2026年5月12日 美国东部时间早上6:00 / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
作者：伊桑·科恩
2024年11月，在内布拉斯加州奥马哈市道格拉斯县选举委员会拍摄到的投票贴纸。
斯科特·摩根/路透社/资料图
“优秀”或“我们值得信赖的人”是候选人用来形容自己的常用语。
但在内布拉斯加州民主党参议院候选人辛迪·伯班克的竞选网站上，这些词汇并非用来描述她本人，而是用来指代另一位旨在击败共和党参议员皮特·里基茨的候选人：独立候选人丹·奥斯本。
周二举行的内布拉斯加州民主党参议院初选是今年最反常的初选之一，伯班克的竞选活动核心目标是阻止其对手威廉·福布斯成为民主党提名候选人。
民主党人士认为，支持唐纳德·特朗普总统、反对堕胎的乡村牧师福布斯是一枚“暗桩”，其目的是拿下民主党提名，分流投给海军退伍军人、工会领袖奥斯本的选票。他们希望伯班克在周二胜出，随后退出竞选，让民主党能够转而全力支持奥斯本。
相关报道 2024年8月19日，一名工作人员在芝加哥民主党全国代表大会上整理T恤。内森·霍华德/西帕美联社/资料图 这位支持特朗普的牧师或将让民主党失去内布拉斯加州参议院席位 时长5分钟
“威廉·福布斯参选并非为了服务内布拉斯加民众，而是为了欺骗选民。”内布拉斯加州民主党主席简·克莱布在3月份说道，“内布拉斯加州民主党经过深思熟虑且原则性地做出决定，不在美国参议院选举中推出官方候选人。”
福布斯告诉CNN，他是终身民主党党员，并表示民主党需要回归约翰·F·肯尼迪总统执政时期所代表的“道德准则”。
内布拉斯加州民主党将希望寄托在奥斯本身上。奥斯本在2024年的选举中仅以7个百分点之差惜败内布拉斯加州另一位共和党参议员，尽管当年特朗普在内布拉斯加州以超过20个百分点的优势胜出，而周二的初选里基茨在一众实力较弱的挑战者中占据压倒性优势，其得票率差距甚至更大。
尽管民主党早有计划，但福布斯和伯班克均在报名截止的最后一天宣布参选。
在内布拉斯加州共和党投诉称伯班克是“暗桩”后，该州共和党籍州务卿试图以“非善意候选人”为由将伯班克从选票上除名，但州最高法院推翻了这一决定。
伯班克告诉《纽约时报》，一旦奥斯本收集到足够 signatures以独立候选人身份参选，她就计划退出竞选。
“在明确我无法在11月大选中获胜之前，我会继续参选，之后我就会退出。”她说。
CNN记者安德鲁·卡钦斯基对本文亦有贡献。
Nebraska Democrats are boosting a Senate candidate. Her pitch: Help someone else win
2026-05-12 6:00 AM ET / CNN
By Ethan Cohen
Voting stickers are seen at the Douglas County Election Commission in Omaha, Nebraska, in November 2024.
Scott Morgan/Reuters/File
“Good” or “someone we can trust” are words you’d expect to find candidates using to describe themselves.
But on the website of Cindy Burbank, a Democrat running for Senate in Nebraska, they don’t describe her. They refer to another candidate running to defeat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts: independent Dan Osborn.
Tuesday’s Nebraska Democratic Senate race is one of the year’s strangest primary elections, as Burbank is running a campaign largely to block her opponent, William Forbes, from becoming the party’s nominee.
Democrats argue Forbes, a President Donald Trump-supporting, abortion-opposing pastor from rural Nebraska, is a plant who aims to win the Democratic line to siphon votes away from Osborn, a Navy veteran and union leader. They want Burbank to win on Tuesday so she can then drop out and allow the party to boost Osborn.
Related article A person organizes shirts at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19, 2024. Nathan Howard/Sipa USA/AP/File The Trump-voting pastor Democrats think could cost them a chance at a Nebraska Senate seat 5 min read
“William Forbes is not running to serve Nebraskans. He is running to trick voters,” Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said in March. “The Nebraska Democratic Party made a deliberate, principled decision not to field a candidate in the US Senate race.”
Forbes told CNN he’s a lifelong Democrat and said the party needed to return to the “morality” it represented under President John F. Kennedy.
Nebraska Democrats are pinning their hopes on Osborn, who came within 7 percentage points of defeating the state’s other Republican senator in 2024, even as Trump won Nebraska by more than 20 and Ricketts, who is heavily favored against a small field of primary challengers Tuesday, won by an even larger margin.
However, despite the party’s plans, Forbes and Burbank both jumped into the primary on the last day of filing.
Following a complaint from the state Republican Party in which it called Burbank a “plant,” Nebraska’s GOP secretary of state attempted to block Burbank from the ballot as not a “good faith candidate,” a move the state Supreme Court reversed.
Burbank told The New York Times that she planned to drop out assuming Osborn collects enough signatures to make the ballot as an independent.
“I will stay in until it is obvious that I cannot win in November, and I will drop out,” she said.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski contributed to this report.
发表回复