers and clinics, announced last week that the medical center located in the town of Curtis, population 900, would have to shut down. “The current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Community Hospital said in a press release.
A presentation by a community organizing group called United Today Stronger Tomorrow predicted the closures of six hospitals “in a critical financial state” in Nebraska as a direct result of OBBBA’s passage. The legislation cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, through enrollment hurdles that will kick an estimated 11.8 million off the rolls and cuts to various schemes states use to get more money for their Medicaid systems. Rural hospitals are generally more dependent on Medicaid than their counterparts and will suffer disproportionately as a result of the law.
Though some media narratives presume that, because of the delays of some of the changes to Medicaid, the real pain will only come after the midterm elections, this neglects the fact that hospitals budget several years in advance to plan for maintenance, staffing, equipment needs, and so on. If one will certainly collapse after 2026, it may just close up now. That was clearly the case for the Curtis Medical Center, and already there are rumblings about other imminent closures.
This will further strain a creaky health care system in Nebraska. Of the 93 counties in the state, 66 are experiencing a “severe” shortage of primary care physicians, and 88 have a shortage of mental health providers, according to the Rural Health Information Hub. The Nebraska Hospital Association announced last week that 44 percent of the rural hospitals in the state are losing money. The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform calculates that nearly half of all rural hospitals in Nebraska have lost services in the past decade, and that 18 percent are at risk of closure.
A provider tax increase recently passed by the Nebraska legislature would boost funding for hospitals, but thanks to OBBBA, those federal matching dollars are now scheduled to be cut nearly in half between 2028 and 2032.
The stress on the health care system will impact the working people Osborn is creating his campaign around; not only those in communities that lose a hospital, but those in neighboring communities facing an influx of new, often uninsured patients from newly created medical deserts, causing increased wait times and overcrowding. Given that OBBBA passed the Senate 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie, it’s fair to say that Ricketts delivered the deciding vote putting this into motion.
It doesn’t hurt that, as Osborn noted in his launch video, his opponent Pete Ricketts is a literal billionaire, the son of the founder of brokerage firm TD Ameritrade and a part owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts is a former governor of Nebraska who was appointed to the Senate when Ben Sasse left; he won a special election to fill out Sasse’s term rather easily last year.
But Osborn may not be so easy to defeat. He lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) last year by 6.7 points, when in the same election Donald Trump destroyed Kamala Harris in the presidential race in Nebraska by 20.5 points. If the electorate swings six or seven points in the 2026 midterms, in other words, Osborn would be in position to notch the upset.
And he’s using Ricketts’s comfortable lifestyle against him. Ricketts “got his money the fast way, from his billionaire family,” Osborn narrates in the launch video. “Wall Street Pete bought his Senate seat. And what’s he done? Whatever is best for Pete. He made $10 million off the stock market in one month this year.”
Osborn is a steamfitter and union leader who had never been to Washington until deciding to run for Senate last year, after leading a successful strike at a Kellogg plant in Omaha.
One of the primary issues animating Osborn’s campaign will be the cost of living. A new law that will likely increase the costs of electricity and higher education, while causing not just higher costs but lower quality in health care, presents a good foil for Osborn’s message.
Osborn is planning a late-July kickoff at the Steamfitters Union Hall in Omaha with musician Conor Oberst, better known as Bright Eyes.
David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’
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