Republicans have a simple strategy for how to campaign against a slate of independent candidates running for Senate seats in red states: Take every opportunity to tie them to Democrats.
In Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho and Montana, Republican Senate candidates are running against independents who have held the Democratic Party at arm’s length in order to make competitive runs. These are states where Democratic candidates have flopped in recent years.
Now Democrats are making the case that the independents — who they hope would caucus with their party, even as some of them have said they would not — stand a chance of defeating Republicans because of the current political environment.
“If the Democrats are calling me a Republican, and the Republicans are calling me a Democrat, I’m doing something right. So that’s what I’m going with,” Brian Bengs, the independent running against Republican Sen. Mike Rounds in South Dakota, told NOTUS.
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Republicans, however, believe the Democratic Party’s brand is noxious enough that they can effectively beat the independent candidates just by continuing to point out how Democrats are embracing them.
That’s how it’s playing out in Nebraska, where Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts is vying against independent Dan Osborn.
“Our approach is straightforward: expose the truth about Dan Osborn’s far-left views and the Democrat infrastructure behind his campaign,” Ricketts’ deputy campaign manager, Max Oberg, told NOTUS in a statement.
“[Democrats] know their brand is so toxic in these states that they’re just going to try to put a false label on progressive candidates,” Oberg added.
Republicans are pointing out that some Democrats, like Cindy Burbank in Nebraska, David Roth in Idaho and Julian Beaudion in South Dakota, dropped out of their races to allow the independent candidates in their states the opportunity to consolidate voting blocs.
“There were two Democrat candidates in the race, and now there is one,” Sen. James Risch of Idaho told the Idaho State Journal in a statement, after Roth dropped out of the race to pave the way for independent candidate Todd Achilles. “Idaho remains one of the most Republican states in the nation, and I am proud to consistently deliver conservative votes for our state.”
The Democratic nominee in Montana did not withdraw despite mounting calls to drop out to allow a two-way race between the Republican candidate and independent Seth Bodnar.
The Republican campaigns have also pointed to some of the independents’ presence on ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform; Osborn, Bengs and Bodnar have all used it to raise money. On its site, ActBlue says it allows independent candidates on a “case-by-case basis” if they meet criteria the platform has set up.
Osborn has raised more than $5.7 million as of June 30, Federal Election Commission records show. At that point during his 2024 run against Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, in which he ran as an independent, Osborn had raised around $1.6 million. The boost in fundraising suggests growing interest in his race this cycle since he came within 7 percentage points of Fischer two years ago.
Bengs has raised more than $780,000 as an independent as of June 30 — an approximately $630,000 jump from what he raised in the same period in 2022, when he ran as a Democrat against now-Senate Majority Leader John Thune, according to FEC records.
“Bengs is out there using ActBlue and the Democrat machine to raise money, which should also tell everyone that he’s a Democrat,” Rob Skjonsberg, a senior campaign adviser to Rounds, told NOTUS.
Still, most of the Republicans have outraised their opponents by millions. As of June, 30 Ricketts raised more than $11.4 million; Risch more than $4 million; and Rounds more than $4.5 million.
Republicans are leaning on referring to the independents as democratic socialists and associating them with the views of progressives running elsewhere, calling them “fake independents.” It’s reflective of their broader playbook against Democratic candidates.
“Dan Osborn, Brian Bengs, Todd Achilles, and Seth Bodnar would work in lockstep with the toxic socialist Democrats to enact their woke agenda and raise taxes for American working families,” Bernadette Breslin, who serves as national press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee — Senate Republicans’ campaign arm — told NOTUS in a statement.
Democrats would have to flip a net of four seats in order to take control of the Senate.
Osborn, a navy veteran running to unseat Ricketts in Nebraska, is seen by political analysts as having the best shot of the independents. Although he has the endorsement of labor groups often associated with Democrats such as the United Auto Workers union, he also supports cutting federal spending.
In April, the Cook Political Report moved the Nebraska Senate race from solid Republican to likely Republican.
“If voters are convinced that this is a politician who is not going to be tethered to either party in a state like Nebraska and a year like 2026, yeah, Dan Osborn has a real shot,” Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a “center left” think tank, told NOTUS.
Candidates like Osborn are making sure to keep their distance from Democrats. Although Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said on X the party supported Osborn, he told CNN on Aug. 23 he planned “on remaining an independent.”
Osborn’s campaign did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
“The reason that Dan Osborn and this independent movement has started was because Dan Osborn ran against [Sen.] Deb Fischer two years ago and got closer than anybody thought he would as an independent,” Mary Jane Truemper, the chair of the Nebraska Republican Party, told NOTUS.
Kurt Alme, Montana’s Republican candidate, has followed similar talking points to other Republicans. Breitbart News Network reported he called Bodnar a “Democrat in disguise.”
“I’m running for Senate as an Independent because Washington is broken, and Party bosses in DC are too busy fighting each other while families in our state face higher costs and fewer opportunities,” Bodnar told NOTUS in a statement.
Bengs and Achilles have considerably lower chances of pulling off an upset, Larry Sabato, a political analyst and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told NOTUS. But they have been targeted by Republican campaigns in nearly identical ways.
Both independent candidates have past connections to the Democratic Party. Bengs ran as a Democrat in 2022 and Achilles was elected to the Idaho state House as a Democrat in 2024. Both candidates told NOTUS they plan to join the Senate as independents and, while they acknowledge their past Democratic affiliations, Bengs and Achilles said they plan to caucus as independents.
Still, those commitments haven’t changed the Republican playbook against them.
“Our strategy is simple: tell the truth about Todd Achilles. He’s a liberal Democrat masquerading as an ‘independent’ and his record makes this clear,” Marc Kilmer, Risch’s campaign manager, told NOTUS in a statement.
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