SEE IT: Billboards emerge as GOP campaign trolls ‘fake Independent’ Senate candidate with socialist theme

FIRST ON FOX — When Nebraska Democrats gather in Omaha Friday to attend a gala headlined by former President Joe Biden, they’ll be greeted by a mobile-billboard blitz that will link a Senate candidate to some highly recognizable — and polarizing — rising figures in the Democratic Party.

The campaign to re-elect Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., is deploying mobile billboard trucks with bold, neon graphics portraying his rival, Independent candidate Dan Osborn, as a “fake Independent” and part of the Democratic Party’s far-left future, along with New York City’s socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and controversial Maine candidate Graham Platner.

“Nebraska Democrats’ brand is too toxic to run a candidate under the party label,” Ricketts campaign Communications Director Will Coup told Fox News Digital. “Even though Fake Dan Osborn doesn’t have a D next to his name, he still supports the party’s most far-left beliefs.”

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Dan Osborn, left, an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, is being linked by the re-election campaign for Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, center, and Graham Platner, right, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine.  (Sophie Park/Getty Images)

Biden is delivering remarks at the Nebraska Democratic Party’s 2025 Ben Nelson Gala in downtown Omaha. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn were also invited as featured speakers.

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Omaha is considered a “blue dot” in Republican-leaning Nebraska. Nebraska is one of only two states that splits its electoral votes by congressional district, and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, typically votes for the Democratic presidential nominee. 

While the district voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, Republican Rep. Don Bacon nevertheless won re-election for his U.S. House seat in that same district. Bacon is not seeking re-election in 2026. 

While Osborn is running as an Independent, Chair Jane Kleeb has affirmed the Nebraska Democratic Party is “supporting” his bid to unseat Ricketts, the two-term senator and former Nebraska governor.

The re-election campaign for Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., launched mobile billboards in Omaha, Nebraska, tying Independent candidate Dan Osborn to Democrats on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. (Ricketts’ Campaign)

“Nebraska Democrats proudly support Dan Osborn,” will be the message on one of the three mobile billboards.

The Ricketts campaign has called Osborn a “fake” Independent — another message that will be on display around downtown Omaha Friday.

“Osborn’s campaign is even staffed by the same people who ran Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York. A communist, a socialist, and a Fake Independent: that’s the best the Democratic Party has to offer,” Coup told Fox News Digital.

Mamdani and Osborn share 28-year-old media strategist, Morris Katz, as reported by Vanity Fair.

Katz is also the media strategist for Graham Platner, the controversial candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Maine next year.

Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., arrives on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023.  (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Between 2020 and 2021, Platner posted and has since deleted Reddit posts calling himself a “communist,” which he recently said he was “joking” about.

Platner has faced calls to drop out of his Senate race, and a top campaign staffer resigned after he faced backlash for photos revealing that he had a tattoo resembling the Totenkopf used by Hitler’s SS paramilitary forces.

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An image of Platner with “communist” plastered across his face will be featured on one of the mobile billboards, alongside the message “fake ‘Independent'” on Osborn and “socialist” on Mamdani, above a slogan describing the “future of the Democratic Party.”

Osborn, a union leader who ran as an Independent against Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., last year, is now mounting his second straight bid to unseat a sitting Republican in the U.S. Senate.

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Fox News Digital reached out to the Nebraska Democratic Party, Biden, Platner and Mamdani for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.