Nebraska primaries: Ricketts faces GOP challengers and Democrats pick Senate nominees

Nebraska’s primaries Tuesday put the focus on the U.S. Senate contest, where Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts is seeking a full term after taking office in 2023 and winning a special election in 2024. The ballot also includes races for governor, the state Legislature and Congress, and state officials and election-watchers will be tracking both turnout and vote-count timing as results come in.

The AP Decision Team highlighted the Senate contest as the top matchup because it pits Ricketts against an expected general-election challenge from independent Dan Osborn, an industrial mechanic and military veteran who lost to Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024 by 7 points. Ricketts faces four Republican primary challengers, while Democrats choose their nominee in a contest between Cindy Burbank, a pharmacy technician and community college instructor, and Bill Forbes, a pastor.

The Democratic Party’s planned path to the general election depends on which Democratic nominee emerges from the primary and how the party handles a rare setup involving an independent. The Nebraska Democratic Party supports Burbank for the primary and Osborn for the general election, and it originally planned not to field a general-election candidate so supporters would coalesce behind Osborn. Democratic leaders said Forbes’ late entry into the primary, along with his past statements and political positions, prompted allegations that he entered so that a Democrat would be on the fall ballot and siphon votes away from Osborn, potentially helping Ricketts.

Forbes denied that allegation, and state records indicate he is a registered Democrat. Burbank, a late entrant herself, said keeping Forbes off the November ballot was a major priority of her campaign, and she wrote on her website that Osborn “deserves a fair shot against Ricketts.”

Election administration also factored into the Democratic ballot. Nebraska’s Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen had removed Burbank from the ballot in March after a complaint filed by the Republican Party of Nebraska alleged she was not running in good faith. The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered Burbank back on the ballot, setting up the Democratic primary that voters will decide Tuesday.

The AP report said the Senate primary is not expected to generate record fundraising. Burbank had received about $4,300 for her campaign as of April 22, while Forbes reported zero monetary contributions.

Across the rest of Nebraska’s ticket, the AP said Republican Gov. Jim Pillen faces five primary challengers for governor. On the Democratic side, frequent candidate Larry Marvin and former state Sen. Lynne Walz compete for the nomination, and Marvin has previously run for U.S. Senate four times since 2012. In Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, six active candidates are running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, while Omaha City Councilmember Brinker Harding is unopposed for the Republican nomination.

The state Legislature races are nonpartisan, but the AP said many candidates run with Republican or Democratic backing. Each district’s contest will produce two winners to advance to the general election even though voters can vote for only one candidate.

Election-night logistics are also set. All Nebraska polls close simultaneously at 9 p.m. ET, and the AP said it does not make projections. The AP will declare a winner only after determining that no scenario allows a trailing candidate to close the gap, and if a race has not been called it will continue to cover newsworthy developments such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory while explaining why it has not yet declared a winner. The AP also noted that Nebraska recounts are automatic if the vote margin is 1% of the total vote or less in races where more than 500 votes are cast, and it may still declare a winner if the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Here are the basic voting and counting factors the AP said it will monitor as results are tallied, including party-only ballot rules and the timing of early votes. Nebraska voters registered with a political party may vote only in their own party’s primary, meaning Democrats cannot vote in the Republican primary and vice versa; voter ID is required. As of May 1, Nebraska had about 1.3 million registered voters, including about 621,000 Republicans and about 328,000 Democrats, and the AP said about 219,000 votes were cast in each of the two Republican U.S. Senate primaries in 2024, or about 18% of registered voters at the time. The AP said about 39% of the Republican primary vote and about 65% of the Democratic primary vote was cast before Election Day in both the 2022 and 2024 primaries, and it reported that as of Thursday about 56,000 Republican ballots and about 49,000 Democratic ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election. The AP said more than three-quarters of Nebraska’s 93 counties tend to release all or nearly all of their early and absentee results in the first vote update, while nearly two-thirds of counties tend to release no or relatively few in-person Election Day results in their first report, including Douglas and Lancaster counties. The AP also said it expects many counties’ early releases to arrive before Election Day results from in-person voting are widely available.