Orman quits race

Democrat gives up Senate race in Kansas

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Greg Orman, who sought to defeat incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, has abandoned the race, party officials said tonight.

Orman, the managing director of a private equity firm who lives in Olathe, informed party chairman Larry Gates this week of his intention to withdraw, Gates said. Orman, 39, could not be reached.

His decision leaves just one Democrat in the race — Lee Jones, a 56-year-old railroad engineer from Overland Park who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2004.

Gates said he knew of no other candidates. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas since 1932.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/492248.html

Has anything else been published yet about this development? Orman has taken on and succeeded with mammoth business ventures in the past. Surely he could not have been taken by surprise that a senatorial campaign to unseat an incumbent would require a lot of money, time and energy.

Tell me about Lee Jordan. He came to our county Dems meeting. But I honestly don't know much about him.

He ran four years ago after Joan Ruff quit the race. He would be a fine senator, but he has no real organization. His "staff" are all volunteers. It seems to me that someone who is seriously running for the Senate should have at least some paid professional staff at this point. He should have been raising money for the last two years, and I got the impression he's just barely started.

Orman was also a Republican, who seemed to have turned Democrat as an opportunist. Maybe just to see to it that no real Dem would actually run.

The genuinely sad thing is that the Kansas Democratic party seems remarkably unwilling to get behind a Democratic candidate for Senate.

My son is good friends with Orman's nephew, who is in the navy stationed on the west coast. He called a few weeks ago and I said hey that's pretty cool about your uncle running for office and he said oh he is? LOL

I wondered then how serious Orman was. :)

But I wish someone would step forward! They would have my support, for sure.

William J Meyers for House 2008

Local news.

He said something about not being able to accept fully certain "principles," or something to that effect, of the Democratic Party. He started out as a Republican, then switched to Independent, then to Democrat (which, coincidently parallels my political journey!).

I thought, "Man, how could you run for elected office as a Democrat and not know what the Democratic Party stands for?"

I don't know, he sounded a little flakey...like he really didn't know what he wanted.