Vice President Joe Biden tried to call Republican Sen. Pat Roberts on Election Day in an effort to discuss Biden’s statement that Roberts’ opponent Greg Orman, who has campaigned as an independent, will join Senate Democrats if elected.
Biden made the statement Tuesday morning during an interview with WPLR radio in New Haven, Conn. The vice president expressed confidence that Democrats will hold on to Senate control, saying he believes Democrats will win in Alaska, North Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana. And then this: “I think we have a chance of picking up an independent who will be with us in the state of Kansas.”
Biden’s words were explosive in Kansas, where Orman has been fighting Roberts’ accusation that Orman is a Democrat in disguise. Here was the Democratic vice president, appearing to give the game away.
The Orman campaign tried to brush it off, but the Roberts campaign jumped on the story, quickly recording a midday robocall that would be sent to one million households in Kansas. “Vice President Joe Biden admitted that Greg Orman will become a Democrat in the U.S. Senate, even though Orman is denying it to Kansas voters,” a recorded voice said, urging voters to go to the polls to vote for “the only Republican” in the race, Pat Roberts.
Republican sources in Kansas say Biden’s office called both Roberts’ campaign manager and his Senate chief of staff in an effort to speak to the senator. “He wants to walk it back,” one Republican strategist speculated. “It’s been getting a lot of play here. But the whole point is, it’s what everyone knows.”
Biden did not get through. The two men, who were colleagues across the aisle in the Senate for years, didn’t talk.
