TOPEKA, Kan. — Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and independent Greg Orman have scrambled to assemble capable voter turnout operations as their Senate face-off goes down to the wire in this unlikely midterm battleground.
When Roberts’ new team took over his foundering campaign three weeks ago, they discovered an operation that hadn’t ordered any yard signs and a headquarters that didn’t have a computer printer or its own Internet service. Those problems were quickly rectified, and now Roberts is working closely with the Kansas GOP to build a ground game and integrate it with that of Gov. Sam Brownback, who also is in a dogfight but was more prepared.
Orman has led Roberts in recent polls, and Brownback trailed Democrat Paul Davis by 2.8 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys. This has prompted the Republican National Committee to shift what a GOP source described as “limited” resources to usually reliably conservative Kansas in recent weeks. The RNC has a political operative in the state and is paying for direct mail advertising and voter canvassing.
“Roberts has a much smaller ground team, they just didn’t get it built up,” Kansas GOP executive director Clayton Barker told the Washington Examiner.
Orman has his own challenges.
As an independent, he doesn’t have the access to the kind of professionally run ground game that a political party can provide. If the race boils down to a few percentage points or less, the Orman campaign might suffer for lack of being able to identify and turn out voters. The Orman camp claims an enthusiastic statewide volunteer army of 600 plus, and growing, but concedes they are at a disadvantage.
“It’s hard, no doubt about it,” an Orman campaign official said, adding that they are trying to do “something that’s never been done.”
In Washington and Kansas, Democrats have worked hard behind the scenes to boost Orman. They pushed the nominated Democratic Senate candidate, Chad Taylor, off the ballot to create a more favorable head-to-head matchup with Roberts, and have been providing Orman with strategic advice. Help from the national and state Democratic parties could help him neutralize the GOP’s operational edge.
The Kansas Democratic Party did not respond to an email request to comment regarding whether Orman figured in to their midterm election plans. Meanwhile, the differences between Orman’s campaign and the Republican infrastructure boosting Roberts are stark.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Johnson County Republican Party headquarters in Overland Park was humming. A steady stream of young people showed up to man phone banks for Brownback and Roberts. Retirees slipped in and out to assemble yard signs for the two Republicans at the top of the ticket, and to stuff literature packets to be used by volunteer door-to-door canvassers.
The strip mall storefront in this Kansas City, Mo., suburb, the closest thing the state has to a legitimate electoral battleground, didn’t hold any more than two dozen GOP activists at any point during a two-hour stretch Tuesday. But it was professionally run, with experienced organizers who knew how and where to plug in arriving volunteers who appeared equally adept at handling the assigned tasks.
“I think Roberts does have a real race on his hands. I think he’s up to it,” said Marearl Denning, 69, an artist and retiree who helped open the Johnson County Republican Party headquarters just after the 2008 elections and was on hand Tuesday afternoon to coordinate volunteer activities.
It was a different story in Shawnee, another Johnson County community 15 minutes northwest. There, in another nondescript strip mall storefront, the Orman campaign was trying to build a political party organization from scratch.
In a Tuesday evening event at campaign headquarters to recruit help, aides conducted basic tutorials for prospective campaign volunteers. After introductory remarks by Orman’s wife, Sybil, to welcome the approximately 50 who showed up, campaign aides asked everyone to break into groups based on which get-out-the-vote activities they felt comfortable performing.
Each group gathered near a large sign-up sheet, with an aide explaining the basics of each task. For instance, a staffer talking to the group interested in voter canvassing explained that everyone would report to a regional leader. Would the campaign tell canvassers what to say, asked one prospective volunteer. Yes, the aide explained, everyone would be provided with scripts so that they knew what to say when they knocked on doors.
Sybil Orman, during her short remarks, said that the “one thing that’s really interesting about being an independent is, first off, we are what grassroots is all about, because we don’t have anything built in.” About her husband, she added: “Kansas needs him. They need his brilliance; they need his heart; they need his strength, they need his perseverance … You all are going to be essential. We can’t do it without you.”
This story was first published on Oct. 1 at 3:57 p.m.
