Kansas’ Republican Sen. Pat Roberts emerged victorious in his Senate re-election bid Tuesday, capping one of the more unpredictable political races of 2014.
Roberts was more than eight percentage points ahead of independent challenger Greg Orman, with three-fourths of precincts reporting, according to CNN, which called the race for the Republican.
Roberts, who survived a brutal GOP primary in the conservative bastion, was forced to slug it out again when the Democratic Senate nominee was removed from the ballot and replaced by Orman.
Orman framed himself as a true independent beholden to neither Democrats nor Republicans in Washington, a message that gained traction and forced Roberts to overhaul his campaign. It didn’t hurt that the 45-year-old Orman is more than three decades younger than Roberts.
Roberts countered by suggesting Orman would eventually fall in lockstep with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. And Orman was grilled by the Roberts campaign for a lack of concrete policy proposals.
Roberts was buoyed by support from GOP mainstays Bob Dole, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The victory was never easy for Roberts.
Ahead of the GOP primary against Milton Wolf, Roberts was forced to confront charges that he did not have a residence in Kansas, an accusation that further cemented his image as a Washington insider, critics argued.
That the Senate contest carried so much drama, in a state Romney carried by 20 points in 2012, proved to be one of the real oddities of the 2014 election cycle.
For Republicans, however, the win in Kansas limits the total number of pick-ups they need to gain control of the Senate and avoids finger-pointing around what would have been an embarrassing loss.
