Pete Ricketts

Would it be rooted in the unglamorous party building that Kansas Democrats have been engaging in since their shocking victory in 2022, when a referendum limiting abortion rights failed to pass? Or would it be harnessed by a superstar candidate who arrived without warning, like a high plains thunderclap? Perhaps winning in a state like Kansas or Nebraska meant abandoning two-party politics entirely.

When I spoke to Dan Osborne, the Omaha mechanic running for Senate as an independent against the billionaire scion Pete Ricketts, he alluded to George Washington's farewell address, in which he warned that if they took hold, parties would become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.

You think about the way the two parties operate, Osborne said.

It's all stoking people's fears.

Cabela's was important to me, she said.

All I wanted to do was retire there.

Over breakfast in Omaha with Dan Osborne, I asked him what it would take to channel the anger of Nebraskans like Storm into an upset of Pete Ricketts.

I talk about policies that hurt people, he said.

In Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan, one by ten, wasn't close.

The one kind of Republican hold outside of Florida was Pete Ricketts in Nebraska.

He ended up winning by six, which we can talk about a little bit more if you want.

New Hampshire Democrat Chris Pappas won by 14.