Anti-Establishment Ben Sasse Surges to Virtual Tie in Nebraska GOP Senate Primary

After his YouTube video in which he blasted Obamacare and the Republican establishment in Washington for not combating it fiercely enough went viral late last year, conservative Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse has rocketed from obscurity to holding a virtual tie for the party’s Senate nomination.
A Harper Polling poll released Wednesday found that Sasse, the former Bush administration Health and Human Services Department official who is the country’s youngest president of a university (Midland), trails former Nebraska state Treasurer Shane Osborn by only one percentage point in the race to replace retiring Sen. Mike Johanns. Osborn is at 30 percent while Sasse is at 29. Both are within the poll’s margin of error of holding the lead. Two other candidates are running, and the winner of the May 13 primary will likely head to Washington.

Sasse’s campaign manager Tyler Grassmeyer said Sasse is gaining momentum because he is “THE anti-Obamacare candidate” who will “fight ObamaCare, and the worldview that goes along with it.”

“Ben is crisscrossing our state daily doing anti-ObamaCare town halls and attracting huge crowds,” he said. “Nebraska conservatives know we have to send the strongest, most conservative Nebraska voice to Washington.”

Last June, Sasse was at three percent in the same poll. He has since gained the endorsements of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the Club for Growth and had more than $1 million cash on hand at the end of 2013. Osborn, a former Navy pilot, has been endorsed by FreedomWorks and Steve Forbes. He also has the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who clashed with Sasse last year after Sasse said that it was time for “every Republican in Washington, starting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to show some actual leadership” in his anti-Obamacare video that the Drudge Report highlighted.

The Conservatives at Breitbart have the full article