\n<\/p>\n
Juan Laguna Jr., the eldest son of two Mexican immigrants in central Nebraska, had never been to a political event until two Sundays ago. That\u2019s when he found himself, at age 20, in a large hall in his small town, listening to an independent named Dan Osborn make a pitch for the Senate.<\/p>\n
His family had just experienced a shock: The giant Tyson beef processing plant in the middle of Lexington, Neb., closed suddenly at the end of January, ripping the heart out of the town\u2019s economy and wiping out around 3,200 jobs<\/a>, including those of his parents \u2014 about a third of the population of the town.<\/p>\n Mr. Laguna didn\u2019t vote in 2024, the first year he was eligible. But when Mr. Osborn, a mechanic and former union leader, came to town, he agreed to join his oldest sister, his parents and their next door neighbor, to go listen. He wasn\u2019t sure if it would help, but it couldn\u2019t hurt, and he was desperate.<\/p>\n Lexington is an unlikely place for Mr. Osborn to visit: It\u2019s in a House district that President Trump won by 50 percentage points. The town itself is mostly Hispanic, a demographic shift that started in the early 1990s<\/a> when workers, largely from Mexico, came to work in the meat plant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Osborn wouldn\u2019t need to win the district to capture the Senate seat. He does, however, need to stem his losses in the reddest parts of the state by persuading enough people like the Lagunas to turn out and vote for him, while he runs up his margins in the blue cities of Omaha and Lincoln. That just might give him a shot at beating the Republican incumbent, Senator Pete Ricketts, a son of the founder of TD Ameritrade, an online brokerage.<\/p>\n Mr. Osborn\u2019s pitch, \u201cReplace a Billionaire with a Mechanic,\u201d sounds decidedly Democratic. But he is running as an independent, part of a line of left-leaning candidates in Idaho<\/a>, Montana<\/a>, and South Dakota<\/a>, who are trying to side step a Democratic brand that is toxic in much of the nation\u2019s midsection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The event was held next to the town\u2019s giant grain elevator complex, a series of soaring silos visible from almost anywhere in Lexington. The Lagunas got there early and sat in the back as volunteers in red T-shirts took names and gave out campaign buttons, bottles of water and salty snacks.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t left and right anymore, this is big versus little,\u201d said Mr. Osborn, his brown shirt embroidered with his name. \u201cWe have to look at the people who spend billions of dollars in our elections trying to keep the people that they want in power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Laguna, a maintenance worker at a pharmaceutical plant, had never been interested in politics. It felt far away from his life, and seemed to be more about team colors than solving people\u2019s problems. People he knew complained that politicians talked a lot but didn\u2019t do much, and that seemed right to him.<\/p>\n In 2024, he had just become eligible to vote, but he was not particularly pulled toward either candidate. Donald Trump was funny on TikTok, he said, and he liked the former president\u2019s pitch on the economy.<\/p>\n But he did not like how Mr. Trump talked about immigrants. Friends and family urged him to vote, he said, including his sister, who at the time was 16 and wasn\u2019t old enough yet.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt really pressured to be honest,\u201d he said, sitting with his family at his parents\u2019 kitchen table last month. \u201cI did not know who to vote for. And I just decided not to vote at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But in the year since came Mr. Trump\u2019s deportations. The immigration raids seem to be aimed at people like his parents, Mr. Laguna said, and his parents have invested more in America than almost anyone he knew.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They grew up poor in Mexico. His father, Juan Laguna Sr., moved to the United States when he was 13, to pick tomatoes in California. He found his way to Nebraska, first to a turkey processing plant, where he was so young his colleagues called him \u201cthe baby,\u201d then to the meat plant in Lexington.<\/p>\n