WICHITA, Kan. — The intense battle for Senate control could hinge on whether Kansas voters dislike Majority Leader Harry Reid more than they hate Congress.
Independent businessman Greg Orman is mounting a campaign that builds on broad frustration with Washington dysfunction, while Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is trying to tie Orman to the Democratic majority in the Senate.
An Orman adviser told the Washington Examiner that his campaign “has nothing to do with Pat Roberts,” adding: “It’s a very simple campaign: The system is fundamentally broken; Pat Roberts is of the system — 47 years a part of the system.”
Roberts, meanwhile, told reporters the problem was just the Democrats.
“That’s the issue,” he told reporters following an afternoon fundraiser in Wichita. “We have to take back the Senate, end the gridlock and not have a Senate run by Harry Reid and run on behalf of Barack Obama, instead of the people.”
Republicans need to win a net of six Senate seats to assume control of the Senate in January, and a Roberts loss could help Democrats narrowly hang on. The senator has raised more than $1 million over the last few weeks as Republicans around the country have acknowledged the competitive nature of this race and come to his aid.
Kansas has consistently elected Republicans to the Senate since the 1930s, yet Roberts trailed Orman in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average by 5.3 percentage points. The most recent survey, from USA Today, showed Roberts lagging behind Orman 46 percent to 41 percent. The poll, of 500 likely voters, was conducted Saturday through Tuesday and had a margin of error of four percentage points.
Roberts is planning a multi-prong strategy to turn things around. His plan involves the use of positive testimonials from Kansas icon such as former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the GOP presidential nominee in 1996; excoriating attacks on Orman’s honestly and trustworthiness, and a thorough examination of an investment career that made him a multimillionaire.
But the heart of Roberts’ pitch has much to do with Reid as it does with Orman.
The senator is running a distinctly national campaign, telling voters in this majority-Republican state that ending Reid’s hold on the Senate and checking Obama’s power is what matters most. Undergirding Roberts’ message is a subtle plea to overlook whatever frustration and disappointment they might feel toward him as a career politician who has been dogged by criticism that he doesn’t have strong ties to the state.
This argument has helped Roberts make headway in consolidating the Republican base after a bruising GOP primary against Tea Party candidate Milton Wolf.
“Harry Reid would do anything to maintain his job. I would vote for anybody that was running Republican in that race — seriously, because I don’t want to lose it,” said Marcia Jorgensen, a 65 year-old retiree from Overland Park, Kan. “It’s a Harry Reid thing for me, all day long.”
This week, Orman was dragged into the type of traditional political campaign he is trying to avoid. Charged by Roberts with supporting “amnesty” for illegal immigrants because of his stated support for the bipartisan “gang of eight” immigration reform bill that passed the Senate in 2013, Orman responded with a television spot critical of Roberts for failing to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants.
“The truth, Orman opposes amnesty,” the ad’s voiceover says.
Still, Orman’s broad strategy is to avoid as much as possible taking positions on key issues that he could be forced to vote on if elected to the Senate. Orman said he would have voted against the Affordable Care Act but has declined to say whether he would vote to repeal Obamacare. Republicans vow to bring a repeal bill to the floor next year if they win control of the chamber in November.
Orman is additionally vague on who he which party he would caucus with, although he promises to join the Republicans if they win “firm” control of the Senate in the midterm elections.
Part of this strategy is practical. Orman is wooing Kansas Democrats with suggestions that he will guarantee Senate control for their party. Simultaneously, he can’t afford to alienate too many Republicans, who constitute a majority of registered voters.
But the Orman campaign seems content to absorb charges of evasion and political opportunism — at least to a point — because they want the issue that defines the race to be Washington, D.C., and the Congress.
Getting into debates with Roberts over how Orman would vote on hypothetical legislation or which party he would caucus with smacks of Washington process and insider politics. The Orman campaign believes that would distract from its most effective message.
“Washington is so focused in on, you’ve got to be this or you’ve got to be that. And the voters are saying” that they don’t care, the Orman adviser said. Nobody cares about “this caucus thing,” the Orman adviser added, referring to questions about how Orman would vote on new legislation as a political “Kabuki dance.”
“His job, as an independent senator, is going to be to the benefit of Kansas, to try to get the government to work,” the adviser said.
