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LINCOLN — Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer survived an unexpectedly close race Tuesday with registered nonpartisan Dan Osborn, leaning on her GOP base to secure a third term.
The Associated Press called the race for Fischer late Tuesday. She led by nearly 4 percentage points at 11:30 p.m., with more rural votes coming in. Some early voting ballots returned on Election Day and provisional ballots still need to be counted, but those are unlikely to change the result.
Fischer had voiced confidence during the campaign that Nebraskans would reward her willingness to prioritize their needs, including agriculture and infrastructure, and would worry less about sound bites or national news.
On Tuesday, she said Nebraskans “still vote for candidates who share their values.”
Her defenders had worried that her preference for doing work behind-thescenes to craft and pass legislation, rather than spending more time promoting herself and her work, cost her with some Nebraskans who follow politics only at election time.
“Nearly $30 million, that’s the amount of money out-of-state Democrats spent trying to buy a Nebraska Senate seat,” Fischer said. “It did not happen. … They wasted their money.”
For several months during the campaign, Fischer would not acknowledge her opponent, rejecting polls that indicated a close race as being flawed and touting her own internal polling showing a big lead.
By late Tuesday, the race appeared headed toward the narrowest margin for any Nebraska GOP Senate candidate since 2000, when Republican Attorney General Don Stenberg lost to former Gov. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., 51%-49%.
Osborn, an Omaha union leader known for his work helping to lead the Omaha Kellogg’s strike in 2021, put a scare into Fischer’s campaign.
He did so largely by painting himself as Nebraska’s version of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a gruff, working-class guy interested in focusing Congress on kitchen-table issues.
