Pharmacy technician Cindy Burbank emerged victorious Tuesday in an unusual Nebraska Democratic Senate primary where the top two candidates accused each other of political trickery.
Burbank defeated pastor William Forbes by a 90%- 9% margin — but she won’t take on incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) in the general election, having pledged to drop out of the race before November to make way for independent Dan Osborn.
Osborn has been endorsed by the Nebraska Democratic Party, who view the industrial mechanic, union leader and Navy veteran as the best candidate to take on Ricketts.
“The moral of the story: Vote for Cindy Burbank in the Primary Election today, not the fake Democrat plant, William ‘Bill’ Forbes!” the Nebraska Democratic Party urged voters in an X post Tuesday. “This is the way to break up the one-party rule in Nebraska. It starts with voting for Cindy!”
On her bare-bones campaign website, Burbank accuses Ricketts of “putting in a candidate loyal to him in the DEMOCRATIC primary – to split the vote against him, so he wins easily.”
“He’s running an anti-abortion activist named Bill Forbes, who has posted in support of Pete Ricketts!” Burbank charges. “He knows he’s losing to Dan Osborn and this is his plan to cheat his way to victory. We can’t let that happen.”
“Support me – and I’ll make sure Pete Ricketts’s stooge never gets anywhere near our November ballot!”
While Forbes has acknowledged previously voting for President Trump and attending training sessions put on by the conservative Leadership Institute, he denies being a plant — arguing Burbank is the “fake Democrat.”
“I’ve been a Democrat my entire life — not when it was convenient,” Forbes said in a statement posted on his campaign website.
“Dan Osborn isn’t a Democrat at all,” he continued. “Real Nebraska Democrats should be uniting behind candidates who actually share our values instead of helping this interloper hijack our primary.”
Forbes called Burbank a “self-admitted placeholder and a disloyal hack being used as a tool to sabotage the Democratic primary and clear the path for another insider.”
“If she were truly a Democrat,” he said of Burbank, “she wouldn’t be meddling in our party’s race to help the billionaires rig the outcome.”
“This fake Democrat needs to drop out immediately and stop undermining real Democrats who actually want to win.”
A survey released Monday by a Democrat-aligned pollster showed both Burbank and Forbes losing to Ricketts in a general election contest, but Osborn coming out on top.
The Tavern Research poll showed Ricketts with a 16 point advantage over Forbes; 9 point edge over Burbank; but trailing Osborn by 5 points, in a 47%-42% contest.
“What they are trying to do is fool Nebraska voters,” Ricketts said of the Democratic primary, in an interview on the “Scott Jennings Show.”
“The Democrat brand is so damaged in the Midwest that they know they can’t win statewide by running a Democrat,” the senator argued.
“It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to go, ‘Hey, look, if the Democrats are endorsing [Osborn], and the Democrat who wins the Democrat primary is even going to drop out if she wins, in favor of this guy, I guess that this guy is really a Democrat.’”
