Early in the cycle, Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas looked vulnerable. In a New York Times interview, he admitted that he pays rent to stay with supporters when he visits his home state, and that he registered to vote at his friends’ address the day before his primary opponent got into the race.
Senator Roberts looked set to become the next Richard Lugar, the Indiana senator who lost touch with his home state and lost the 2012 GOP primary to a tea party insurgent. Roberts’s opponent, Milton Wolf, is a young, telegenic doctor and tea party activist, and seemed a strong challenger to the three-term incumbent. Dr. Wolf is backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and pulls no rhetorical punches: He has compared Mr. Obama, his distant cousin, to Hitler and Mussolini.
Enter social media. In February, the Topeka Capital-Journal broke a story about Wolf’s disabled Facebook page, where he had posted gruesome X-ray images and added macabre jokes and commentary.
In a statement, Wolf admitted to “mistakes," but his candidacy is on life support. A Public Policy Poll taken in February showed Roberts at 49 percent and Wolf at 23 percent.
Still, Wolf remains in the hunt. On April 16, he released a TV ad that hits Roberts for spending nearly five decades in Washington.
Another wrinkle is that outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – a former two-term Democratic governor of Kansas – is reportedly thinking of getting into the race. That raises the stakes for the GOP primary. Secretary Sebelius has until June 2 to decide, the filing deadline for the Aug. 5 primaries.
