Control of the Senate could hinge on these independents running where Democrats aren’t

Democrats Step Aside as Independents Chase Senate Seats in Deep-Red States

Healfromzero.com – In Seward County, Nebraska, a retired teacher pulled on a light blue shirt reading “Seward County Democrats” before walking into a town hall to meet her preferred candidate for the U.S. Senate. The twist: that candidate is not a Democrat. In fact, no Democrat appears anywhere on the fall ballot for the state’s Senate seat. Party leaders made the deliberate choice to withhold their own nominee and instead throw their weight behind Dan Osborn, an independent who previously ran against the Republican incumbent. The decision underscores a quiet but consequential shift in how the party is approaching midterms across a swath of the Great Plains and Mountain West.

Osborn, a mechanic and former union president at the Kellogg’s cereal plant in Omaha — a facility that shut its doors last month — is once again taking on Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts. Two years ago, he fell short by fewer than seven percentage points in a race that many observers considered winnable. Now he returns with a coalition of Democratic voters behind him, a configuration strategists view as a template for future contests.

“We are going to start to see in 2028 and beyond people stepping up and using this model to win in their perspective states,” Osborn said. “So we can get a group of people that want to do the right thing.”

A Pattern Across Multiple States

Nebraska is not an isolated experiment. Democratic leaders in South Dakota and Idaho have likewise endorsed independent candidates rather than fielding their own nominees. In Montana, the calculus grew more complicated: after a long-shot Democratic nominee declined to withdraw, some party leaders pivoted to back Seth Bodnar, an independent former university president. The common thread is a recognition that the party label itself has become a liability in regions where voters associate Democrats with coastal elites and Washington gridlock.

The stakes are high. Two decades ago, Nebraska sat one Democratic senator in the chamber, while North Dakota and South Dakota each held two. Former Montana Sen. Jon Tester carried his reelection into Trump’s first term before losing by seven points in 2024, a year in which Trump carried the state by twenty points. The erosion of Democratic presence in these states has been steady and, by most measures, irreversible under conventional ticket-based campaigning.

Why the Party Is Betting on Independents

Jane Kleeb, chairwoman of the Nebraska Democratic Party and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, framed the endorsement of Osborn as a pragmatic response to voter fatigue with the party brand.

“You know, our brand still needs a lot of help,” Kleeb said. “I deeply understand why they’re frustrated with the Democratic Party nationally. All you see on TV is coastal Democrats, so we’re working hard to change that.”

She described the move as one that signals willingness to cross party lines rather than let partisan ego dictate strategy. For voters in states where the Democratic label carries little residual goodwill, the message is straightforward: the party will not stand in the way of a candidate who can actually compete.

Stephanie Nantkes, the retired teacher who wore the Seward County Democrats shirt to Osborn’s event, put the local sentiment bluntly when asked how her party is viewed in her community.

“I mean, not well,” she said. “Not well at all.”

She added that public anger toward Washington has intensified since the last cycle, pointing to Osborn’s near-victory two years ago as evidence that conditions could shift further.

“People are more outraged by Washington now than they were then,” Nantkes said. “Two years ago, he almost pulled it off. So what do you think might happen this time?”

Economic Pressure and Republican Vulnerability

The independent candidates face an uphill climb in states where President Donald Trump posted double-digit margins in the last presidential contest. Winning would require a substantial bloc of independent voters alongside a meaningful share of disillusioned Republicans defecting to the independent ticket. Yet several economic and policy headwinds are testing Republican dominance heading into November.

Agricultural economies across the Plains have been battered by tariff disruptions and shifting trade rules. A recent administration decision permitting greater volumes of foreign beef imports has drawn particular ire among ranchers and rural communities that form the backbone of Republican turnout. Frustration with these policies is eroding the loyalty that once made these states reliably red.

Mike Mulholland, a retired Omaha fire captain who attended one of Osborn’s town halls, offered a vivid analogy for the slow unraveling he perceives among MAGA-aligned voters.

“I compare it to pulling a drain plug in a full tub of bathwater,” Mulholland said. “It’s not going from one extreme to the other, but I see the support for MAGA slowly circling the drain, because I think people are waking up and they want change.”

Osborn’s Message: Look Up, Not Left or Right

Osborn, a Navy veteran like the three other independent candidates in these races, makes no pretense of partisan loyalty. In interviews he directs voters’ attention away from the left-right axis and toward what he calls the political-industrial complex.

“We have to stop looking left and right and pointing fingers and we have to start looking up,” Osborn said. “We have to start looking up at the puppet masters, the lobbyists, the money in politics that drives the political-industrial complex.”

As he works toward holding town meetings in all 93 counties across Nebraska, Osborn reports sensing a different political temperature than the one he encountered in 2024, when he ultimately lost to Sen. Deb Fischer. He points to the ongoing war in Iran and surging household costs as factors that have sharpened voter restlessness, even among conservatives he meets at rallies and kitchen-table conversations.

“The significant difference between when I was campaigning in 2024 is the war in Iran,” Osborn said. “And costs are skyrocketing that families are struggling with.”

Whether that restlessness translates into votes remains the central question of the fall. What is no longer in question is that the Democratic Party, at least in these states, has concluded its own ticket is the obstacle rather than the solution — and that an independent candidate, unburdened by the label, may be the only viable path to breaking a decades-long Republican lock on the Senate seats.