With less than a week to go before the midterms, most campaign managers are worrying about voter turnout, polls, and last-minute messaging. But for Camilo Vilaseca, Dan Osborn's campaign manager, more new leaked audio shows a different concern: he's worried about where Dan Osborn is going and, reportedly, what he's drinking.

In recordings, Vilaseca expresses concerns about Osborn's behavior on the campaign trail, including buying 99-cent shooters (the single-serving liquor bottles sold at gas station counters), and that staff worry about leaving Osborn alone. Vilaseca even worries that Osborn is slipping away from people assigned to watch him so he can go drink.

And Vilaseca thinks that Osborn may have been drinking when he was recorded trashing rural Nebraskans in one of the most damning audio leaks of this campaign cycle. This also casts other recordings that have battered Osborn's campaign in new light. This includes the time he attacked Sen. Deb Fischer, saying, "And I f***ing lost to that b***h"; criticizing his own campaign staff, saying "my field team f***ing sucks"; and his vulgar remarks on "fat chicks and big black c***."

(Editor's note: this clip contains adult language. Listener discretion is advised)

 

"But also, I think he was drunk in that clip, which is also another thing, I don't know where he was drinking, I don't know when that was. I don't know who he was talking to. But it kind of freaks me the f**k out that someone's recording him when he's drinking, and, like that's when he'll say more off-the-cuff s**t," Vilaseca says.

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"So for me on the damage control it's like, I don't know where he said any of this stuff," he continues. "Like, I don't know where he said that. I don't know where he said the whole, like, 'I can't run around the streets saying f**k ICE' clip. Like, I don't know where either of those are from. And that's a bigger, like, that's part of my problem right now. Like, if they do have more."

"I don't even worry about them having stuff from, like town halls or from meetings necessarily. I definitely f***ing worry about them having stuff from moments like this," Vilaseca says. "Basically, since I got here, Dan hasn't really been alone for anything. So, part of this is, either ... either he's like, when we're on the road he's sneaking out and then getting caught saying s**t or this all kind of happened before I got here. And if it all happened before I got here, then there's f***ing nothing I can do about it, right?"

In other remarks, Vilaseca talks about Osborn's drinking. 

"F***ing Dan Osborn drinks Busch Light," he says. "That and the f***ing 99 [cent] shooters. He said, 'Sometimes I'll be driving home from an event, f***ing hit the Casey's real quick, I need to get some shooters.'

There are multiple cities that have banned the sale of 99-cent shooters, citing problematic drinking. After Chelsea, Massachusetts banned them in 2018, public drunkenness fell and alcohol-related ambulance calls dropped sharply. People taken into protective custody for public intoxication also fell from 222 to 86 in a year, according to the Commonwealth Beacon. Chelsea Police Chief Keith Houghton told WPRI, "It wasn’t just the aesthetic problems, with bottles everywhere, we were dealing with public intoxication, we were taking people into protective custody and transporting them to the hospital." In 2023, Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo proposed a ban on 99-cent shooters, pointing to the toll on problem drinkers.

This is another blow for a campaign that has been in freefall for a while. The Osborn campaign has seen massive staff turnover, too. His communications director left in July after being recorded saying Osborn helped recruit Graham Platner in Maine and Osborn called her a liar. The campaign's data lead left, and so did longtime aide after the Flatwater Free Press found he tried to infiltrate and dissolve a rival party. Perhaps that's why, publicly, Vilaseca says Osborn has "the team to beat [Republican Pete Ricketts]" but expressing concerns privately about Osborn's behavior.