Greg Orman offers strong challenge to Pat Roberts in U.S. Senate race

Greg Orman is a refreshing and thoughtful candidate taking on incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas. Voters are fortunate to be ringside for this campaign, which is getting national attention and offers sharp contrasts between the two men.

Orman spent nearly an hour Monday being grilled at a meeting of The Star’s Editorial Board. He didn’t flinch from answering most questions. He often didn’t just rehash boiler-plate platitudes in dealing with complex and costly issues.

Orman was straightforward, for example, when he said he would have voted for two measures that Roberts opposed: the 2014 farm bill (signed by President Barack Obama), and a U.N. treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities that Bob Dole, a longtime Roberts friend and former U.S. senator from Kansas, helped champion. It narrowly failed in the Senate.

Orman showed he could offer the state of Kansas and the nation a more pragmatic brand of service if voters this fall choose to send him to the U.S. Senate.

But for that to happen, Orman must do more over the next five weeks to tell Kansans what he stands for and how he differs from Roberts. Despite having served three terms in the Senate and 16 years in the U.S. House, the incumbent Republican senator is still an unknown quantity to many in the state, according to polls that also show Orman with a slight lead in the race.

As an independent candidate, Orman maintains he can go to Washington and try to break the destructive gridlock that has prevented elected officials from dealing with controversial measures. That’s a big challenge, which Orman may be underestimating.

Still, on Monday Orman tried to cut through the clutter on some major issues, saying he wanted to find practical ways to improve the use of taxpayer dollars for the country’s policies on immigration, health care, transportation, farming and higher education.

Calling himself “fiscally conservative” and “socially tolerant,” Orman said it was critical to slow the growth in health care costs. Acknowledging reality, he said he wasn’t a “repeal and replace” politician when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, because Obama would veto any such effort while he’s still in office. Instead, Orman says the federal government — through its funding for myriad health-care plans — needs to push for better quality outcomes in health care, not just a higher quantity of high-cost tests for patients.

Orman also took the realistic road regarding the affordability of higher education. He says the federal government, which funds many programs that benefit universities and colleges, should hold them more accountable for doing their part to hold down costs to students and their parents.

The Senate candidate also said the nation’s inability to reform immigration laws was a “huge drag on our economy.” Orman isn’t Roberts on this matter, and fortunately so; the incumbent’s “secure the border, no amnesty” stance is simplistic demagoguery. Orman wants to secure the border, too, but he would also hold people responsible for breaking the law and require some public service from them in exchange for a chance to stay in America and be tax-paying citizens.

Finally, as Orman points out, because the federal government’s fingers are in so many other issues of vital importance — including state transportation policies — the inability of Congress to pass vital funding bills has hampered investments that could prime the pump for improvements in those states.

Orman’s success as a businessman, and the insights he offered on a number of questions Monday, indicate he’s qualified to tackle complex national issues. Voters will decide in early November if they know enough about Orman to entrust him to meet that challenge.

This story was originally published September 29, 2014 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Greg Orman offers strong challenge to Pat Roberts in U.S. Senate race."