Challenging the Political Establishment with a Blue-Collar Agenda – LA Progressive
“In his campaign for the U.S. Senate, Dan Osborn, who led a prominent labor strike against Kellogg’s in 2021, plans to bring together a coalition of farmers, union laborers and small business owners.”
“Recent studies of lawmakers in the United States have found that less than 2% of those serving on Capitol Hill held blue-collar jobs before they were elected. That percentage drops even further among the nearly 7,300 state legislators across all 50 states, according to researchers at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago, who found that only 81 of those legislators were previously employed in working-class jobs. Dan Osborn, a 48-year-old building trades worker, is a rare example of a candidate working to increase those numbers.
“Osborn is running a labor-backed independent bid for U.S. Senate this year in Nebraska. His opponent, Sen. Deb Fischer, the 73-year-old Republican incumbent first elected in 2012, pledged to serve only two terms, but is now seeking a third. Fischer has built a $2.7 million re-election war chest with support from defense contractors, Senate Republican colleagues and AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).”