Overland Park, Kansas
Greg Orman, the independent candidate running against Kansas GOP senator Pat Roberts, did the best he could at a debate Wednesday to fend off accusations that he’s really just a liberal Democrat pretending to be a centrist. There was a lot of non-ideological talk about how we need to get “certainty around things like transportation funding.” There was plenty of blame cast on both parties. “Pat Roberts will tell you that Harry Reid and Barack Obama are the reason Washington is such a mess. He’s half right,” said Orman, who has promised to caucus with whichever party wins a majority. “But the other half of the mess is Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts. The truth is both parties are more interested in playing political games than problem-solving.”
And there were even some feints to the right. “We need to relax the Dodd-Frank regulations that relate to community banks and regional banks,” Orman said. “These weren’t the banks that were responsible for bringing our financial industry to the brink of collapse.”
Pat Roberts, who has been beleaguered by residency issues, a tough primary, and his own lackluster personality on the campaign trail, has struggled to draw a clear ideological contrast against Orman, a businessman without a voting record. But Roberts highlighted the fact that Orman has donated to many Democrats and even ran for office as a Democrat in 2008 (in his current race Orman has hired Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffers). When Roberts pointed to Orman’s donations to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as proof he’s a liberal Democrat, Orman shot back by pointing out that he “gave money to Scott Brown in Massachusetts in 2010 precisely because he was the vote that was supposed to prevent the Affordable Care Act from becoming law.”
But after the debate ended, it became clear that Orman’s task of being (or at least appearing to be) a straight-shooting and scrupulous centrist isn’t as easy as it looks. Orman describes himself as pro-choice on the issue of abortion, but during a brief press conference after the debate he declined to say how he’d vote on the two abortion bills—one prohibiting taxpayer-funding and the other banning late-term abortion—most likely to come up for a vote in the Senate in the near future.
Orman said he needs to read the bills first, but he refused to say if he would tell voters where he stands before they head to the polls in less than a month:
ORMAN: You know, what I’ve said on that issue is that as a man–
TWS: But on these specific bills, could you say yes or no?
ORMAN: I’ll get there. What I’ve said on these issues that as a man I’m not going to face those decisions and I trust the women of Kansas are smart and they should be able to make those decisions on their own. I do however agree on some reasonable restrictions. I thought the restriction on partial-birth abortion makes sense and I would have voted for that restriction. And as it relates to taxpayer-funding, I don’t believe we should be funding abortions.
TWS: So you’d vote for the no-taxpayer funding bill?
ORMAN: But I need to read the bills before I can comment.
TWS: Will you comment on that before the election? On those two specific bills, those are the ones in the Senate right now that would be before you.
ORMAN: We’ll have our people take a look at it–
TWS: But you can’t give people an answer before you face the voters?
ORMAN: Once again, we will go ahead, and I try to read every bill before I say whether or not I’d support it, and I’ll read those bills.
Immigration could also prove to be a dicey issue for Orman. During the debate, he disputed Roberts’ claim that he supports amnesty for illegal immigrants. But when I asked Orman during the press conference if he would vote for the 2013 Senate immigration bill if it comes up in a future Congress, he replied: “I would.”
“John McCain, Lindsey Graham, 14 Republican senators supported that bill. They do not believe it’s an amnesty bill,” Orman continued. “They believe it’s commonsense comprehensive immigration reform. Like those Republican senators and like Senator Dole before them, I’d want to have a very practical policy on immigration reform, and not one that’s driven simply to win elections.” Roberts voted against the 2013 bill.
Perhaps the most difficult issue for Orman is how he would handle Obamacare. As he was walking away from his press conference, I asked Orman three times if he would vote to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate. He didn’t say a word.
Orman has kept his media interviews and public appearances to a bare minimum, presumably to avoid taking too clear of a position on any one issue that could sink him in a relatively conservative state like Kansas. But two new polls released Wednesday suggest that Orman might not be able to run out the clock. According to a Fox poll, Roberts leads Orman by 5 points (44 percent to 39 percent), and CNN found Roberts one point ahead of Orman (49 percent to 48 percent). Orman still holds a 2.5-point lead over Roberts in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
