Independent Dan Osborn launches another Nebraska Senate run

Independent Dan Osborn launched another run for the Senate in Nebraska on Tuesday after having waged a surprisingly competitive, though ultimately unsuccessful, campaign last year.

Independent Dan Osborn launched another run for the Senate in Nebraska on Tuesday after having waged a surprisingly competitive, though ultimately unsuccessful, campaign last year.

And Osborn said the biggest difference between last year and next year will be his Republican opponent.

“Everything that I talk about, I think Pete Ricketts embodies,” Osborn said in an interview, referring to the Republican senator and former governor who is running for his first full Senate term next year after he won a special election last year.

“Billionaires shouldn’t be able to buy their way into Senate seats, first of all,” Osborn said. “But it’s this race to the bottom that people like me are experiencing, because it’s — everything is so expensive, and it’s just extremely difficult to get ahead in life.”

Republicans have already signaled that they plan to deploy the same playbook they used against Osborn last year, casting him as a Democrat masquerading as an independent. Osborn went on to lose to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer by 7 percentage points.