Dan Osborn wants Nebraska voters to believe he answers to no party. His campaign finance records tell a different story. A Fox News Digital review of Osborn's 2026 first-quarter filings found the self-styled independent Senate candidate continuing to rake in donations from Democratic donors, left-wing activists, and progressive political action committees, with no prominent Republican donors in sight.
The pattern is not new. Osborn ran for the same Nebraska Senate seat in 2024 and lost. He is back for a second try, still branding himself as a man without a party. But the money flowing into his campaign tells a consistent story: the checks come from the left, the infrastructure comes from the left, and the endorsements come from the left.
If Osborn survives the May 12 primary, he will face Republican incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts in November. The question hanging over the race is whether Nebraska voters will look past the "independent" label and follow the money.
Osborn's Q1 filings show $7,000 from Rory Gates, the son of Bill and Melinda Gates. Another $7,000 came from Sean Eldridge, founder and president of Stand Up America, an organization established in 2016 to oppose President Donald Trump. Stand Up America's own materials claim "American democracy is rooted in a history of systemic racism, classism, and sexism, which continues to this day."
Democratic megadonor Wendy Schmidt also contributed. Campaign finance tracking site OpenSecrets shows Schmidt has given nearly $10 million in support of Democrats and nothing to Republicans.
Osborn received thousands more from PACs affiliated with Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., former Democratic congressman Ron Kind, and the defunct 2024 Senate campaign of Missouri Democrat Lucas Kunce. He also took money through ActBlue, the Democratic Party's primary online fundraising platform. The Washington Examiner reported that Osborn raised more than $350,000 through ActBlue and that Nebraska Democrats declined to run their own candidate, opting instead to support Osborn again in the 2026 cycle.
Meanwhile, a PAC called "Conservatives for Osborn" received zero donations in the first quarter of 2026. It had $68 in cash on hand. Sixty-eight dollars. That is the sum total of conservative enthusiasm for Osborn's campaign, at least as measured by the one entity that carries the word "conservative" in its name.
The donor list is only part of the picture. Osborn's campaign apparatus is wired into the Democratic political machine at the operational level. His digital effort is handled by Fight Agency, a firm founded by Democratic Party strategists, including consultants who worked on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and the winning Senate bids of Pennsylvania's John Fetterman and Arizona's Ruben Gallego.
Fight Agency's client roster reads like a progressive wish list. It touts New York City socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sanders, and progressive Democratic Rep. Greg Casar among its clients. This is not a bipartisan outfit moonlighting for an independent. It is a firm built by and for the progressive left.
The ad-buying firm working for Osborn's hybrid PAC, the Working Class Heroes Fund, also services prominent Democrats, including Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee itself. The pattern of Democratic donors and left-wing operatives bankrolling Osborn's operation has only deepened since his first Senate run.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that a PAC backing Osborn, Retire Career Politicians, raised nearly $2 million in a single month during his 2024 run from liberal donors and dark-money groups. Those donors included Donald Sussman at $100,000, Phoebe Gates at $15,000, the Sixteen Thirty Fund at $300,000, and the Organizing Empowerment Project at $500,000. The Free Beacon also noted that Osborn began his campaign with consultants and firms openly associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, despite presenting himself as a centrist independent.
Osborn has built his brand on the promise that he will not caucus with either party if elected. His campaign website strikes a familiar tone. He has said he believes "we all have more in common with each other than we do with the partisans who run Washington" and that as an independent, he would be "uniquely positioned to bring together a majority to get it done."
But unearthed audio reported by The Plains-Sentinel, a local Nebraska digital news outlet, captured Osborn telling voters at a town hall something quite different. If his independent approach didn't work, Osborn said, "there's only one party I would caucus with." He then added: "Not Pete Ricketts's party."
That admission is worth reading twice. The man who tells Nebraska he belongs to no party already has a fallback plan, and it leads straight to the Democratic caucus. Top Democrats have openly suggested they will pick up a Senate seat if Osborn wins. The Nebraska Democratic Party endorsed him. Its leaders have cleared the field for him.
This kind of maneuvering, where outside money and party machinery quietly prop up a candidate who publicly disavows both sides, is a tactic voters across the country are learning to recognize. It echoes the dark-money operations that have poured millions into state-level races designed to tilt the playing field without voters fully understanding who is paying for it.
The Nebraska Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have made Osborn's funding a central line of attack. Mary Jane Truemper, chairwoman of the Nebraska Republican Party, told Fox News Digital:
"So far, we have seen Dan Osborn cozy up to elite Washington Democrats, including those affiliated with Jeffrey Epstein, such as Bob Kerrey, while preaching an 'anti-billionaire' message. If those contradictory actions tell us anything, it's that he will not keep his promise of not caucusing with either party. Nebraskans value transparency and reliability in our representatives. We have yet to see either from Dan Osborn."
NRSC spokesperson Nick Puglia was more blunt. He told Fox News Digital that Osborn is "a Fake Independent backed by radical leftists like Elizabeth Warren and Zohran Mamdani's advisors." Puglia added: "It's no surprise Osborn's campaign is being bankrolled by even more Democrats and ActBlue donors."
Ricketts himself has weighed in publicly. He told the Washington Examiner that "Dan Osborn is endorsed by the Nebraska Democratic Party and funded by Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer," calling Osborn "a fake independent" and saying "Nebraskans won't be fooled by this charade." The broader Senate landscape remains competitive, with recent shifts in several races keeping both parties focused on every available seat.
Osborn's campaign wants voters to see a labor union leader who stands apart from Washington. But the filings paint a portrait of a candidate embedded in the Democratic fundraising ecosystem. ActBlue money. Progressive megadonors. PACs tied to sitting Democratic senators. A digital operation run by the same firm that elects Democratic Socialists. An ad-buying firm that works for the DCCC.
And then there is the matter of Osborn spreading his own money around. Fox News Digital reported that Osborn spreads his money out in support of other Democrats running for Congress. That is not the behavior of a man with no partisan loyalty. That is the behavior of a team player working within a party structure, just one who refuses to wear the jersey in public.
The question of outside money shaping elections is not unique to Nebraska. But Osborn's case is a particularly clean example of the gap between branding and reality. He calls himself independent. His donors, his operatives, his endorsers, and his own recorded words all point in one direction.
Nebraska voters deserve to know who is really behind a candidate before they hand him a seat in the United States Senate. In Osborn's case, the answer is written in black and white on every filing, if anyone bothers to read it.
An independent candidate funded entirely by one side isn't independent. He's just a Democrat who won't say so.
