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All Things N ebraska
Spring is planting time in Nebraska. But the looming primary election on May 12 for U. S. Senate is also, allegedly, quite a planting session, generating competing claims that candidates are “plants” to help or hurt the two leading candidates.
We’re referring to the race between U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts and Dan Osborn.
Osborn, an independent, is a labor leader and mechanic who ran a surprisingly close race with U.S. Sen.
Deb Fischer in 2024.
Ricketts, a Republican, served two terms as governor before being appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Jim Pillen shortly after Ricketts left the governor’s residence. Several people have asked if Osborn has a chance of unseating Ricketts, a wealthy businessman who has a well-financed political machine. His family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, is among the top contributors nationally to Republican political campaigns.
In today’s topsy-turvy political world, I’d say that any incumbent is vulnerable. Voters seem to dislike those in office. And Ricketts hasn’t stood for election for eight years, which seems like a long time since he’s asked Nebraskans for their votes.
Then, as now, Osborn is facing accusations of being a closet Democrat, who, if elected, would caucus with the Democrats.
Osborn rejects that, saying he’s a regular guy and registered nonpartisan who will fight for regular folks, claiming that Ricketts hasn’t done that.
Ricketts, meanwhile, is running as a tax cutter and one who has supported President Trump’s immigration policies. The senator also says he’s defended “Nebraska values,” a phrase that’s sometimes hard to define (Is it that we want the football team to win again, or that we like brown gravy with our roast beef sandwiches?).
What about those “plants”? There’s two Democrats, William Forbes, a preacher from Paxton, and Cindy Burbank, as well as a candidate for the Legal Marijuana NOW Party, Mike Marvin.
All three of those candidates have been accused of being unserious, illegitimate and/or “plants.”
Follow closely because this gets complicated. Democrats say that Forbes is a “plant” to help Ricketts (by pulling votes away from Osborn) because it appears that he likes Ricketts, is opposed to abortion rights and has voted for President Trump. And CNN reported that Forbes, despite being a registered Democrat, attended a campaign training camp for conservatives, a camp recommended by the GOP.
Republicans, meanwhile, accused Burbank of not being a “good faith” candidate. Her main goal, they say, is to eventually drop out and throw her support for the third-party candidate, Osborn. Burbank’s website touts that she’s “not a plant” and that her main goal is to defeat Ricketts.
For a time, she was tossed off the primary ballot by Secretary of State Bob Evnen, but that decision was reversed by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Then we get to Marvin, a union leader (like Osborn) who once headed the state employees union. Suspiciously, Burbank, a Democrat, paid the $1,740 filing fee for Marvin to run. It happened just minutes before the filing deadline.
Burbank told the Nebraska Examiner she paid the fee because a filing fee check sent by Marvin had been rejected and it ticked her off. Republicans, meanwhile, accused Marvin of being a “plant” to help Osborn.
To be sure, if there’s a strong Democrat in the Senate race it would pull votes away from Osborn in the general election.
And, if the Democrats don’t have a candidate in November - for instance if Burbank won the primary and dropped out - that would create a two-way race with Ricketts. That’s a lot of craziness to digest but that seems par for the course in politics these days.
After all, who could have envisioned a pro rassler becoming governor in Minnesota, or a weightlifter/actor being elected in California or a reality TV star occupying the White House.
