http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/216586-democrat-drops-out-of-kansas-senate-raceDemocrat drops out of Kansas Senate race
By Alexandra Jaffe
Democrat Chad Taylor has dropped out of the Kansas Senate race, according to local reports, complicating Sen. Pat Roberts’s (R-Kan.) reelection fight.
Local outlet Kansas First News is reporting that Taylor, the Shawnee County district attorney, said he submitted papers to withdraw himself from the ballot at 4:15 p.m. Central Time on Wednesday, just 45 minutes before the deadline to exit the race.
The race is now a three-way battle between Roberts, independent Greg Orman and libertarian Randall Batson. Taylor’s exit may create more of a headache for Roberts, who has emerged as surprisingly vulnerable in recent weeks, with multiple polls showing him holding just a single-digit lead in the race.
The GOP incumbent emerged from a contentious primary fight with his campaign coffers depleted and his profile in the state bruised due to a heavy focus from his primary opponent on questions of whether he actually lives in Kansas.
Though Taylor had so far performed the best against the senator in a four-way matchup, Orman fared better in a head-to-head matchup polled by a Democratic pollster in mid-August, leading Roberts by double digits.
Orman has surged since entering the race, from single-digit support to 20 percent of the vote in the most recent survey.
Even Democrats privately admitted Orman may have had a better shot at taking down Roberts than Taylor. He’s been a much stronger fundraiser than the Democrat and has the ability to self-fund if necessary, and has already aired three ads to Taylor’s one. Taylor also has some baggage Democrats were concerned would hurt him with women, including an ongoing discrimination suit brought against him by two former female employees.
Roberts’s best shot, some speculated, would have been if Taylor and Orman split the anti-Roberts vote and he eked out a win. That becomes tougher in a head-to-head matchup with the independent, with the libertarian expected to draw a small sum of the vote.
Orman has said he’d likely join the majority party if elected, but hasn’t yet indicated which party he’d caucus with if he were to become the deciding vote for control of the Senate.
Roberts’s team plans to paint him as a Democrat regardless and tie him to the national Democratic Party, noting his tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates and the fact he previously considered running for Senate as a Democrat.
That may be enough to mitigate any discontent with Roberts in Kansas, which is a deep-red state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s.
