Exclusive | Nebraska GOP senator confident amid close re-election battle with Democrat-aligned independent

Nebraska Republican Sen.Deb Fischer is battling independent candidate Dan Osborn in her bid for a third term, and the polls are showing a race that’s too close for comfort in the normally reliably red state.

Fischer has a message for Nebraska voters: Don’t buy it.“I think it’s a close race because Nebraskans are confused by this race,” she told The Post in an interview.“My opponent’s not being honest about who he is.He’s running as an independent.

There was no Democrat that filed against me because the deal was that the Democrats would throw their support to this independent,” she added.Cook Political Report shifted Fischer’s race slightly leftward, from likely Republican to lean Republican.And a spate of late polling shows Osborn either leading or within striking distance of the incumbent Republican.

Internal polling from both camps indicates a close race, with a recent Fischer poll showing her up by 7 points and a recent Osborn poll showing him up by 6 points.Regardless, former President Donald Trump is easily expected to win four of the five electoral votes as part of its split system — it’s the only state besides Maine without a winner-take-all system.

There’s no Democrat in the Senate race, but Osborn has gained the support of many Democratic voters, using his background as a former union leader for food-processing workers and his service in the US Navy.He’s not the only independent candidate bleeding Republican votes this cycle.

The Associated Press revealed, for example, the “independent” candidate a Virginia House race, Robert Reid, got ballot access with the help of a Democrat-aligned group.Osborn went viral with his campaign’s “What’s on my jacket?” ad, which depicted a woman wearing a NASCAR-style coat emblazoned with the names and logos of corporations that have “sponsored” Fischer’s campaign, like Google, Northrop Grumman, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft.“The US Senate is a bunch of millionaires control...