In upended Senate race, Nebraska independent Dan Osborn seeks to ‘challenge the system’
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(LINCOLN, N.E.) — Over the past few weeks, independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn has shaken up what many thought was a predictable race in Nebraska.
Partisan polls show that two-term Republican Sen. Deb Fischer is facing a tougher than expected road to reelection in a state where former President Donald Trump is ahead by more than 10 points over Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race. 538’s polling average shows Osborn and Fischer running neck-and-neck.
Osborn, a former union president and Navy veteran, is a first-time candidate running in a traditionally GOP stronghold. Nebraska’s two senators and three members of Congress are all Republicans.
In his first network television interview, Osborn decried the polarized state of politics and told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl he’s looking to “challenge the system” by running for office.
“I’m frustrated with the two parties,” Osborn said on “This Week.” “The fighting, the infighting, the outfighting, not getting anything done.”
Osborn’s momentum can be traced to a creative ad campaign, in which the candidate says his opponent “has taken so much corporate cash, she should wear patches, like NASCAR.”
The Nebraska race has attracted $21 million from outside groups while Osborn has raised $8 million and Fischer $6.5 million.
An onslaught of advertising by Republicans to boost Fischer seeks to depict Osborn as a liberal. The National Republican Senatorial Committee placed a $172,000 ad buy in September, according to AdImpact.
Ads run by Fischer’s campaign call Osborn a “dangerous Trojan Horse,” with Trump casting him as a “Bernie Sanders-type Democrat” in another.
In response to these claims, Osborn said he’s been “a registered independent from the time I could vote.”
A newcomer to politics, Osborn has often spoken out against what he calls a “two party doom loop,” and criticized Fischer for voting against the bipartisan border security bill last spring.
Osborn led a strike at Kellogg’s cereal plants in 2021, successfully winning higher wages for workers. He said that this experience with Kellogg “really opened my eyes to the fact, you know, the way our world is and the way our government’s run.”
Democrats are defending 23 seats in the Senate and Republicans 11 this cycle. With razor-thin margins, an Osborn victory could deny Republicans the opportunity to claim a firm majority — depending on which party he chooses to caucus with.
When pressed by Karl on his potentially tie-breaking role in the Senate, Osborn declined to align himself with either party. He also didn’t say who he is supporting for president.
“I need to navigate down the middle because that’s what, that’s what the two party doom loop means,” said Osborn. “It means we’re so far apart and politics is so polarized.”
Osborn has said he wouldn’t accept any party endorsements, yet many Democrats are rallying around his candidacy. The Nebraska Democratic Party is supporting Osborn through press releases and mail materials to voters.
Trump endorsed Fischer in September, posting on Truth Social that “Deb Fischer has my Complete and Total Endorsement — SHE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!” Fischer said she was “honored to have President Trump’s support.”
Osborn told Karl that he “votes on the person,” noting that he supports a veteran if there’s one on the ballot.
If he prevails and Nebraska sends an independent to the Senate, Osborn said his election could be a “national movement.”
“I think this is the start of something special,” he said. “People are ready for it. And I want to be a part of it.”
(WASHINGTON) — While the House Ethics Committee will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, it’s possible that Congress could go around the committee to release the panel’s findings.
According to House rules, any member of Congress can go to the floor and tee up a vote on a “privileged resolution” that would force the Ethics Committee to release its report on Gaetz within two legislative days.
The member would only have to argue that not releasing the report impacts the “dignity” or “integrity” of the House or “reputation” of its members.
The action would be unusual, but not unprecedented. In the 1990s, Democrats repeatedly tried to force the Ethics Committee to divulge information about investigations into then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Those efforts came up short because Republicans closed ranks around Gingrich and the majority. But Gaetz is incredibly unpopular on Capitol Hill, and it would only take a handful of Republicans — along with all Democrats — to pass the resolution.
“If you’re a member of Congress, do you really want to be in the business of defending Matt Gaetz?” former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania, who led the Ethics Committee, told ABC News Monday.
Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said there are “plenty” of precedents of the committee disclosing reports even after a member has resigned.
Wild said that all members of the committee have access to the report and hopes that “one or more” Republicans will vote with Democrats for its release.
Asked if that’s a possibility, Wild said, “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to all of them. I mean, everybody, everybody on the committee now has the report, so they’ve got the opportunity to be reviewing it.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has opposed releasing the report, saying he’s protecting an “important guardrail for out institution” that any ethics investigation ends once a member leaves the House.
On Tuesday, Johnson denied that Trump or Gaetz have pressured him to bury the report or that he had discussed it with them or Ethics Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.
“I wouldn’t have that conversation with [Gaetz]. Because that’s not appropriate for us to do that,” Johnson said. “President Trump respects the guardrails of our institution as well, and I’m very guarded about those things. So neither of those gentlemen would breach that.”
“I haven’t talked to Michael Guest about the report. I talk to all my colleagues, but I know where the lines are. I have no idea about the contents of the report,” Johnson told reporters as he walked back to his office from a news conference.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave a brief “Yes” when asked Tuesday if the Gaetz report should be released to the public.
If the Ethics Committee doesn’t vote to release its findings, Democrats could raise the possibility of forcing a floor vote – which would put Republicans on the record about Gaetz.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during an ABC News presidential debate with former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Philadelphia, on Sept. 10, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ post-debate campaign visits to North Carolina and Pennsylvania on Thursday and Friday, respectively, represents the start of a “more aggressive” campaigning stage, her campaign said.
Harris is set to hold two rallies in North Carolina and one in Pennsylvania as part of the kickoff for her “New Way Forward Tour,” which her campaign said is an effort to “capitalize on her decisive victory” against former President Donald Trump at the ABC News debate.
The campaign said that Harris had such a “commanding debate performance” that it spent Wednesday going through the footage to pinpoint moments they can use in upcoming ads in the coming days.
This phase will also see the vice president do more media engagements primarily targeting battleground states and other important constituencies, the campaign said, with local media interviews set for the coming days. She will also participate in a discussion with the National Association of Black Journalists next week.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Gov. Tim Walz and Gwen Walz will each hit the road as part of the tour as well.
Emhoff will be in Arizona and Nevada on Thursday; Gov. Walz will be in Michigan on Thursday and Wisconsin on Friday; and Mrs. Walz will be in New Hampshire on Thursday.
The campaign’s new tour will also feature surrogate events, including a Republicans for Harris function in Phoenix, Arizona, an HBCU student event in Savannah, Georgia, and a veterans and military families event in Columbus, Georgia.
(WASHINGTON) — From the June 28 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at least 134 people were killed in 148 mass shootings across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
But during those roughly three months and since, the issue of gun violence prevention, according to some advocates, has been overshadowed by a flurry of hot-button campaign topics: The state of the economy, abortion rights, wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, two assassination attempts on Trump and the shifting political landscape in which Vice President Kamala Harris succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee.
“Gun violence is still one of the most important issues facing our country. We still have an ongoing epidemic,” said Nicole Hockley, the CEO of Sandy Hook Promise — a gun violence prevention group she co-founded following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children, including her son, and six adult staff members dead.
In an interview this week with ABC News, Hockley cited a Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions report that said for three straight years gun violence has been the leading cause of death in the United States for adolescents under the age of 19.
In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released in August, gun violence was ranked eighth in importance among voters after the economy, inflation, health care, protecting democracy, crime and safety, immigration and the Supreme Court.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 61% of Americans say it’s too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country and 58% believe U.S. gun-control laws should be stricter.
“I do appreciate that there are many other large issues and hot topics like the economy, like abortion, like foreign wars that are of interest to voters as well,” said Hockley, whose nonpartisan group does not endorse candidates nor donate to campaigns.
She added, “Perhaps there is an assumption, rightly or wrongly, that everyone already knows what each candidate’s opinion is and what they are likely to do in terms of gun violence prevention, whereas they might not be as clear on things like policies around the economy.”
Debates over gun violence During the three national debates in the presidential campaign, the subject of gun violence prevention appears to have received less discussion compared to the other contentious topics, some advocates said.
In the Sept. 10 debate between Harris and Trump, hosted by ABC News, gun violence came up when Trump — who was shot in the ear during a July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one campaign rallygoer dead and two others wounded — alleged, “She wants to confiscate your guns.”
The accusation prompted Harris, who oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to respond, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
Harris, the former California Attorney General, also said, “I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs and human beings.”
Ten days after debating Trump, Harris reiterated that she is a gun owner during a televised sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, adding, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”
The most extensive conversation on guns during the debates came during the vice presidential debate when Walz touted his record in Minnesota on combating gun violence, saying his administration had passed an assault weapons ban and enhanced red-flag gun laws to keep weapons out of the hands of people poised to harm themselves or others.
“These are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference,” Walz said about gun violence prevention during the debate.
Vance and Trump oppose most gun-control laws, including an assault weapons ban and national red-flag laws proposed by Harris. The National Rifle Association has endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.
“Now, more than ever, freedom and liberty need courageous and virtuous defenders,” Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, said in a statement in July. “President Trump and Senator Vance have the guts and the grit to stand steadfast for the Second Amendment.”
During the debate, Vance said on gun violence prevention measures, “Governor Walz and I actually probably agree that we need to do better on this.”
Addressing school shootings, Vance said at the debate, “I, unfortunately, think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”
‘The lockdown generation’
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement of Americans fighting for public safety measures, said that despite the myriad issues in this campaign cycle, gun violence prevention still resonates with voters nationwide.
“First and foremost, I get to travel all across this country and meet with our volunteers and partners and candidates running up and down the ballot, and there are so many people that are not running away from this issue but running on it and actually winning,” Ferrell-Zabala told ABC News. “This is a priority for many folks.”
She said that from her experience, young people, who have grown up in the era of school lockdowns and active shooter drills, are particularly energized over the issue of gun violence prevention and plan to vote their conscience.
“This is a big issue. This is a top three for all voters and for young people, this is particularly hitting them because they are the lockdown generation. Many of them are survivors of gun violence themselves,” said Ferrell-Zabala, whose group has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket.
According to the 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of respondents also favored preventing mentally ill people from buying guns and 79% wanted the minimum age for buying guns raised to 21.
Ferrell-Zabala said most aspects of gun violence prevention should not be considered political, including requiring gun owners to secure their weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of children or people intent on harming others or themselves.
“They are being used as political issues, but they are not. The majority of people, polls show time and time again, are for common sense gun laws because they know they are going to save lives in this country,” Ferrell-Zabala said. “And what you’re seeing is a product of a gun industry and extremist politicians that are trying to back this guns-everywhere culture, where guns are everywhere for anyone anytime. That’s unacceptable, frankly.”
Hockley said that many of the children who survived the Sandy Hook massacre that claimed the life of her 6-year-old son, Dylan, have now reached the age of 18 and will be voting in their first presidential election.
“I believe that they will be very much voting to stop this epidemic,” Hockley told ABC News. “I’m sure they’ll have other concerns as well, women’s rights, human rights. Gun violence prevention is also a human right, the right to live to your full potential. These students have seen the worst of what our country can offer in terms of school violence and I very much believe and hope that they will be voting that as one of their main issues.”
