Cindy Burbank, a 62-year-old retired pharmacy technician, won the Democratic Senate primary on May 12 in Nebraska, setting up an unusual race for Republican incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts.
The strange part? Burbank pledged that if she won and did not see a clear path to victory, she would drop out of the election in November and endorse Dan Osborn, a populist independent who came within 7 percentage points of winning a 2024 Senate race in the reliably Republican state.
Osborn, 51, finished with considerably better results than the 21-point thumping former Vice President Kamala Harris received from President Donald Trump in the Cornhusker State.
Burbank won with about 90% of the vote over William Forbes, according to The Associated Press. Forbes, a 79-year-old pastor, is a registered Democrat but voted for Trump three times and attended a Republican training event earlier this year, according to a March 30 CNN report.
Nebraska Democrats decried his last-minute candidacy as an example of the GOP meddling in their primary with a scheme to siphon votes away from Osborn in the fall.
