Osborn Talks Gaza, Transgender Ballot Initiative in Press-Barred Event

by Matt Johnson

(Picture credit Matt Johnson)

OMAHA — U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn held a town hall in the tenth-floor ballroom of the Stockyard Exchange Building in Omaha on Thursday night, and unlike previous town hall events, this one was inexplicably closed to the press.

Osborn’s wife, Megan Osborn, said that she was specifically asked to be “gatekeeper” at the event in the lobby, citing the campaign manager as the reason. The Plains Sentinel asked if Osborn would be available for questions after the event.

“Just not from the press,” she said. “I’ve just been told by our campaign manager: no press tonight.”

There was no specific reason cited for the decision.

“I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is that I get to be the gatekeeper tonight.”

After the event, however, one guest on the inside provided The Plains Sentinel with an audio recording of the town hall.

Dividing Lines

In his stump speech, Osborn framed his campaign as one of the “working class” versus the “billionaires,” and he attributed his loss to Deb Fischer as the result of wealthy influence affecting the outcome.

“We ran one of the closest Senate races Nebraska has ever seen in 2024,” Osborn said. “We were tied in September before the millionaires and the huge corporations came in to rescue them [the Fischer campaign].”

And while much of his campaign messaging described closing the partisan divide between right and left, he told voters to line up in opposition to the wealthy.

“If you believe that billionaires, like Elon Musk, George Soros, or Pete Ricketts, should not be allowed to buy anything they want, including private islands for sex trafficking, and our elections, and our votes, then send them a message in cash and vote for me,” Osborn said.

Osborn Takes on Hot Button Issues

One guest asked Osborn about AIPAC and Israel. Osborn stated that he did not take AIPAC money and cited the need to overturn Citizens United. And while he described Israel as an “ally,” he was largely critical of the war in Gaza.

“No bomb or bullet that says ‘made in the USA’ should ever drop on a school or hospital, period,” Osborn said.

One guest asked Osborn if he thought the conflict was a genocide.

“I’m not an expert on what a genocide is. I see the pictures coming out of Gaza, and there’s nothing left. And they don’t let the press in there. They don’t let humanitarian aid in. They’re starving people to death. This is a human tragedy, and we should not be complicit in it.”

Another guest, who described herself as a mom with daughters, asked Osborn about a ballot initiative to establish constitutional protections for sex-separate athletics to ensure equal access to athletic opportunities for females.

“I would have to read the law, I’m not going to commit to signing a petition until I see the law written down on paper,” Osborn said.

The guest appeared to have a copy of the petition with her and offered to give it to Osborn.

“I’m not going to sit there and read that right now, but I will read it,” Osborn said. “And if the law is not rooted in hate, and the law is not rooted in discrimination, and the law is rooted in fairness, I’m all there.”

Another guest asked about ICE and Illegal Immigration. Osborn stated that he supported deportations for groups like MS-13, but he believed ICE could perform those duties at a fraction of their current budget.

“They performed that mission off of about $7 billion, and now they’re up to $80 billion,” Osborn said. “And now what we’re seeing is masked agents, thousands of them, being put in our streets. I don’t agree with that.”

Osborn also sees immigration as the solution to a labor shortage in the United States.

“The nice thing about it is, we need workers,” Osborn said. “There’s 50,000 open jobs. And we have an entire ranching industry that’s taking their licks right now with fires and with workers not showing up to work. So that’s certainly a problem.”

In the end, Osborn seemed to indicate that the pushback against illegal immigration was primarily driven by bigotry.

“We are all immigrants, unless you’re Indigenous. And so, yeah, I’m not going to put up with discrimination and hate, because people speak a different language, or they look different. They don’t fit the ideal image of what somebody thinks an American should look like. I think our diversity is our strength.”

The Race Ahead

Other questions involved the budget deficit, preferred committee assignments, and which party Osborn would caucus with. Osborn was about to take another question from one of two people who had their hands raised when Megan Osborn cut him off.

“That’s the last question,” she said.

The event was scheduled to run from 6 to 7:30 PM, but ended early after just six questions at seven o’clock.

No specific reason was given for the event being cut short. Around 40 guests were in attendance in the large tenth-floor ballroom, well below its capacity, which can seat hundreds of people.

The Plains Sentinel reached out to the Ricketts campaign for a response to the town hall and received the following from Max Oberg, Senate Deputy Campaign Manager:

“Last night, Dan Osborn refused entry to a Nebraska journalist in an attempt to hide his extreme liberal views from Nebraskans. He implied that Nebraska mothers concerned about men in their daughters’ locker rooms are motivated by ‘hate’ and advocated for open borders to fill American jobs. Once again, Dan Osborn plays an Independent on TV, but behind closed doors, he’s a liberal Democrat.”

The race between Pete Ricketts and Dan Osborn is shaping up to be one of Nebraska’s most competitive in years. Betting markets like Polymarket and Kalshi currently give Ricketts roughly a ~60% chance of winning over Osborn. The money tells a similar story, with Ricketts raising just shy of $5 million and Osborn raising almost $4 million, with each holding around $1 million cash on hand.

And with roughly 24 weeks left before the general election, Osborn has plenty of time to hold several more town halls—it remains to be seen whether the press will be invited.

— Matt Johnson is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel.