A union leader says electing a real working-class senator like Osborne could turn the whole of American politics on its head.
Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne speaks during a campaign rally at the Handlebend Cafe in O’Neill, Neb., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Historically described as “the most exclusive club in the world,” the US Senate is often denounced these days as “Millionaires Club” where the interests of working Americans are neglected to satisfy the demands of billionaire campaign donors and Wall Street insiders. Senators who lean toward the billionaire class come from both parties. Indeed, while Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support unions and proposals to raise the minimum wage, many Democrats have aligned with Republicans to advance trade policies that have closed tens of thousands of factories, and more than a few shy away from populist calls “tax the rich” – perhaps because many are becoming richer themselves than the wildest dreams of most Americans.
But what if the Senate had a member who renounced party affiliation and simply represented workers? What if that senator was a machinist who served as a union leader and led an epic strike against corporate greed?
“I think that would be huge, and I think it would send a message to both parties that they better get with working class people,” United Auto Workers president Sean Fain told me recently. As the Nov. 5 election nears, Fein is focusing his energy on electing just such a candidate. In October, the labor leader, who gained national prominence as the leader of last year’s successful UAW strike against the nation’s three major auto manufacturers, went to Nebraska to knock on the union halls for an independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne.
An industrial mechanic by trade who spent most of two decades at Kellogg’s large plant in Omaha, Osborne served as president International Union of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Workers Local 50G. In 2021, he and members of the local union walked off the job in a 77-day strike against the two-tier pay system and a host of other issues. A strike attracted national attention and made Osborne something of a local hero – especially among working people fed up with corporate greed. Fired by Kellogg’s, Osborne became a boiler maintenance worker and joined Steamfitters and Plumbers Local 464 in Omaha.
He’s also the best-known independent Senate candidate this year, an underdog stirring up an unexpectedly competitive race in a red state.
“I haven’t always been political,” Osborne explained when I followed his Nebraska campaign earlier this year. He said he didn’t think much about campaigns and elections “until corporate greed knocked on my door when I was president of BCTGM Local 50G.”
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“During Covid we were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day,” Osborne said. “At one point, 50 percent of our workforce had to be quarantined and/or (were) sick, but we kept the plants running at full capacity. (Kellogg’s) had record profits that year, from $19 billion to $21 billion. The CEO gave himself a $2 million raise. The board got richer, the shareholders got richer, (but) with the same stroke of the pen, after they raised their wages, they tried to take from their workers, so we went on strike.”
Osborne and the union struck a contract after 77 days of picketing. But Osborne said: “That experience really opened my eyes… It changed who I was and how I saw my world.”
He saw a political class that had too often failed the workers, and a U.S. senator from Nebraska, Republican Deb Fisher, with a long history of speaking out against workers’ rights and doing Wall Street bidding. Osborne could run as a Democrat or as Fisher’s primary Republican challenger. But he decided to campaign as an independent candidate because that is his political instincts. “I’m not going to change who I am,” he says. “I have to stay true to myself. If I don’t do it, why do I do it?”
Instead, he’s running a grassroots campaign that he says says, “Washington, D.C., is broken, and we need someone to fix it.” Guerrillas are unlikely to do the job, he argues, “because they just have to get in line. I don’t want to stand in line with anyone. It never worked out for me.”
Osborne tells crowds gathered in union halls and community centers that he wants to go to the Senate as fighter for stronger unions, higher wages, trade policies that favor workers and their communities, a better deal for working farmers and a fight against corporate greed that will “close loopholes used by multinationals to avoid paying taxes.” This populist message has attracted Democrats and at least some Republicans. Both Bernie Sanders supporters and Donald Trump supporters are now showing up at Osborne events. And he rose in the elections. Poll at the end of October for The New York Times put Fisher at 48 and Osborne at 46.
For observers of the bitter battle for control of the U.S. Senate, which Democrats and their allies now hold by a slim 51-49 margin, the prospect that Nebraska — a deeply red state that will almost certainly vote for Trump — could oust Republican Sen. great news. As Politico noted on Friday, “If Dan Osborne, a populist independent, pulls off an upset victory in the Senate race, it will be a humiliating blow to Republicans.” With Democrats almost certain to lose a seat in West Virginia and in serious danger of losing a seat in Montana, Osborne may be the only senator standing in the way of a Republican majority. But the candidate, who is both pro-choice and a critic of at least some Democratic approaches to the budget, says he is in no rush to align himself with either party.
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This makes many political insiders nervous. The Democratic Senate Committee is not helping Osborne because the committee’s head, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, says the Nebraska resident is “not a Democrat.” But Fein is not shy about campaigning for Osborne. He sees the Nebraska campaign as one of the most interesting political events of 2024.
“Working class people are what move this country and move the world. So we have to start recruiting people from those ranks who understand what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck, or not have money at the end of the week, or not have adequate health care or retirement benefits,” says the UAW Leader. “Most Americans live like this. So if we want to make a difference in this country, we have to elect people at all levels of government who understand these issues and will fight for them.”
What makes Fain especially happy is the prospect of sending a mechanic to fix what’s broken in Washington. “He’s a working-class man. That’s the point,” says the UAW president. “It’s very strange that over the years, because of this capitalist system, you always hear people talking about, ‘Oh, it’s a (candidate) businessman.’ We always choose business people and see where that puts us. It puts us in a system of government where everything is for sale and where working class people are left behind.”
So, argues Fein, why not elect a former union leader?
“When you are a trade union leader at the local level, national level, whatever it is, you answer to the people. You represent friendship,” he says. “It’s no different than a congressman representing constituents. It’s the same thing, the same concept. When you run a local or national union, you only have so much money to work with, you have a budget. You manage people. You have to know the business end of these things. So obviously there are a lot of similarities. But the difference to me is that when you’re a union leader, your fight is for working-class people to have justice and to have decent wages, to have health care, to have pensions, and to have more time for yourself – so that you don’t you had to work all the time to live.”
That, Fein says, is exactly the kind of experience needed in the Senate.
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