This article was originally published by Nebraska Examiner on June 22, 2026. It is republished here under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Any views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Political Report or the Outsider Media Foundation. Links are included as they are in the original article. Header image added by Independent Political Report.
Nebraska might have nonpartisan fever.
This midterm cycle has seen an increase in nonpartisan — independent — candidates running in partisan races across the state. Four candidates have gathered enough signatures – or are openly trying to get enough signatures – to be on the November ballot.
In addition, former state Sen. Brett Lindstrom is flirting with a nonpartisan bid for Nebraska governor, and former state Sen. Bob Krist is mulling a nonpartisan bid for secretary of state.
In the 10 years between 2014 and 2024, there were only two independent candidates on the ballot, according to the Nebraska Secretary of State’s website. Both were running for the U.S. Senate in 2014. Then, in 2024, there were two independent candidates in partisan races in Nebraska — Dan Osborn, who ran for U.S. Senate against Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was later removed from the ballot after dropping out of the presidential race.
Some of this year’s nonpartisan candidates pointed to Osborn’s 2024 bid against Fischer as inspiration for their own campaigns. Austin Ahlman, a nonpartisan candidate for the 1st Congressional District, calls it the “Osborn effect.”
“He truly inspired a lot of folks up and down the ballot, myself included,” Ahlman said of Osborn’s 2024 campaign. “Running without party infrastructure is hard, and you have to work twice as hard to earn trust from voters used to picking the red or blue team.”
Nebraska and other states in the Great Plains were once known for their prairie progressivism, but now Republicans dominate much of America’s heartland. While the Nebraska Legislature — the only unicameral system in the country — is technically nonpartisan, all of the state’s elected executives are Republican, and the GOP has a supermajority in the legislature.
A growing number of nonpartisan voters
In Nebraska, party-affiliated voters still outnumber nonpartisan voters, but the number of voters registered as independent is growing.
According to the most recent numbers from the Secretary of State’s website, there are 280,763 registered nonpartisan voters, up from 268,606 in December 2022.
Republican Party registrations also grew during the last four years – from 606,862 in 2022, to 620,580 last month – as did voters registered as Libertarians or part of the Legal Marijuana NOW Party.
The number of registered Democrats declined, from 345,208 in 2022, to 327,478 this year.
Mark Cohen, a nonpartisan candidate running in Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, said, “over time, the two-party system has become less effective for Nebraskans,” and that people “are starting to consider that independent candidacies are more viable than they may have been in the past.”
Macey Budke, another nonpartisan running in the 3rd Congressional District, told the Examiner she thinks Nebraskans are more receptive to independent candidates because of the current political climate.
“We just have this massive pendulum swing all the time,” Budke said. “People are not feeling heard, [parties] are mainly going with their own agendas, Problems are not getting solved.”
There are only a few examples of successful independents in the U.S. Senate or House. They include U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine.
What do independent candidates mean for Nebraska politics?
Dona-Gene Barton, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who studies political behavior, said running as an independent “is an interesting strategic move to try to capture support from partisans of both stripes, but it carries the electoral risk of not running under the Republican label in a red state.”
“The question remains as to whether the rise of independents running in Nebraska is reactionary to the polarization of state primaries where more moderate political voices feel unrepresented,” Barton said.
UNL political science professor Kevin Smith told Nebraska Public Media that independent candidates are still viewed as “long shot candidates.”
Smith, in his interview with NPM, said that he sees the increase in nonpartisan candidates as a “cry for a little more centrism from both major parties.”
“It’s no secret that there are an awful lot of citizens in Nebraska and around the country who are frustrated with both major parties right now and their inability to get along and get things done,” Smith said.
The reaction from Democrats and Republicans to independent candidates has been mixed. While some have shown indifference to nonpartisan challengers, state Republicans and the Sen. Pete Ricketts campaign have called Osborn a “fake independent,” accusing him of being a Democrat because he received donations from Democrats and is endorsed by the Nebraska Democratic Party chair.
It is widely believed Nebraska Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Cindy Burbank will drop out of the race to give Osborn a clearer shot against Ricketts. During her primary campaign, she posted on her campaign website that she planned to drop out if she won the party’s nomination.
While Nebraska Democrats have criticized Ahlman for jumping into the 1st district race, accusing him of being a spoiler, Burbank broke ranks with the party and endorsed Ahlman.
Osborn said voters have told him they’re tired of the two-party system. A common gripe he hears at events is that “Washington D.C. party bosses have left workers behind.”
“Fuel, groceries and rent are unaffordable, and home ownership for our kids is no longer the standard,” Osborn said. “I can’t say I’m shocked that there are more people leaving the two-party structure.”
The general election is Nov. 3
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