(Picture credit Matt Johnson)
Newly surfaced video from a July 7 campaign event in Sidney shows Independent U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn admitting he may be open to backing a plan to alter the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the video, a woman is heard off-camera asking, “How do you feel about adding more justices to the Supreme Court?”
“I would love to be a part of that conversation about expanding the Supreme Court, seeing what that looks like,” Osborn answered, adding that, “a lot of times if you don’t talk through everything and try to think of every scenario both good and bad that it could create, then you’re making a mistake.”
As to “expanding the Supreme Court,” Osborn added, “I’ve sat down and I’ve talked to quite a few people and I haven’t come up with too many negatives on how that affects [things], because it’s more minds, it’s like, just like any mechanic, I have troubleshooting a machine and I go up it to it, man I’ve been staring at this and hasn’t been fixed for an hour, I got to walk away, I’m like, I’ve got to get some other people to help me look at this. Because the more eyes you get onto something, the more minds you get onto something, the better.”
While Osborn has avoided publicly making court packing a focus of his campaign, he has regularly denounced the 2010 Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, describing the outcome as the “worst” ruling in the court’s history, and has both conducted closed-door meetings with left-wing activists as well as accepted donations from progressive court-packing proponents.
In March, Osborn received $7,000 donations from a prominent left-wing activist central to a push to lobby for a court-packing plan. FEC records show $7,000 in donations in March from Chris Eldridge, founder and president of the left-wing 501(c)4 Stand Up America.
After a Supreme Court decision in May curtailing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Stand Up America led a coalition of more than 50 progressive organizations demanding “structural court reforms” in response to “the Court’s far-right supermajority,” including one Democratic legislative proposal to add members to the Supreme Court and limit members thereon to 18-year terms.
While a local newspaper did cover Osborn’s July 7 Sidney town hall, as The Plains Sentinel has previously reported, the campaign has on occasion blocked reporters’ access to public events, including an Omaha meeting in early August with progressive activists.
Shortly after Osborn arrived at that meeting with Indivisible Nebraska officials, a staff member told The Plains Sentinel that the event was not open to the media—a “preference” of both Dan Osborn and Indivisible Nebraska, even though the event description expressly noted that “Indivisible Nebraska monthly meetings are open to all.”
Indivisible Nebraska is part of the larger nationwide Indivisible network, which draws significant funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Tides Foundation.
The Osborn campaign did not respond to The Plains Sentinel’s requests for comment for this story.
Osborn Criticized Over Private Remarks
Osborn has been criticized in recent weeks for comments he has made privately regarding several policy positions.
In a recording obtained by The Plains Sentinel, the candidate said he was avoiding the issue of biological men playing in women’s sports because he is worried it could cost him Republican votes.
“The state is made up of 50% Republicans, 26% Democrat, and 24% Independents. So my win numbers, mathematically, I need to get 10 to 15% of Republicans to win this race,” Osborn said. “How am I going to do that, by f—-ing saying, ‘Oh, I love trans people, and they should be able to play in sports.’”
In a second recording, Osborn said he cannot say publicly “I want to abolish ICE” because he has people recording him and he would be “f***ed.”
Last week, audio was released from a meeting with Latino and Black Democrats where Osborn called the border wall a “symbol of racism.”
In a statement on Tuesday to the Omaha World Herald, a spokesperson said he was for “strong, effective border security.”
“When I give President Trump full credit for securing the border, some people don’t like that,” Osborn said. “But because I’m an independent, I don’t have to blindly support the purity tests of either party. I’ll fight for a border wall where it makes sense, and other strategies where it doesn’t, like in Big Bend National Park.”
— Ken Shepherd is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel. He is a former editor at Fox News Digital and the Washington Times.