A top Republican super PAC is jumping into the Nebraska Senate race as incumbent Sen. Deb Fischer (R) struggles to put away her race against Independent Dan Osborn.
The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a group run by allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it is spending $3 million in the red state to back up Fischer, whose fight for a third term has suddenly tightened.
Independent polling has been sparse, but internal surveys from both camps have shown that their respective candidate is leading the race.
”California and New York Democrats are putting crazy money into Dan Osborn’s campaign. They’re not going to succeed, especially as Nebraska voters learn about Osborn’s Democrat ties and Bernie Sanders ideology,” Steven Law, the SLF’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We’re just closing the gap a bit.”
Republicans are still heavily favored to hold on to the seat. Former President Trump carried the state by 19 percentage points in 2020, although he is expected to once again lose the single electoral vote awarded to the winner of the Omaha-based congressional district.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), the popular former governor, is also on the ballot to fill the remainder of former Sen. Ben Sasse’s (R-Neb.) term, giving Fischer a boost in the process.
The Cook Political Report rates the race “likely Republican.” Decision Desk HQ’s latest forecast gives Fischer an 87 percent chance of securing six more years in the upper chamber.
But Osborn, a union leader, making the race close enough to prompt a leading Republican outside group to spend on it is a minivictory for Democrats, who have been forced to spend tens of millions in reliably blue Maryland to help Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks’s (D) Senate campaign against former Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
According to a Fischer internal poll released last week, she leads by 6 percentage points over Osborn.
“With proper funding Senator Fischer will continue to tell her story, making it from a cattle ranch to the US Senate and fighting for Nebraska’s conservative values,” John Rogers, Fischer’s pollster, wrote in a memo. “That, coupled with educating voters about Dan Osborn’s radical leftist ideology, will continue to put this race to bed.”
