This is not an endorsement based on agreement with everything Osborn proposes. His economic program is more populist and interventionist than ours in several respects. He supports raising or eliminating the cap on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax while ruling out benefit reductions or an increase in the retirement age. He also favors several regulatory approaches to healthcare and consumer markets that go farther than we would.
But elections are choices among the candidates actually running, and Osborn offers Nebraska something increasingly scarce in Washington: a senator who would not be beholden to either major political party.
His opponent, Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, deserves particular credit for his position on Ukraine. Ricketts has been one of the clearer Republican voices recognizing that Vladimir Putin’s invasion is not merely a dispute in a distant country. He has argued that America is safer when Putin loses, supported continued pressure on Russia and warned that a Russian victory in Ukraine could ultimately threaten NATO members and draw the United States into a larger conflict. On this issue, Centrist Independent Voter agrees with him. Osborn also supports Ukraine, although Ricketts has a longer and more extensive record on the issue.
Ricketts also frequently speaks about fiscal discipline. His voting record makes that claim harder to credit. He voted for the 2025 reconciliation legislation commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and celebrated its passage. The Congressional Budget Office subsequently estimated that the enacted law would increase federal deficits by about $3.4 trillion over ten years. Fiscal responsibility requires more than criticizing spending when the other party is responsible for it.
More important to this endorsement, however, is Ricketts’s record on the constitutional responsibilities of Congress.
After the 2020 election, Ricketts supported Nebraska’s participation in the Texas lawsuit challenging election results in states won by Joe Biden, although he ultimately supported congressional certification of the Electoral College result. As a senator, he has repeatedly supported President Trump’s most controversial appointments, including Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel, even when other Republican senators were willing to oppose them.
Ricketts also supports the SAVE Act’s documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. He has backed President Trump’s broad tariff strategy and declined to support bipartisan legislation that would restore a meaningful congressional role over tariffs, despite the Constitution assigning Congress authority over trade and taxation.
The same pattern appears on war powers. Ricketts has repeatedly voted against efforts to require congressional authorization for military hostilities undertaken by the president. Whatever one’s view of a particular military action, Congress should not casually surrender its constitutional responsibility to decide when the United States goes to war.
These are not simply a collection of conservative policy positions with which Centrist Independent Voter happens to disagree. They reveal a broader problem: when important congressional powers or institutional safeguards have come into conflict with the wishes of a Republican president, Ricketts has too often sided with the president.
There are also important differences between the candidates on abortion. Ricketts is an active opponent of abortion rights. As governor he sought a near-total abortion ban, including pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, and as a senator he has sponsored and supported federal measures restricting abortion, including legislation involving parental notification, abortion pills and fetal remains.
Osborn takes a substantially different position. Although personally opposed to abortion, he supports a woman’s legal right to choose.
Osborn also opposes blanket tariffs while leaving room for targeted tariffs where they serve a legitimate strategic purpose. He combines tougher border enforcement with legal status for long-term undocumented immigrants who have worked here and committed no violent crimes.
Most important, Osborn says that if elected he will not caucus with either Democrats or Republicans.
That commitment is more consequential than the usual claim of political independence. Osborn is one of several independent Senate candidates considering a new bloc outside the two major caucuses. Even a small group of genuinely independent senators could force changes in Senate rules and organization, reduce the power of party leadership and make bipartisan governing coalitions easier to build.
But that potential power comes with an obligation. If several independent candidates are elected and find themselves holding the balance of power in the Senate, they should regard that result as a mandate for responsible, pragmatic government, not as a license to use their outsized leverage to pursue pet populist crusades. Their purpose should be to make the Senate work better: strengthening congressional institutions, encouraging bipartisan compromise and forcing both parties to govern more responsibly. Independence is valuable precisely because it can loosen the grip of the two parties. It should not become merely another vehicle for ideological demands.
Centrist Independent Voter will not agree with Dan Osborn on every economic policy. We do agree that Congress should reclaim powers it has too readily surrendered, that senators should exercise independent judgment rather than simply follow their party’s president, and that the two-party structure is contributing to dysfunction in Washington.
Nebraska voters have an opportunity to send the Senate something it badly needs: a genuinely independent vote.
Centrist Independent Voter endorses Dan Osborn for the United States Senate.