Does Greg Orman have any policy specifics to offer Kansas voters?
Most Kansans are ready to move past the “real live experiment” that defined Sam Brownback’s governorship. As voters contemplate whom to elect as the next governor, the candidates owe it to voters to clearly articulate where they stand on major issues facing our state. This is especially true for independent candidate Greg Orman, whose campaign has offered little more than poll-tested platitudes and generalities.
Why focus on Orman? Love or hate political parties, they serve an important function in a democracy. Parties help voters understand candidates: their values, their policy positions and the kind of team they would form to help them govern. Yes, individual Republicans and Democrats occasionally differ from party orthodoxy, but when voters choose a Democratic or Republican candidate, they generally have a good idea what they are voting for and what the likely policy outcomes will be. By running as an independent, Orman doesn’t give voters those cues, so the burden is on him to articulate his policy positions.
Given his political history, Kansans can be forgiven for not knowing what “new ideas” Orman claims to have in store for us. Remember, he first ran for U.S. Senate in 2008 as a Democrat, and donated to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Al Franken that year. In 2010, Orman reversed course, donating to Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown’s Senate campaign specifically because Brown opposed the Affordable Care Act. But in 2012, Orman claims to have voted for Mitt Romney, the architect of the health care law on which the ACA was based.
In yet another twist, when Orman ran as an independent in 2014, Democrats cleared the field for him by pulling their own candidate from the race under pressure from national Democrats like Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill. By this time, Orman avoided offering clear opinions on many policies like health care or even the basic question of which party he would caucus with if elected.
Unfortunately, Orman’s latest campaign has continued on this path, and has missed major opportunities to discuss his policy views on pressing issues. It took The Kansas City Star two tries to get Orman to respond when they surveyed candidates about their gun control positions. He declined an offer from The Shawnee Mission Post to publish an essay on school funding solutions. This avoidance of making clear statements on issues hurts voters’ abilities to make informed decisions.
On the rare occasions Orman has spoken on policy, he has largely hewed to focus group-tested talking points that avoid committing him to specific policy positions. For example, when asked about school funding in a recent video interview with The Star, Orman said he supported “targeted” policies that address students not getting an “adequate education.” That’s an awesomely vague response to perhaps the most important policy problem facing Kansas. And on his own website, Orman lists eight reasons to vote for him, none of which is about policy.
Like Brownback, Orman is conducting his own experiment on Kansans — this one of the political science variety. His campaign is better fit for making focus groups and poll respondents see him as inoffensive than it is for telling Kansans what he believes on issues like taxes, school funding, health care, guns, water and roads. It seems Orman’s strategy is to be purposefully vague, to keep repeating his tired line that parties are awful (implying that voters are foolish for supporting them) and to hope that gets him just enough votes to win a divided race.
A perennial candidate now on his third statewide campaign, Orman needs to finally learn what most Kansans know instinctively: An agenda is not a litany of complaints.
Nathaniel Birkhead is an assistant professor of political science at Kansas State University.
This story was originally published April 4, 2018 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Does Greg Orman have any policy specifics to offer Kansas voters?."