Kansas Senator Pat Roberts Re-ignites Residency Controversy

 

With the Kansas primary only a month away, it  looks like Senator Pat Roberts has "Lugared" himself with what the right-wing media outlet Breitbart,com  called a "Freudian slip" in an interview on radio station KCMO and reported on July 3 in the DC insider newspaper The Hill saying he returns home to Kansas “every time I get an opponent”  and proclaiming that he doesn't measure his voting record by "how many times I sleep wherever it is."

Back in February Roberts got caught in a controversy with an interview in the New York Times

In an interview, the three-term senator acknowledged that he did not have a home of his own in Kansas. The house on a country club golf course that he lists as his voting address belongs to two longtime supporters and donors — C. Duane and Phyllis Ross — and he says he stays with them when he is in the area. He established his voting address there the day before his challenger, Milton Wolf, announced his candidacy last fall, arguing that Mr. Roberts was out of touch with his High Plains roots.

“I have full access to the recliner,” the senator joked. Turning serious, he added, “Nobody knows the state better than I do.”

"We’re not going to get Lugar’d," Roberts adviser David Kensinger told the Times, in a reference to long-time Indiana Senator Richard Lugar who lost a 2012 primary to a Tea Party challenger, who in turn lost to a Democrat Joe Donnelly in the general election.


Roberts fits the Lugar profile, so Kensinger concern was understandable. Roberts is getting up in years; he's 77. And he's been a Congressman and Senator since 1980 and before that, starting in 1967, a D.C. staffer for Kansas Senator Frank Carlson and Congressman Keith Sebelius.   

Roberts made some astute moves to avoid Lugar's fate.  He lined up almost every conceivable challenger, virtually every state Senator and Representatives for an endorsement.  He shifted his voting record from conservative to very, very conservative.

Despite this, Roberts got a primary challenger:  Milton Wolf, a distant cousin of President Obama and radiologist.  Wolf is being backed by many of the same Tea Party organizations and media that backed Dave Brat's upset of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Mississippi Senate challenger Chris McDaniel.  In fact, Wolf has gone on national right-wing shows like that of Mark Levin to back McDaniel and attack not only Roberts, but the state's other Senator Jerry Moran, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign.

There have been signs that Roberts is vulnerable. A 2013 poll, for example, found that just 42% of Republicans say they would vote to re-nominate Roberts, while 34% say they would prefer someone "more conservative."  And, a February  2014 PPP poll show that Kansans disapproving of Roberts by a 38 to 29 margin.

But Wolf hasn't caught on.  The February PPP poll found Roberts leading Milton Wolf 49 percent to 23 percent among GOP primary voters. A June Survey USA poll showed Roberts ahead of Wolf, 56-23 percent.

One reason is that Wolf, though he is sometimes an effective sound biter, has some big problems of his own,which are highlighted on "The Real Milton Wolf" tumblr created by the Roberts campaign.  The tumblr doesn't mince words promising to document.

character flaws, missteps, and flat-out lies. We assure you that the incredible array of evidence below will leave no doubt in your mind, Milton Wolf is not only unvetted, untested, and unelectable, but a completely discredited candidate.

Personally, I hope that Roberts and Wolf have a full out slugfest in the nice month and that votes come to see the former as an out-of-touch, D.C. insider, carpetbagger and the latter as an unethical, right wing nut job.

Then, perhaps Kansas can elect its first non-Republican Senator since  George McGill was re-elected in 1932.  The Democrats have a potentially strong candidate in Chad Taylor.


In a future post, I'll take a look at vanity austerity millionaire independent candidate Greg Orman threatens to split the anti-Roberts (or anti-Wolf) vote. 

Poll Shows Brownback, Roberts,and Kobach Vulnerable

A new poll from the respected Public Policy Polling shows that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, Senator Pat Roberts, and Secretary of State Kris Kobach are all seriously lacking in popular appeal.

BROWNBACK

Here is what PPP says about Brownback

PPP's newest Kansas poll finds that Sam Brownback has continued to become even more unpopular in the last year, and that he slightly trails his Democratic opponent for reelection. Only 33% of voters in the state approve of the job Brownback is doing, compared to 51% who disapprove. That's down from a 37/52 spread when PPP last polled the state a year ago.

Brownback trails Democratic challenger Paul Davis for reelection by a 42/40 margin. Davis isn't particularly well known- only 41% of voters have an opinion about him one way or the other- so those numbers are more a referendum on Brownback than anything else. Davis leads largely because he is winning 23% of the GOP vote, a large amount of crossover support in this polarized political climate, while only 11% of Democrats plan to vote for Brownback.

“Kansas voters really don’t care for Sam Brownback and haven’t for some time now,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

According to conventional political wisdom, an incumbent at 40% is in definite trouble and there is no reason to think that the PPP poll is an outlier.  Last October, SurveyUSA released a poll showing Brownback trailing Davis, who had just announced his candidacy.

Sam Brownback, who has served in Kansas as a Congressman, U.S. Senator, and now Governor, is in danger of being unseated after one term, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for KWCH-TV in Wichita. ...the Democratic ticket of Paul Davis and Jill Docking edges the Republican ticket of Brownback and Jeff Colyer, 43% to 39%.

Of those who voted for Brownback when he ran for Governor in 2010, just 59% stick with him in 2014, and 25% defect to the Democrats. Though today Brownback leads 2:1 among Republicans, he trails 11:1 among Democrats.

In early February, the GOP leaked an internal poll from

Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research, [which] puts Brownback ahead of Democratic state House Minority Leader Paul Davis 42-31. If you're wondering why these mystery Republicans would leak a poll that has Brownback well below 50 and gives him middling 45-41 favorables, 

ROBERTS
PPP writes

Pat Roberts has seen his net approval rating decline 12 points over the last year, in the wake of news media reports that he spends little time in the state. In February of 2013 we found him on slightly positive ground at a 31/28 spread, but now only 29% of voters approve of him compared to 38% who disapprove.

 Roberts could be in trouble in the primary ... He starts out with a 49/23 lead over Milton Wolf, but a lot of that is simply a function of name recognition since only 24% of GOP primary voters are familiar with Wolf. And concerns about his lack of attention to the state ring through with Republican voters just as they do the overall electorate- by a 42/34 spread they think Roberts is more focused on being a Washington DC insider than he is in representing Kansas.

While PPP shows Democrat Chad Taylor trailing Roberts by 16 points, its shows Wolf and Taylor neck-and-neck at 33-32.

One has to wonder if some of the far right politicos in Kansas are kicking themselves for letting themselves be talked into signing up to the Roberts re-election effort.  A year ago, PPP noted

Roberts' low profile could give him more trouble in a primary. Just 42% of Republicans say they would vote to re-nominate him, while 34% say they would prefer someone 'more conservative.' Those are pretty uninspiring numbers if a more fiery candidate wanted to challenge him from the right. Roberts has bigger leads over specific GOP alternatives we tested against him though- 21 points over Todd Tiahrt at 47/26, 31 over Tim Huelskamp at 53/22, and 36 over Kris Kobach at 55/19. 

Remember, those results were before the controversy about Roberts "lazy-boy" residence in Kansas became public.

The conventional wisdom at this point seems to be that Taylor doesn't have much of a chance against Roberts, but that he might have against Wolf.  I'm not so sure.  Seems to me that the themes of Roberts not spending enough time in Kansas and being more interested in being a DC insider  might just play in November.

KOBACH

The PPP poll is also encouraging for Jean Schodorf's chances of defeating the Secretary of Hate.


Do you approve or disapprove of Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s job performance?

31%  Approve  34% Disapprove  35% Not Sure

If the candidates for Secretary of State were Republican Kris Kobach and Democrat Jean Schodorf, who would you vote for?

  41% Kris Kobach   34% Jean Schodorf  25% Not Sure