Saturday night was a first for Rep. Ro Khanna of California.
The progressive Democrat flew to Omaha, Nebraska, and drove to the student center on the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s campus.
On a ballroom stage, he sat, flanked by a Libertarian to his right and a former Tea Party Republican to his left. Further down were seated a former RNC chairman and Dan Osborn, the candidate who brought the night’s “cross-party” panel together—a registered nonpartisan running for US Senate.
“I’ve worked with some Republicans on the hill, but I don’t think I’ve done a joint campaign event with them before,” Khanna told the crowd of a little more than 200 attendees. “That’s a credit to Dan for bringing us all together.” The visit wasn’t Khanna’s first to Nebraska.
The Osborn campaign called the finish line townhall event a “demonstration of Dan’s commitment to working across the aisle for Nebraska,” before voters hit the polls on Nov. 3.
The guests, according to the campaign, were united by a “mutual desire to get money out of politics, release the Epstein files, and end the war in Iran”—policy drum beats central to Osborn’s stump, which he’s shared across the state in his Independent bid’s 93-county campaign tour.
Osborn’s populist platform, downstream national pressure, and big spending on both sides has created a fiercely competitive reelection race for Republican incumbent US Sen. Pete Ricketts, the state’s multimillionaire former governor running for his first full term in Washington.
In 2026, Osborn makes his second run for office. The former Omaha union leader challenged Republican US Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, and while falling short, outperformed Democratic candidates like Kamala Harris by over seven points.
An unpopular Democratic brand and a near two-to-one Republican voter registration advantage has prompted a clear rhetorical strategy for the Ricketts campaign: paint Osborn as a hidden Democrat in Independent-sheep’s clothing.
It’s this narrative which Osborn sought to counter Saturday, joining Rep. Khanna onstage with Joe Walsh, a former Republican US House Rep. for Illinois’ 8th district; Marc Racicot, the former Governor of Montana and Chair of the Republican National Committee from 2001 to 2003; and Rachael Nelson, the former chair of the Nebraska Libertarian Party.
‘We need a kick in the ass’
Nelson moderated a discussion between the panelists before turning to audience questions. Each guest endorsed Osborn in their own words.
“Dan and I have not agreed in the past. We come from different backgrounds,” Nelson opened the event. “But no matter what we don’t agree on, he will come out, sit right next to you, and discuss it … Dan is not a polished, perfect politician. That’s exactly why we need him in office.”
Before the forum began, Sky and Amanda Roberts, the brother and sister-in-law of prominent Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts-Giuffre, shared a video message recalling their September visit to Omaha on a bookmobile tour of the Epstein files which Osborn visited.
“Dan has publicly supported releasing all of the Epstein files, and for families like us that means transparency, accountability, and prosecutions wherever the evidence may lead us,” Sky said, while Amanda resurfaced Osborn’s commitment to advocate for justice for Epstein’s survivors in the US Senate.
The Epstein investigation was Khanna’s connecting thread, as the Silicon Valley congressman has been a dogged advocate on the issue, most notably co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation alongside Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) which forced the Department of Justice to release government files tied to the Epstein sex trafficking ring.
Khanna and Massie introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, or Epstein 2.0, in July. Their newest measure would allow state attorneys general and survivors to sue the US Attorney General to demand full disclosures. Khanna said the Senate needs people like Osborn, who will “support what Massie and I are doing now.”
“The reality is, [Pete Ricketts] has not supported Epstein 2.0,” Khanna said. “We need a senator who’s going to stand with survivors and stand for justice from the Epstein class.”
“I’m here for the same reason you all are here. We’re broken. Our political system is broken. You know it. You feel it,” Walsh followed. “We need a kick in the ass, and it’s not going to happen unless guys like Dan Osborn go to Washington.”
Walsh, a popular figure in the Republican Tea Party movement, was elected to the US House in 2010 and served one term. He would later become a prominent Donald Trump critic on the right, challenging Trump for the 2020 Republican Presidential nomination. He left the Republican Party that year and switched his registration to Independent.
In 2025, Walsh registered with the Democratic Party. At the townhall, he called Trump a product of the broken political system he described.
“I don’t want to get in trouble for saying this. The one good thing about Donald Trump is this,” Walsh said, bracing as if the crowd would suddenly pelt him with tomatoes for the observation. “He’s so bad, so corrupt, so cruel, so divisive, and so lawless, he’s doing all this bad sh*t, but he’s finally waking the American people up to take this country back.”
“You’re not supposed to say sh*t in a public meeting,” Racicot, the 78-year-old elder statesman, joked.
Racicot served two terms as governor of Montana in the ‘90s, and was RNC chairman for two years. Like Walsh and Khanna, Racicot is a harsh critic of Trump. His pattern of endorsing Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden in 2020, led to his 2023 censure by the Montana Republican Party.
The Bush-era Republican said he could “hardly sleep” in anticipation of his Omaha visit for Osborn, calling his candidacy an “extraordinary opportunity to do something right for America.”
Racicot described a bygone era of politics, rid of the polarization and vitriol that has become increasingly extreme in the modern climate.
“How many of you feel like things just aren’t right in America?” he asked the crowd, whose hands unanimously shot up.
“To save your country, to save your democracy, work as hard as you can to support a candidate who speaks the truth,” Racicot gestured to Osborn. “He will not only serve in the US Senate, he will also influence the entire planet … It’s unique, but it’s justified.”
Black sheep
Osborn called the panel “a dream come true.”
“This is what I expect to do in Washington, DC, bringing people together around ideas we can agree on,” he said. “Stop working for the money in politics, stop working for super PACs and corporations, and work for the people.”
Saturday’s guest speakers acknowledged their political differences, but said they had a consensus on discontent with the campaign finance system.
“I don’t think I’ve heard of another candidate running for the US Senate who has put that issue within the top 10 issues that they are concerned about,” Racicot said. “We have to lay the system bare. It’s like a snake, serpentine, slinking around through the bushes and all different kinds of campaigns. We’ve got to cut off the head of the snake.”
While everyone on stage hailed from different political tribes, they all shared a black-sheep reputation of going against their respective grains.
Walsh and Racicot’s willingness to criticize Trump has led hard-line conservatives to peg them as “too liberal,” while Khanna has openly criticized mainstream Democratic leadership, branding himself a “New Deal Democrat, not a Chuck Schumer Democrat” and calling for the party’s “old guard” to step aside.
Osborn’s rejection of the two party system glued the stage together.
“I don’t know of many candidates running for office right now, who can put a libertarian, a progressive, a Tea Party guy, a Republican, and a bunch of independents in the same room,” Walsh noted. “That says something.”
“We should have listened to [George] Washington in the very beginning, in his farewell address, when he said political parties will ultimately lead to the destruction of the democracy,” Racicot chimed in. “That’s what has happened and that’s where we are.”
Facing the audience
Following the hour-long panel discussion, audience members lined up to ask questions of Osborn and his guests.
Questions touched on topics including school gun violence, data centers, surveillance, climate, transportation access, government reforms, and young people giving up on politics.
The first question of the night pertained to the state’s 2026 ballot measure seeking to cement an existing ban on trans athletes in student sports into the Nebraska constitution.
A self-described veteran asked Osborn whether he could say that people may oppose trans girls in sports, while opposing the statute’s enshrinement in the state’s basic governing document.
“That we at least have enough humanity not to put into our state constitution that trans people are second class citizens,” they asked. “Can you do that?”
“It’s fear. They try to rule by fear,” Osborn responded. “I really do truly think that this is all designed to be divisive. And I’m not playing that … I believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence: ‘Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness,’ full stop.”
The crowd applauded and Khanna cut in saying, while of the Hindu faith, he knows the scriptures teach that “every person has dignity and humanity.”
“I’m tired of a Democratic Party that has thrown the trans community under the bus. Thrown the immigrants under the bus. And run afraid of the issue,” the California Rep. said. “Shame on folks for reading the polls and saying, ‘It’s a 70-30 issue’ and ‘I’m not going to stand up for that’ … The American people will respect you if you have strength in your convictions. Not if you’re on every side of every issue. I want a Democratic Party that is strong again, that believes in things again, and that’s going to stand up for the dignity of every individual.”
In closing, Osborn shared with the crowd an old maxim in marketing: “The highest compliment a client can give is a referral.”
“The best thing you could do is not a crappy AI slob jingle on the radio or an attack ad. It just turns into white noise,” he said. “It is really a referral from a friend, a family member, and a neighbor. That is how grassroots campaigns win, and that’s how we’re going to win in Nebraska.
This event marked Osborn’s final big-ticket town hall before Election Day, set for Nov. 3.
