Records Show Osborn Staffing Populist Campaign With Coastal College Graduates

by Ken Shepherd

While holding itself forward as a populist campaign standing up against elites and for ordinary Nebraskans, the Dan Osborn for Senate campaign is actively seeking students from elite institutions far from the state for entry-level campaign work.

For the past year, Osborn has been advertising a “campaign fellow” job listing on a website managed by Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where the average cost of attendance is a little over $95,000 annually. The college is considered one of the eight elite Ivy League Schools of the East Coast.

In a Dartmouth Center for Career Design job listing titled, “Osborn for Senate Campaign Fellow (Part or Full Time),” the campaign says that it “welcomes fellows from all ideological and party background… dedicated folks excited by the possibility of electing a blue-collar independent mechanic to the Senate who will challenge the broken status quo in Washington.”

“Fellows will be placed according to interest. Can be part time or full time. Full time fellows will receive a stipend. We accept both folks in Nebraska (preferred) or remote,” continues the posting, which opened in mid-April last year and expires on April 13, 2026.

Responsibilities for campaign fellow vary from “help with voter contact” and “canvassing operations” in the field to helping with “making gifs and memes” on the communications end to “help with donor research” for finance, according to the listing.

A review of LinkedIn profiles touting roles in the Osborn for Senate campaign suggests elite-college recruiting efforts have proven successful, with the campaign employing current undergraduates from institutions such as Stanford University (California) and Cornell University (New York) in roles as policy analyst and campaign fellow, respectively.

Stanford students can expect to spend more than $97,000 to attend yearly, while Cornell students will be set back about $96,000 annually, according to their respective websites.

Osborn’s most notable coastal hire is Morris Katz, a 27-year-old New York-based campaign consultant, who helped develop the media strategy that led to the rise of Osborn in 2024 and Zohran Mamdani in 2025. Katz attended Skidmore College, a liberal arts college in upstate New York, which costs more than $70,000 a year to attend.

The hires might raise eyebrows for a campaign pitching itself as a prairie populist.

“Trump was right, the system’s rigged … but it’s rigged by the big people and the people with the money that have the influence,” Osborn told the Nebraska Examiner in an interview last November for a profile headlined “Dan Osborn pursues a prairie populist upset in Nebraska U.S. Senate race.”

“I would say the number one issue that people talk about first is the economy and the cost of everything right now,” Osborn told the Nebraska Examiner at the time.

The Plains Sentinel reached out to three significantly more affordable public Nebraska colleges to inquire what efforts, if any, the Osborn campaign had made to recruit from their student bodies.

“Unless Mr. Osborn’s campaign has posted career opportunities on Handshake that I have not yet seen, we have not worked with them,” a representative with Chadron State College’s career services office told The Plains Sentinel via email.

The annual cost of attendance at Chadron State is $18,654, according to its official website.

Like Chadron State, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL), also uses the Handshake recruiting app to handle its job postings and an official there tells The Plains Sentinel the Osborn campaign did previously post a campaign fellow ad but it closed earlier this year.

“It is fairly common for political campaigns to recruit through the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Handshake portal, which is open to a range of employers seeking to connect with students about internships and employment opportunities,” UNL senior director of strategic communication Troy Fedderson told The Plains Sentinel via email.

“Listings on Handshake are submitted by employers and do not constitute university endorsement,” Fedderson noted, adding that “The Osborn campaign has submitted opportunities in the past, though there are currently no active listings. The most recent listing opened in April 2025 and closed in January 2026.”

Republicans such as Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Mike Flood have also used UNL’s Handshake portal to recruit for openings, Fedderson noted.

“Regarding past or upcoming career-related events, the Osborn campaign has not submitted any requests to participate,” Fedderson told The Plains Sentinel. “Our Career Services team also does not recall a political campaign taking part in a career fair or similar in-person event.”

UNL estimates in-state undergrads’ annual attendance cost to be $28,002.

A third public institution contacted by The Plains Sentinel, Wayne State College, did not return a comment by the deadline. The average attendance cost at Wayne State is $18,108, according to its official website.

The Osborn campaign did not respond to The Plains Sentinel’s requests for comment.

Ken Shepherd is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel. He is a former editor at Fox News Digital and the Washington Times.

(Photo credit Matt Johnson)