Are any of the candidates in Nebraska’s Senate race whom they claim to be?
In one of the most unusual contests in the country, that has become a central question ahead of Tuesday’s primary election. Republicans and Democrats are accusing each other of subterfuge in a race that includes a high-profile independent.
At least one of the two candidates in the Democratic primary has no plans to become a senator. Cindy Burbank, a 62-year-old retired pharmacy technician, says she intends to drop out of the general election if she wins the nomination, to clear a path for Dan Osborn, the independent candidate backed by the state Democratic Party.
The other, William Forbes, a 79-year-old pastor who says he has voted for President Trump, stands accused by Democratic leaders of being a G.O.P. “plant,” running to siphon Democratic votes away from Mr. Osborn in November to help Senator Pete Ricketts, a Republican, win re-election.
Republicans, meanwhile, argue that Mr. Osborn, who has received campaign contributions from national Democrats, is a Democrat in all but party affiliation. And they have suggested that a niche third-party candidate running under a marijuana legalization party banner is secretly a Democratic plant designed to eventually consolidate support behind Mr. Osborn. (Both the third-party hopeful and Mr. Forbes have denied being “plants.”)
Confused yet?
The complicated dynamics underscore a stark reality of politics in much of the Great Plains: The Democratic brand has become so toxic that independent candidates are often more viable rivals to Republicans.
In Nebraska, which Mr. Trump won by about 20 percentage points in 2024, Democratic leaders saw little chance of winning statewide on their own in the midterms. So they decided to support Mr. Osborn, a former union leader who significantly outran the Democratic presidential ticket as a Senate candidate last cycle.
Democrats “have gotten out of touch with some of the issues that voters in the Midwest care about, because our leaders are more reflective of coastal states,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. An alliance with independent voters was “the only viable path for us right now for a federal race,” she added.
A Decline in ‘Prairie Populism’
Mr. Osborn, who lost the Senate race two years ago by about seven percentage points to Nebraska’s other Republican senator, Deb Fischer, has repeatedly pledged not to caucus with either party if elected. (Republicans, though, point to a February town hall where he indicated he might caucus with Democrats if his independent approach fails.)
In an interview, Mr. Osborn criticized both parties, and said his campaign appealed to those who were “fed up with the two-party doom loop.”
Other left-leaning independent candidates are running for the Senate in Montana, South Dakota and Idaho. But unlike in Nebraska, the Democrats in those states have not stood aside for them.
Former Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a Democrat who served from 1992 to 2011, said the rise of independents was evidence of how Republicans were successfully “demonizing” Democrats as out-of-touch radicals, and of how Democrats were hurting their own brand.
“We’ve got some folks on the far left side that gave the Republicans the opportunity to say, ‘Well, Democrats want to defund the police,’” he said. “You’ve got to be a party that cares about working folks and family farmers.”
A progressive “prairie populism” once proliferated in the Midwest and the Great Plains. Two decades ago, Democrats had a slight edge over Republicans — 19 to 17 — among senators representing the 18 states commonly considered to comprise the region. Today, Democrats are outnumbered 25 to 11.
“It’s what the Democrats have learned in the Midwest and very safe red states: If you run as an independent, the odds get better,” said Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican who is retiring. He worried that Mr. Trump’s unpopular tariffs could give such candidates a chance.
“I do think this is a potential opening,” he said, “and I don’t like it.”
‘Puppet’ Accusations
The Nebraska Democratic Party endorsed Mr. Osborn soon after he launched his campaign last summer. Then, the party needed to ensure that no Democrat appeared on the November ballot — which would risk dividing the cohort of left-leaning voters that Mr. Osborn would need to defeat Mr. Ricketts.
But that hope was dashed in March, when Mr. Forbes entered the Democratic primary contest at the last minute.
State Democrats were alarmed and suspicious that he was running to hinder Mr. Osborn, because they had heard that Mr. Forbes was an anti-abortion conservative, Ms. Kleeb said. They prepared to run a hand-picked candidate in the primary to defeat him and then exit the race before November.
But before they could, Ms. Burbank, an unknown candidate, took matters into her own hands, entering the Democratic primary just before the deadline.
Ms. Burbank and Ms. Kleeb soon learned they shared the goal of clearing the November ballot of any Democrats and of boosting Mr. Osborn. The state party has since spent $136,000 backing Ms. Burbank.
Their partnership has had growing pains. State Republicans used a fund-raising email sent by Ms. Kleeb — saying that Ms. Burbank would “drop out after the primary and support Osborn alongside all of us” — to argue that Ms. Burbank was an illegitimate candidate who should be struck from the ballot. (She was briefly booted by the secretary of state, then won a lawsuit to be reinstated.)
In an interview, Ms. Burbank decried Mr. Forbes as a “Ricketts puppet.” She also criticized Ms. Kleeb, suggesting she micromanaged her strategy.
“She’s not playing nice — she’s being a dirty dog,” Ms. Burbank said. “She literally told me to sit down and shut up and not talk to anybody.” (Ms. Kleeb said she had simply been trying to help guide Ms. Burbank.)
Ms. Burbank confirmed that she planned to exit the race after the primary, assuming that Mr. Osborn submits enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
“I will stay in until it is obvious that I cannot win in November, and I will drop out,” she said.
The only other candidate in the Democratic primary is Mr. Forbes. In March, he told CNN that he had voted for Mr. Trump multiple times and attended a Republican leadership training session in January. But he denied being a Republican plant and is currently a registered Democrat, according to state records.
Photos and video clips of Mr. Forbes’s sermons from his now-deleted Facebook page, reported on by local news outlets, show that the candidate has espoused right-wing beliefs and supported an abortion ban.
“I’m a Democrat because the big-tent party of J.F.K. and Ben Nelson is still the best vehicle to deliver results for Nebraska — not the billionaire-funded machine Ricketts runs or the phony independent games Dan Osborn plays,” Mr. Forbes said in an email. (Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, served as both U.S. senator and governor of Nebraska.)
Mr. Forbes, who declined to be interviewed via phone, said the primary was “about who will actually take the fight to Ricketts and the Trump machine destroying rural communities.”
A $1,740 Check Draws Scrutiny
For all the accusations Republicans are facing, Mr. Ricketts’s allies contend that Democrats and Mr. Osborn are the ones using sleight-of-hand tactics.
Many of their claims center on the primary race for the little-known Legal Marijuana NOW Party: Ms. Burbank paid the $1,740 filing fee for Mike Marvin, a candidate who G.O.P. critics have predicted will drop out and back Mr. Osborn, if he wins the marijuana nomination. (The Legal Marijuana NOW Party’s nominee for Senate in 2024 pulled that exact move.) Mr. Marvin has denied the allegations.
“They’re really just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of voters,” said Jessica Flanagain, a consultant for Mr. Ricketts’s campaign.
Ms. Burbank said there was no collusion, and that she encountered Mr. Marvin at the secretary of state’s office when both were submitting candidate applications. There was an issue with Mr. Marvin’s filing check, Ms. Burbank said, so she paid for him.
Other candidates have professed similar ignorance of shenanigans.
The campaign of Mr. Ricketts, a first-term senator who also served as Nebraska’s governor and is the son of the billionaire Joe Ricketts, denies any ties to Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Osborn likewise denied interfering in any primaries.
“Who’d have thought playing politics could be so interesting?” he said.
Georgia Gee contributed research.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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