Roberts is in serious trouble against his independent opponent, polls show. GOP scrambles to save Roberts

The GOP’s political machine is kicking into overdrive to save a Senate seat in Kansas that’s suddenly complicating its path to the majority.

With polls showing Sen. Pat Roberts in serious trouble against independent Greg Orman, top Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, are leaning on big-ticket donors to fill the long-time Kansas senator’s campaign coffers. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and John McCain of Arizona are planning to barnstorm the state on Roberts’ behalf. And in a bid to boost the senator’s sagging poll numbers, the Roberts campaign is planning an ad blitz to cast his long record and seniority in Washington in a more positive light.


Republicans are also poring over Orman’s record, looking for ways to cast him as a liberal and shady businessman out to enrich himself. Local stories are popping up about a lawsuit against Orman by the boxing equipment manufacturer Everlast and a legal fight the candidate had with legendary actress Debbie Reynolds over a $1 million loan he made to her Hollywood museum.

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“We’ve added to the campaign,” Roberts said in an interview this week. “We’re going to be much more aggressive. We’re done with the primary, and we’re getting ready for the general.”

To top Republicans, the bare-knuckle approach couldn’t come soon enough. After surviving a closer-than-expected primary fight against radiologist Milton Wolf, the 78-year-old Roberts and his team assumed they would skate to victory in November given the conservative electorate in the deeply red state. Roberts ads hadn’t filled the airwaves since the August primary, and the campaign lacked much of a game plan for the general election — let alone for a competitive race.

But all that changed last week. After the Democratic candidate, Chad Taylor, abruptly dropped out of the race, Orman suddenly had an opening. Polls showed Orman increasing his name ID — bolstered by his roughly $950,000 in ad spending — and he has the opportunity to consolidate much of Taylor’s support, leading Roberts by 1 percentage point after respondents were told the Democrat was no longer an active candidate.

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Alarmed Republicans called in the cavalry. McConnell, who is battling to become Senate majority leader, delivered a clear message to Roberts in a private call, sources said: It’s time to step up your campaign.

Under the guidance of McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, two top GOP operatives — Chris LaCivita and Corry Bliss — were dispatched to Kansas last week to steady the ship and begin to sharpen the campaign’s tactics. Roberts’ longtime aide, Leroy Towns, stepped down as campaign manager. The new team said it planned to make a mark early.

“Up until last week, no one has done any degree of research on Greg Orman and how he’s made his money,” LaCivita said in an interview. “That’s about to change.”

Orman, 45, who founded the venture capital firm Denali Partners after working as an energy industry executive and in real estate during his 24-year business career, declined to be interviewed. His spokesman, Sam Edelen, said the independent candidate was running as a “businessman who will solve problems” to fix a gridlocked Washington.

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“Calling in a mudslinging hit squad from Washington is just one more example of how out of touch Pat Roberts has become,” Edelen said. “The way Mr. Roberts is running his campaign is exactly what’s wrong with the politics of Washington — yelling, screaming, pointing fingers and blaming others for his inability to work with others to get anything done.”

The possibility of a debacle in Kansas recalls GOP nightmares from the past two election cycles. Winnable races in states like Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, North Dakota, Delaware and Montana were blown by underperforming and gaffe-prone candidates, denying the GOP a Senate majority in 2010 and 2012. Now Kansas has emerged as an unlikely battleground this year, on two fronts: The state’s conservative governor, Sam Brownback, is fighting a backlash from moderate Republicans to hang on against Democrat Paul Davis.

Roberts defeated Wolf by just 7 points in their bitter primary, aided by two unknown candidates on the ballot who seemed to siphon support from the tea party challenger. Now there are new fears within the GOP that the 33-year congressional veteran — who has been dogged by questions over his Kansas residency — could be next.

“A lot of other people like Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander and others probably anticipated more than maybe Pat did on the challenge,” said McCain, who plans to stump for Roberts this fall. “Maybe Pat didn’t anticipate it as much as maybe he should have.”

It’s unclear which party Orman would join in the Senate if he wins. He has said he would caucus with whichever party has a clear majority of seats, but he has not specified what he would do if the Senate were equally divided. That could make him a kingmaker, even as he’s said he wouldn’t vote for either McConnell or Nevada Democrat Harry Reid as majority leader.

Asked this week about his views on Orman, Reid told POLITICO: “Sounds like he might be OK, but I haven’t talked to him.”

Roberts, who reported $1.4 million in his war chest through the middle of July, is about to get a lot more financial help. McConnell, Hatch, Sens. Rob Portman and fellow Kansan Jerry Moran plan to headline a Sept. 23 fundraiser at NRSC headquarters in Washington, with political action committees asked to pony up $5,000 apiece to host the event. Lobbyists and the Washington donor community have been invited to attend at least four other Roberts fundraisers, including a breakfast and lunch that Hatch and Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby are headlining, respectively, at the Monocle restaurant near the Capitol.

“Anything and everything,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said when asked what the GOP would do to save Roberts. “All hands on deck.”

One major factor in the race is whether Taylor’s name remains on the ballot. The Democrat withdrew from the race last week, but the Republican secretary of state ruled that Taylor’s name must stay on the ballot, and Taylor is appealing to the state Supreme Court. In a Survey USA poll released Monday, Roberts and Orman were tied, but 10 percent of likely voters said they would still back Taylor even after being told he was no longer running.

Republicans plan to make the case that national Democrats quietly schemed with Taylor — whose campaign was struggling from a lack of money and name recognition — in an apparent bid to bolster Orman. Democrats and Orman both deny that assertion, though Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill privately spoke with Taylor before he dropped his bid. In an interview, McCaskill said she intervened on behalf of her Kansas Democratic friends who had expressed concerns to her about Taylor’s viability — not because of orders from Democratic leaders in Washington.

“I tried to be really candid and honest about what I thought the likelihood was that he would be able to prevail when he hadn’t really not done any significant fundraising,” McCaskill said. “This came from Democrats in Kansas — not anywhere else. … He was struggling with a difficult decision.”

Orman donated $2,000 to McCaskill’s 2012 opponent, Todd Akin, in 2006. Orman also has made contributions to a handful of other Republicans, including the House GOP’s campaign committee, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and the Republican National Committee. But he has also given to Democrats, including $1,000 to Reid in 2007 and $4,600 to Barack Obama in 2007. Orman’s campaign says he’s given to independent causes as well.

Orman has been both a Democrat and a Republican in his lifetime. In 2008, he briefly ran against Roberts as a Democrat before dropping out of the Senate race that the GOP senator won easily for a third term. While Orman has said he’s rejected both parties, the Roberts campaign said on a variety of issues — such as offering a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants and requiring background checks for gun purchases — the independent lines up with Democrats.

“He agrees with Harry Reid on almost every single issue,” said Bliss, Roberts’ new campaign manager. “So I’m not sure where there’s any evidence that he’s not a liberal Democrat.”

Anna Palmer contributed to this report.