Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and former labor leader from Nebraska who ran a surprisingly close campaign for a Senate seat as an independent last year, announced Tuesday that he would run for the Senate again in 2026.
Mr. Osborn said in an interview that he would aim to draw a sharp contrast between his working-class background and the profile of Senator Pete Ricketts, the Republican incumbent, who is an heir to billions his father made in the financial services industry.
“It’s the C.E.O. from Omaha versus the guy from the shop floor from Omaha, so that’s going be the fundamental difference,” Mr. Osborn said.
Mr. Osborn, 50, faces a steep climb against Mr. Ricketts. Republicans have won every House and Senate seat in Nebraska since 2014, when Brad Ashford, a Democrat who had previously been a Republican, won a single term in the House.
Mr. Ricketts, 60, who has spent tens of millions of dollars on Nebraska campaigns for himself and other Republicans, is not likely to be surprised by Mr. Osborn, as was Senator Deb Fischer last year, when Mr. Osborn, running a populist campaign, outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the state by 13 percentage points. Ms. Fisher defeated Mr. Osborn by 6.6 percentage points.
In a campaign announcement video, Mr. Osborn disparages Mr. Ricketts as someone who inherited billions from his father, calls him Wall Street Pete and accuses him of turning his back on Nebraska’s working people. “Bye, Pete,” Mr. Osborn says.
But Mr. Osborn’s veneer of independence may be harder to convey the second time around. His campaign website’s “Donate” button sends supporters to ActBlue, the fund-raising platform used by Democrats. And the Nebraska Democratic Party plans to support him and will once again not run a candidate of its own, said Jane Kleeb, the party’s chairwoman.
“Breaking up the one-party stranglehold on our state is going to take an unlikely alliance of Democrats, Republicans and independents coming together to fix a very broken Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Kleeb said.
In the interview, Mr. Osborn said that, should he be elected, he would not caucus with either party in the Senate. He criticized both major parties for catering to “the billionaire class,” saying it had led them to place the concerns of wealthy donors ahead of those of working-class people.
“We can talk about the Big Beautiful Bill and the fact that it is going to continue funneling money toward the top by taking from social services, and health care from hard-working people,” Mr. Osborn said, referring to the sprawling domestic-policy bill that President Trump signed into law last week. “I doubt there’s a bunch of billionaires that are in line for Medicaid.”
He also faulted Democratic recruiting efforts, which he said had focused on lawyers and white-collar professionals instead of on working-class candidates like him.
“If you’re truly a party for the working class, your candidates are going to be mostly working-class,” he said. “I like to call it paycheck populism, because I get a paycheck once a week. I know how much money comes in. I know much money goes out. And I know how much harder it is to live now versus eight years ago.”
Mr. Osborn rose to prominence in Nebraska when, as a mechanic and president of the bakery workers’ local union at a Kellogg’s plant in Omaha, he led a strike in 2021 that lasted 77 days. The company subsequently fired him, and he is employed now as a steamfitter’s apprentice.
His 2024 campaign raised $15 million, a surprise given his lack of political connections, personal wealth or affiliation with the Democratic Party. Ms. Fischer raised only about half as much, though by October, super PACs from both parties had invested in television advertising in the state.
Mr. Osborn said he would begin the race against Mr. Ricketts in a stronger position than he had against Ms. Fischer, because he is better known now throughout the state.
“I was able to get out and do 200 public events against Deb Fischer, publicly advertised events,” he said. “I think the least amount of people I had at one of those events was one person. It was at a lunch in Red Cloud, Neb. One lady showed up, but I never had a no-show, so that was good.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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