by Allison A
Boston MA
Independent challenger Dan Osborn leads by 2 points in the 2024 US Senate election in Nebraska against two-term Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. Osborn has been working in a Kellogg’s factory in Omaha for 20 years. He is currently the president of Local 50G of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union.
Osborn’s campaign and platform reflect his working-class background and perspective. Osborn proudly highlights the role that he played when his local union took part in the 11-week-long Kellogg workers’ strike in December 2021. In the midst of high public support for the labor movement, Osborn’s record as a union and strike leader is key to his current success in the polls. ISG has always argued that working-class politics, clearly independent of the Democrats and Republicans, can win even in states thought of as traditionally conservative, like Nebraska.
His platform includes pro-working-class stances such as an increased federal minimum wage and mandatory bereavement leave. Osborn talks about the need to make it easier for workers to join unions, including supporting the passage of the Protect the Right to Organize Act, a reform the Biden campaign promised but dropped shortly after his election.
Osborn’s campaign decries the large subsidies given to the pharmaceutical industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. It notes that a significant portion of the taxpayer money handed to Moderna and other Big Pharma companies translated into increased CEO pay rather than its intended purpose of funding COVID vaccine research.
While these pro-labor policies are proving popular among Nebraskans, Osborn and other independent candidates will have to contend with a false narrative, supported by the mainstream media, that candidates must belong to either the Democrats or Republicans to win.
Unions have fallen for this narrative for decades, with even the new reform leadership of the powerful United Auto Workers recently putting their weight behind Biden for this year’s elections. These corporate parties have not and will not act in the best interest of the everyday worker, making independent candidates like Osborn essential in the fight for working-class representation at all levels of government.
The best way to challenge corporate politics is to get organized. The key to achieving the gains for workers that Osborn promotes lies with workers themselves and their ability to make demands as a unified class. Whether the independent Nebraskan candidate finds victory in his quest for the Senate seat or not, workers across the state and the country must build on this current opening for independent, working-class politics. His campaign could help organize workers beyond the scope of the current election and the demands of his platform.
We call for more unions and labor activists to follow Osborn’s example and run clearly independent working-class candidates. Osborn’s campaign should raise the call for the labor movement to organize a broad workers’ party. Such a party could unite millions of members with the common cause of fighting in the interests of the working class and holding its candidates accountable to its platform. Only then will candidates such as Osborn have the best chance of implementing policies with positive, tangible outcomes for millions of workers.
Independent Socialist Group 