Tacked to the wall of Greg Orman’s campaign office is a print of a John Steuart Curry painting, “Tragic Prelude,” that hangs in the capitol in Topeka. It depicts John Brown of Osawatomie, 39 miles south of here, as what he was, a deranged product of “bleeding Kansas,” the Civil War’s overture. Today, Orman, who is as calm as Brown was crazed, is emblematic of fascinating Kansas.
Orman wants to deny Pat Roberts a fourth Senate term, thereby ending a congressional career that began in 1981 with 16 years in the House. Orman, who favors term limits and pledges to serve only two terms, is running as an independent. The Democrats’ nominee has dropped out of the race, so Orman, 45, or Roberts, 78, will be a senator come January. Sensible Kansans have a problematic choice to ponder: Electing Orman would deepen the Senate’s pool of talent, but it might thwart Republican efforts to control the Senate.
Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932 and has voted Republican in 12 consecutive presidential elections. It has, however, had Democratic governors during 28 of the last 50 years, and its Republican senators have often had Bob Dole’s “collaborative” (Orman’s approving word) style. Orman has made campaign contributions to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid, and voted for Obama in 2008 but favored Romney in 2012.
Orman discusses policy problems with a fluency rare among Senate candidates and unusual among senators. From his firmly Republican father, who owns a small furniture store in Stanley, Kan., Orman acquired an animus against “the beehive of regulations”: One regulation is a “pinprick” but cumulatively regulations are akin to “falling into a beehive.” He is reading Paul Ryan’s new book, and shares Ryan’s anxiety about how nearly 60 percent of the federal expenditures are not subject to annual appropriations. He also shares Ryan’s dismay that a single mother earning about $20,000 can pay, in effect, a marginal tax rate twice as high as the 39.6 percent top statutory rate on the affluent because she can lose government benefits and incur expenses when she increases her earnings.
