Touting his game plan as a problem-solver and not a partisan politician, Kansas Independent candidate Greg Orman has surged in the polls while threatening to unseat veteran incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts.
But this month Orman has come under growing pressure to lay out his political beliefs as he also faces attacks by Roberts and leading Republicans over his business connections and his Democratic past,
according to The Washington Post.
Orman, a millionaire investor largely financing his own campaign, has started to alienate voters by refusing to say whether he supports the Keystone XL pipeline, claiming that he doesn’t have enough information.
Although he calls for greater gun restrictions, Orman will not comment on whether he supports a ban on assault-weapons.
And as far as whether he plans to caucus with the GOP or the Democrats, Orman has not yet decided, though he has close previous ties to the Democratic Party. “It’s not in the best interests for us to say that,” he said last week.
Although Kansas has been a conservative entity for decades, Republicans feel that Roberts is out of touch with the state he’s represented in Congress since 1981, the Post reports.
And after Democrat Chad Taylor dropped out of the race in June, it’s surprisingly turned into a tight two-horse battleground state, as the Republicans attempt to capture at least six seats from the Democrats and take control of the Senate.
However, with the countdown to the midterms under way, the GOP is trying to portray Orman as an “untrustworthy” candidate, while pointing to his business and personal relationships with Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member who was jailed in 2012 for insider trading.
Republicans have also attacked Orman on his support for Democratic candidates. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and records show he’s mostly made donations to Democrats, including the president and Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, the newspaper reported.
Orman, who supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage and immigration reform, also briefly ran for the Senate against Roberts as a Democrat before dropping out, the Post said.
Even though Orman has pointed out that he voted for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, leading Republicans have been lining up to attack his Democratic-leanings.
“Anybody with a liberal record like Greg’s, that’s not independence. That’s someone who’s trying to snooker you, Kansas,” said former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin last week.
Arizona Sen. John McCain also called out Orman last week, saying, “Let’s be honest — he’s a Democrat. He walks like a duck and he quacks like a duck and he is a duck.”
And Robert Dole, a former Senate Republican leader and Kansas legend, said, “There’s a multimillionaire who claims he’s an independent, but really [he’s] in the other party.”