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

Democrats Step Aside in Deep-Red States, Betting Senate Control on Independent Challengers

Earthguardiansonline.com – In Seward County, Nebraska, a retired teacher pulled on a light blue shirt reading “Seward County Democrats” and walked into a town hall to meet her preferred candidate for the U.S. Senate. The candidate was not a Democrat. In fact, no Democratic nominee appears anywhere on the fall ballot for that seat. Party leaders in the state made a deliberate choice to withdraw their own candidate and throw their weight behind Dan Osborn, an independent mechanic and former union leader, in a bid to unseat Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts.

The decision marks a stark departure from how the party has operated in these states for decades. Two decades ago, Nebraska returned one Democratic senator to Washington, while both North and South Dakota each sent two. Former Montana senator Jon Tester carried his reelection into Trump’s first term before falling seven points short in 2024, the same year Trump swept the state by twenty points. The erosion of Democratic presence across the Great Plains has been so complete that party officials now concede the brand itself is damaged in these communities.

A Voter’s Candid Assessment

Stephanie Nantkes, who wore the county Democratic shirt to the Osborn event, offered no diplomatic gloss on how her party is viewed locally.

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

Nantkes pointed to Osborn’s near-miss in 2024, when he lost the Senate contest by fewer than seven percentage points, and asked a pointed question of her own: if the margin was that thin two years ago, what might happen now, with Washington’s reputation even more battered?

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

The Strategic Logic

Jane Kleeb, chairwoman of the Nebraska Democratic Party and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, framed the move as pragmatism rather than surrender. She acknowledged that national media coverage paints the party as a coastal operation, alienating heartland voters who feel unrepresented.

“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 backing Osborn as a willingness to cross party lines and set aside partisan ego in favor of what she called the best interest of Nebraska voters.

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

Osborn, who served in the Navy and later led the union at the Kellogg’s cereal plant in Omaha — a facility that closed last month — positions himself squarely outside the two-party framework. In interview, he rejected the premise that voters must choose between left and right.

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

He sees the current moment as distinct from his 2024 campaign against then-Sen. Deb Fischer. The war in Iran, he argued, has shifted the political temperature, and household costs are climbing at a pace that strains families regardless of party affiliation.

“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.”

As he works toward holding town meetings in all 93 Nebraska counties, Osborn reports sensing a restive electorate even among conservative voters, and he frames that restlessness as a potential opening.

The Broader Pattern

Nebraska is not an isolated experiment. Democratic leaders are also endorsing independent candidates in South Dakota and Idaho. In Montana, after a long-shot Democratic nominee declined to withdraw, some party officials are backing Seth Bodnar, an independent former university president. Osborn himself casts his candidacy as a template for future cycles.

“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.”

All four independent candidates in these races are military veterans, a detail that resonates in communities where service is a common thread across party lines.

The Odds and the Opening

The arithmetic is unforgiving. President Trump posted double-digit victories in each of these states in the most recent cycle, and any independent path to victory requires a substantial bloc of independent voters plus a meaningful share of disillusioned Republicans to defect alongside Democrats. The agricultural economy in these regions remains under pressure, and recent administration moves — including a decision to permit greater foreign beef imports — have tested Republican loyalty and fed frustration over tariffs and trade policy.

Mike Mulholland, a retired Omaha fire captain who attended an Osborn town hall, offered a metaphor for the slow erosion of MAGA enthusiasm he perceives around him.

“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.”

Whether that change materializes in November or merely reshapes the landscape for 2028, the decision to step aside represents the most explicit acknowledgment yet that the Democratic Party’s traditional playbook no longer functions in a stretch of the country that once elected its candidates to statehouses and Capitol Hill with regularity. The independents running where Democrats are absent are, in effect, a referendum on whether voters will accept a third lane out of a two-lane impasse — or whether the old alignments hold despite the growing wear.