This is not a post-mortem piece on what went wrong or could have gone better. I am only going to express a few things about the Greg Orman campaign that I learned about the character of Kansas and the difficulty of mounting the first serious challenge by an Independent against an entrenched Republican Senator in modern history.
Just a few days ago, I stood next to a busy street in downtown Manhattan, Kansas. I was holding a sign that said “Orman: Independent for Senate” on it. Thousands of cars would drive by and every once in awhile someone would slow down, roll down their window, and yell “baby killer” at me and the lifelong Republican standing next to me. We never reacted; we just shook our heads out of disappointment in our opponent and the vitriol his campaign unearthed. My colleague, the lifelong Republican, looked at me and said, “They used to say that to us when we came back from Vietnam”.
The vitriol like that really didn’t heat up until October for us. We hadn’t needed to participate in a primary election and Greg chose from the beginning to stay positive. His tug-of-war commercial first aired when Milton Wolf and Pat Roberts were tearing each other apart on the airwaves and Orman’s message was a stark positive contrast.
As we traveled around Kansas collecting signatures to get on the ballot and participating in parades or fairs the overall reaction was positive and the vitriol was non-existent. Folks across Kansas from corner to corner and border to border were encouraging us to stay positive. Greg Orman personally met thousands of people last summer and I watched them all say “Stay Positive”. Greg always promised them that he would and he wanted to debate the issues, he wanted to solve problems.
During the last four weeks of the election, the Roberts Campaign along with various outside groups supporting Roberts began bombarding the airwaves with gross mischaracterizations of Greg Orman accompanied by robo-calls and photo shopped mailers. It got very nasty. I began noticing “trackers” following me to volunteer events, filming the people that came and went out of buildings and taking pictures of their car license plates. It was a form of intimidation or at least our volunteers felt it was.
Public events and parades were no longer positive experiences. Kansans were being misled and they were falling for it. Verbal threats were made against Greg, Sybil, and staff. Actual security was needed. It was not the Kansas I was proud of; it was one operating out of irrational fear. One that was being primed to vote against it’s own interests. The thousands of people who had asked Greg to stay positive when we first started where much quieter now. There were still vocal supporters and cheers along parade routes but the vitriol was poisoning the well for everyone.
People from across the country asked Greg Orman to attack Pat Roberts. To go negative, as they say. Many supporters and staff even thought it might be the best course.
Greg Orman did not. He did not break his promise and he did not go negative. He was called every name you can think of, he was hassled every minute of his life by paid “trackers” from out of state. He couldn’t even sit through one quarter of a K-State game without being cornered and spending more time explaining why the mailer someone got was not at all the way he felt about the issue.
The personal attacks didn’t come only from one particular party either, both parties at some point attacked Greg Orman this year. He stayed positive. He believed Kansan’s were smart enough to see through the smear campaign. Even after the results were final and he gave his concession speech, he stayed positive.
For the first time in modern politics, Americans were presented with a viable Independent candidate who could potentially be a powerbroker in the US Senate. If that were not enough, it was possibly one of the only major campaigns in recent memory that stayed positive the whole way through.
Last Tuesday, Kansas decided to not fix a broken system. They chose to reward negative campaigning. They screamed vulgarities from cars at us as they drove to the polls. Ironically we were combat veterans, who are proud we fought for those same people to have free political speech. The problem is not Kansas or it’s people, the problem is that we American’s just rewarded negative campaigning again. They will govern the same way they campaign and you will be given false choices based in fear for years to come. Staying positive is much harder than anyone realizes, it is the thing I am most proud of about Greg Orman. He is a profile in courage.
Aaron Estabrook, Manhattan, field director, Orman for Senate 2014