Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer is battling independent candidate Dan Osborn in her bid for a third term, and the polls are showing a race that’s too close for comfort in the normally reliably red state.
Fischer has a message for Nebraska voters: Don’t buy it.
“I think it’s a close race because Nebraskans are confused by this race,” she told The Post in an interview.
“My opponent’s not being honest about who he is. He’s running as an independent. There was no Democrat that filed against me because the deal was that the Democrats would throw their support to this independent,” she added.
Cook Political Report shifted Fischer’s race slightly leftward, from likely Republican to lean Republican. And a spate of late polling shows Osborn either leading or within striking distance of the incumbent Republican.
Internal polling from both camps indicates a close race, with a recent Fischer poll showing her up by 7 points and a recent Osborn poll showing him up by 6 points.
Regardless, former President Donald Trump is easily expected to win four of the five electoral votes as part of its split system — it’s the only state besides Maine without a winner-take-all system.
There’s no Democrat in the Senate race, but Osborn has gained the support of many Democratic voters, using his background as a former union leader for food-processing workers and his service in the US Navy.
He’s not the only independent candidate bleeding Republican votes this cycle. The Associated Press revealed, for example, the “independent” candidate a Virginia House race, Robert Reid, got ballot access with the help of a Democrat-aligned group.
Osborn went viral with his campaign’s “What’s on my jacket?” ad, which depicted a woman wearing a NASCAR-style coat emblazoned with the names and logos of corporations that have “sponsored” Fischer’s campaign, like Google, Northrop Grumman, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft.
“The US Senate is a bunch of millionaires controlled by billionaires,” Osborn said in the ad. “My opponent is part of the problem.”
The ad hit Fischer for getting “10 times richer” since serving in the Senate, plus the fact that she hasn’t held a public town hall since 2017.
Osborn also got national attention for a virtual fundraiser he held with actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Fischer told The Post she’s not fretting, citing data from her two 2012 and 2018 elections.
“I feel good about our race. You know, I don’t take any race for granted. When I ran the first time, my opponent was Bob Kerrey, former governor and former senator,” she continued. “And a poll came out two or three weeks ahead of the election. And they had a 3-point race, and I won by 16%.”
“My second opponent, it was supposed to be a close race, not that close, but a close race. I won by 20%. And I’m not discounting some of the polls that have come out. I think my opponent’s polling is unreliable, and he doesn’t put out all the information.”
On policy, Fischer says she’s been especially focused on defense and rural issues.
“We have to keep up with our two peer adversaries with Russia and China. We have to make sure that we can continue to have a strong voluntary force that will have the resources that they need to keep the country safe,” said the senator, who sits on the Armed Services Committee.
“We’re still working on the farm bill in the Senate. We haven’t come to agreement yet in committee,” Fischer said, as she’s also on the Agriculture Committee.
“We have to make sure that we have strong crop insurance,” she continued. “That’s the number-one issue I hear from ag producers in Nebraska. Gotta have strong crop insurance. We have to make sure that we strengthen the safety nets that are out there. We have to make sure that the conservation programs remain voluntary.”
The Post reached out to Osborn’s campaign twice for an interview and never got a response.
