(Picture credit John Gage)
GRAND ISLAND — Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts and Independent Dan Osborn, both campaigning across Nebraska for the U.S. Senate, met Tuesday evening at the BigIron Events Center at the Nebraska State Fair in Grand Island. The audience was officially capped at 200 guests, though slightly more than that number filled the seats inside.
The debate, hosted by News Channel Nebraska, was moderated by anchor Dave Griek. Questions were posed by Aaron Sanderford of the Omaha World-Herald, Juan Salinas II of the Nebraska Examiner, Casey Wonnenberg of News Channel Nebraska, and Andrew Wegley of the Flatwater Free Press.
Ricketts referred to Osborn almost exclusively as “Democrat Dan” throughout the debate, using the term over two dozen times to refer to Osborn. Ricketts said Osborn “is going to lie to you trying to hide his liberal beliefs. You see, he was recruited by Democrat socialists.”
In his opening remarks, Osborn focused on rising costs of health care and groceries and said Washington, D.C., was “broken.” He also jabbed back at the moniker.
“Pete’s gonna talk about a lot of this guy that I don’t know. His name’s Democrat Dan,” Osborn said. “We should actually have a third podium here tonight for him.”
On Social Security, Tariffs, and Affordability
On Social Security, Osborn leaned on his union experience negotiating retirement contracts, citing a conversation with an older coworker.
“When I first negotiated a contract with a company, one of the old guys, he was an old Polish guy by the name of Ron Jabowski, looked like Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I.,” Osborn said. “But he said, ‘Hey, kid, no matter what, do not sell out our retirees to get something for yourselves now.’ And that’s always stuck with me, and this is Social Security at its heart.”
Osborn said the program could be kept solvent “for the next hundred years by making people pay their fair share,” pointing to the payroll tax cap.
Ricketts said he had already delivered tax relief on Social Security as governor and in the Senate, and that Osborn wanted to extend benefits to people who entered the country illegally.
“There’s only one person on the stage who’s actually done things for seniors in this state, and that’s me,” Ricketts said. “Democrat Dan over there wants to give it to illegal immigrants. You wanna talk about undermining Social Security, that is gonna undermine Social Security by putting on all sorts of people that did not pay for it.”
On tariffs, Ricketts said some U.S. allies maintain high tariffs on American goods while facing low U.S. tariffs in return, and that tariffs should be used to “level the playing field.” He also described Osborn as a candidate more aligned with coastal donors than Nebraska.
Osborn said blanket tariffs were driving up costs, but targeted tariffs could work.
“I think most of us probably came here in a Chevy Silverado, a Ford F-150, or a Ram pickup. That’s not an accident,” Osborn said. “Those are targeted tariffs that work, that protected the automotive industry for a lot of years, and they continue to do so.”
Osborn lamented the rising cost of living, blaming a $40 trillion national debt and the interest it carries. He also said corporations needed to pay more in taxes.
“There’s over fifty multinational corporations that funnel their profits overseas. They park them there, and they don’t repatriate them back to the United States. They don’t pay their taxes. So we have to close those loopholes, again, for fair share.”
Ricketts linked high prices to inflation that began under the Biden administration and credited the Working Families Tax Cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill with putting money back in workers’ pockets.
“There was a waitress in Omaha whose W-2 got put together on both the overtime and the regular pay. When it got separated out, she got an extra fifteen hundred dollars back from the government. That’s a house payment, or that’s more money for groceries or for gas,” Ricketts said. He added that Osborn “would have voted against all those tax cuts.”
One question involved the budget reconciliation package commonly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), which critics say will cut $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade. Ricketts rejected the premise that Medicaid had been cut.
“I’m going to reject your notion that it was cuts to Medicaid because spending on Medicaid is still going up,” Ricketts said. “The reforms we passed were to be able to preserve Medicaid for the people who qualify for it. So the reforms were such as you can’t collect it when you’re dead. You can’t collect it in two states. You can’t be an illegal immigrant and collect it. And then we also put in work requirements.”
Osborn responded with a story of a dialysis clinic in Chadron that closed.
“I was just out in Chadron, Nebraska, recently, and there’s a dialysis plant that just closed as a direct result of the Big Beautiful Bill Act and cutting Medicaid for people who rely on it,” Osborn said. “They now have to drive two hundred miles round trip, three days a week, to get blood dialysis done.”
Heated words on ICE
When the topic of ICE came up, Osborn said he supported a secure border and deporting violent criminals, but described the agency’s expanded budget as wasteful.
“The same mission [was] performed by administrations in the past off of a budget of seven billion dollars. Now that’s been increased to eighty billion dollars. So if you’re a true fiscal conservative, you should be concerned with this number. This is wasteful government spending,” Osborn said. “We have to keep our community safe, but we shouldn’t get used to troops in our street and mask agents.”
Ricketts cited a first-of-its-kind Nebraska Senate endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council, whose president, Paul Perez, traveled to Omaha in August to back him. He then turned to Osborn’s past remarks.
“He has said that our law enforcement is like Nazi Germany. He has called law enforcement officers ‘chicken shit.’ He is on tape saying, ‘I can’t say abolish ICE, or I won’t get elected.’ He wants to abolish ICE,” Ricketts said.
Osborn objected that his words were being taken out of context and said a paid tracker follows him.
“I’ve done hundreds of public events. Everybody is welcome to my town hall,” Osborn said. “What he’s talking about, I don’t really know what he was talking about there. … He has somebody that follows me around the state, puts cameras in my faces, that’s paid by them, and it is … kind of disturbing.”
Ricketts pressed the point.
“Notice the one thing he didn’t say is allowed in his so-called meetings here, is the press. Why? ’Cause he doesn’t want it reported on. But that’s where we have him on tape saying things like, ‘Abolish ICE,’ or, ‘Our law enforcement’s like Nazi Germany,’ or calling our law enforcement officers ‘chicken shit.’”
Iran, Imported beef, Dark Money
On the conflict with Iran, Ricketts lamented the loss of Master Sgt. Noah Tietjens of Bellevue, a 42-year-old Army Reserve soldier killed March 1, 2026, when an Iranian drone struck a military operations center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait.
He also said that Iran must not be allowed a nuclear weapon.
“A country that chants, ‘Death to America,’ cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. That would put our kids at risk. It would put our allies at risk. We must make sure that Iran never gets that nuclear weapon.”
Osborn cited his Navy service aboard an aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz.
“I’ve been through the Strait of Hormuz myself on an aircraft carrier, a naval vessel, in battle stations. … I saw, on the coast of Iran, I saw the missile batteries pointed down into the strait, and it is certainly unnerving,” Osborn said. “We were promised no new foreign wars. But here we are, a hundred and eighty-five days into a new foreign war. And Nebraskans are paying the price.”
On imported beef, after the Trump administration announced a 90-day tariff waiver for up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef, Osborn accused Ricketts of siding with packers over producers.
“My opponent here has, when he was governor, he allowed Chinese-owned Smithfield to start to purchase their own hogs and get into the producing industry and continue to vertically integrate the meatpacking industry. And that’s a giant mistake.”
Ricketts cited his endorsement by the Nebraska Farm Bureau and said more imported beef was a short-term fix that would make it harder for ranchers to rebuild herds.
“I told President Trump that short-term solutions to try and address the costs we all wanna bring down for folks are not gonna work and are actually bad for our cattle ranchers,” Ricketts said. “Democrat Dan over here, though, one of his largest donors actually wrote the Paris Climate Accord. They think that cattle just produce methane, and they wanna try and get rid of them.”
On dark money and Super PACs, Osborn criticized large outside spending and Ricketts’ self-funding. Ricketts took no issue with contributing to his own campaign.
“I contributed to my campaign because I believe in the state, and Nebraskans know where I stand and what I’ll do,” Ricketts said. “Democrat Dan over here, though, in his first race against Deb Fischer, ninety-five percent of his money came from outside the state of Nebraska.”
Osborn denied directing independent expenditures.
“What he’s talking about are independent expenditures. These are people who go and they start Super PACs. I don’t know who these people are, and they’ve raised money in my name.”
On AI and data centers, Osborn said he saw potential but wanted “guardrails,” including protections for the Ogallala Aquifer and ratepayers.
“It’s about making sure AI does the right thing, curing cancer, not spying on us with Flock cameras.”
Ricketts said communities should negotiate from a position of strength.
“When it comes to data centers, local control is the name of the game. If communities are considering a data center, what they should do is negotiate first. They’re in charge. They’re in the driver’s seat. They should make sure, yes, you shouldn’t impact my power rates. You should conserve water, closed loop systems. But then they can ask for more.”
Closing Remarks and Reactions
The debate lasted just over an hour. Ricketts’ closing remarks framed Osborn as offering “wishy-washy answers, empty lines, false attacks,” and repeated that “Democrat Dan is too extreme for Nebraska.”
Osborn opened his close with a joke that Nebraska should “close the border with Iowa,” which he said stood for “idiots out wandering around.” The audience chuckled. He then turned to polarization.
“This is what breaks my heart, looking at the polarization of politics in this country. We have neighbors fighting with neighbors. We have family members that don’t wanna go to Thanksgiving dinner with each other because politics gets brought up. And for me, when I set out in 2024, it was to bring people together. I’m tired of the division that has been created here in this country.”
Among the guests was Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, who took issue with Ricketts’ tone.
“Independent Dan came off as very likable and authentic, and Pete Ricketts came off as a middle school bully,” Kleeb said. “The name-calling was extreme and unnecessary. He should have spent those minutes actually talking about how we’re gonna lower prices, which Trump promised on day one, and we haven’t been able to accomplish under the Republican rule.”
Also among the guests was Darlene Starman, an associate broker at Woods Bros. Realty in Lincoln and an at-large delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention, who said Ricketts won.
“[Ricketts] won it hands down. And very specific answers, and exposed Dan Osborn for who he is … a liberal Democrat—Democrat Dan.”
As in-person debates between statewide candidates become rarer, Tuesday’s debate was the chance for Nebraskans to hear directly from the candidates as they went head to head on the issues. The election is on November 3.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.
— Matt Johnson is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel.