Leaked audio shows Osborn calling border wall 'a symbol of racism'

Same consultant recruited Osborn and Maine’s Platner, whose bid imploded

Leaked audio recordings of Nebraska independent U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn show him calling the border wall “a symbol of racism” and describing Trump supporters in unflattering terms, complicating his second bid for a seat in deeply red Nebraska that Democrats have effectively cleared for him.

The recordings emerged as a new super PAC began running ads against Osborn last week, and as his opponent, GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts, drew out-of-state help from Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. AdImpact reports that the super PAC has spent more to reserve airtime than any other advertiser in the race.

In audio from this summer that the Omaha World-Herald published last week, Osborn described Trump supporters’ connection to the president. “Billy Bob in f—king Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next door to the f—king Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag, all he knows is he’s, like, on the winning team,” Osborn said. He said President Trump has been “so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them, look…You’re on the winning team. And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck.”

Osborn hasn’t challenged the authenticity of the recordings. On CNN he said, “I would apologize to those people that might be offended,” and described the remarks as empathizing with Trump voters who feel “disenfranchised.” “People are pissed off. People are disenfranchised, especially, and that’s what Trump captured in Nebraska,” he said.

Two other recordings have surfaced this month. At a July meeting with Hispanic and Black Democrats, captured in audio published earlier this month by Politico, Osborn criticized the wall. “It’s a joke. It’s a symbol of racism, really, is what the wall represents. It does nothing, you know,” Osborn said. Fox News obtained audio in which Osborn said he needs support from 10% to 15% of Republicans in order to win and that “I have people recording me, so I can’t say I want to abolish ICE. I can’t say those words.” His campaign said he does not want to abolish ICE and that his private conversations are the same as his public ones.

The populist campaign operative Dan Moraff helped recruit Osborn to run in 2024 and then recruited Platner in Maine, working with local unions in both cases. Moraff was acting on his belief that voters want candidates who have lived full lives outside politics but who might not bring the fundraising network of established politicians. Platner’s candidacy imploded in the face of a sexual-assault accusation, which he denied, and Democrats nationally are still dealing with the fallout. Moraff said in a written statement that “Dan Osborn is a stellar candidate who ran stronger than any other Senate candidate two years ago.”

Osborn, an industrial mechanic, came within seven points of winning a Senate seat in 2024 as an independent with no Democrat in the race. That was a close outcome in a state where Democrats had lost the previous Senate election by nearly 40 points. His ads often show him in a welder’s helmet and display his forearm tattoos, an image his backers think will resonate with voters, said Emily Cherniack, president of New Politics, which helps political leaders build public service experience. “He’s ‘marketable’—but the problem is candidates like this are marketable until they make mistakes, and then they’re not,” she said.

While Osborn is an independent, Democrats cleared the field of their own candidates to ease his path, and the Nebraska Democratic Party endorsed him. His ads emphasize positions he shares with Republicans, including gun rights and backing for Trump’s call to make permanent the expansions of no tax on tips and no tax on overtime.

The risk, according to operatives and analysts, is that the recordings reinforce the argument that Osborn is not what he claims to be. Jim Kessler, an executive vice president at the centrist Democratic policy group Third Way, said the leaked comments give Republicans a “proof point.” “These are Potemkin candidates. They’re not who they say they are,” Kessler said.

The risk also echoes earlier campaigns in which Democrats appeared to look down on Trump supporters, an impression that damaged even more experienced candidates. Hillary Clinton was at a fundraiser when she described some Trump voters as “a basket of deplorables,” which became a defining moment in her 2016 presidential campaign. Barack Obama was a Democratic senator when he said at a fundraiser in 2008 that small-town voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Cherniack said the leaked recordings show Osborn “is not ready for prime time.” “It’s such a steep learning curve to run for high office. And when you put someone on the big stage so fast, it’s like Icarus—their wings are going to get burned, and it’s a higher fall,” she said.

Republicans are showing signs of nervousness about the race. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) campaigned with Ricketts in Nebraska on Sunday and said he didn’t expect to have to stump in such a red state this year.

Ricketts is a former governor whose family owned the brokerage TD Ameritrade and is the controlling owner of the Chicago Cubs. The Osborn campaign said its candidate’s background contrasts with Ricketts’s. “Dan isn’t a lifelong politician who’s spent his whole life planning to run for office. That’s what people like about him,” a campaign spokesman said.

Osborn’s platform combines labor rights and raising Social Security taxes on the wealthy with the Trump-aligned priorities of border security, gun rights, and a permanent expansion of no tax on tips and overtime. A feature of his first campaign was his support for Trump’s border wall. “If Trump needs help building a wall, well, I’m pretty handy,” he said in one ad, which showed him holding a welding torch.