Branch Rickey, the great Brooklyn Dodger executive who was instrumental in Jackie Robinson breaking major league baseball\’s color line, had an expression about helping a team by getting rid of bad players (“bad” meaning poor attitude as well as poor play). He called it “addition by subtraction”.
Well, here, in a political race with national implications, we may well have a case of “subtraction by addition”.
According to Alex Roarty\’s article at nationaljournal.com, the AFL-CIO has jumped into the senate race between Republican incumbent Pat Roberts and supposedly “independent” challenger Greg Orman.
According to Roarty, “The AFL-CIO won\’t run TV ads for Orman, spokesman Jeff Hauser said, but his campaign will now be incorporated into the union\’s extensive ground game there.”
Interesting.
At first blush it would be easy to assume this is a huge shot in the arm for Greg Orman – whose one-time substantial lead over Roberts in the polls has disappeared as more and more Republicans “come home” before election day.
But we\’re talking about Kansas. Ruby-red Kansas, which has elected nothing but Republican senators for the past 80 years.
Greg Orman has generated significant support throughout his campaign by claiming he is with neither party – that, if elected, he might well caucus with Republicans. That is pretty much the only thing which has kept him in this race.
But how do you suppose Republicans who were receptive to his claim of being nonpartisan will see Orman now that the Democrat-and-Democrat-only AFL-CIO is supporting him, and he is accepting its support? Does that claim of being an independent have any credibility now?
This race was heading for a Pat Roberts victory anyway. One look at the drift of polling results this month, coupled with the common-sense logic of considering how Kansas usually votes, would make that pretty evident.
My guess is that the AFL-CIO endorsement, while possibly increasing Democrat – thus Orman – turnout in a couple of cities, will do nothing to stop that drift away from Orman/to Roberts…and quite possibly may accelerate it.
