Greg Orman is running for Kansas governor as an independent and unconventional candidate this year because he thinks he has something profound to offer citizens.
So when people ask him how polls this year repeatedly show (so far) that only 9 percent of voters want him this time, a steep drop from when he won 42.5 percent of the vote when he ran for the U.S. Senate against Pat Roberts, he makes the following case for why his independent candidacy is noble:
Median income for Americans hasnt risen in 17 years, he said. Health care, public and higher education costs, child care have so far outstripped the rate of inflation that the average American family well — it doesnt feel like youre treading water. It feels like youre drowning.
This is why 45 percent of the 2016 voters chose the unconventional candidate Donald Trump (and why 40 percent of Democratic primary voters voted for the unconventional candidate Bernie Sanders), he said.
Voters have told him they are scared, getting poorer and priced out of their homes by property taxes they despise conventional politics. So while he wants to win, this election is not only about him, he said.
The thing that has driven me for the last 10 years is my belief that if we dont do something dramatically different, our standard of living, our status in the world and the very existence of the middle class are at risk, Orman said. Its largely because our politics gets in the way of solving problems. We have the Hatfields and the McCoys running our government right now.
Those polls also show Laura Kelly and Kris Kobach, his Democrat and Republican opponents, in nearly a dead heat, but with percentages only in the high 30s and with roughly 15 percent of other voters undecided. What his own polls show is that his favorability ratings are much higher than theirs. Why?
Kobach, he said, Is taking a strategy that I would describe as starving the government. Sen. Kelly on the other hand has talked about a whole litany of new spending programs (but) will have to raise taxes to fund her priorities.
Voters dont like either option, he said. But his background, as an entrepreneur who has created or bought and turned around companies makes him the ideal person to take over a government and fix what ails the state.
The Brownback cuts, which Kobach wants to bring back, damaged the state, he said, because Brownback used across the board cuts cut the good with the bad. Those cuts are lazy, inefficient, they dont work and yet its the only toolkit available to someone like Sam Brownback, or Laura Kelly, or Kris Kobach.
I am the only candidate who has any experience that even approaches the job of managing an enterprise with a $17 billion budget and 40,000 employees, he said.
First, hed stop spending tens of millions while recruiting Kansas City (Missouri) companies to move across the state line to Kansas. These incentives cost Kansans hundreds of millions with no true payoff.
Second, hed decriminalize small-time marijuana possession, which he says needlessly puts young people in prison and grossly inflates tax dollars spent on prisons. Its a stupid public policy for a largely victimless crime, which destroys the capacities of our kids. If you get caught with recreational drugs, you get a ticket instead.
And third, hed use his considerable business acumen to look at how we negotiate drug prices through the Medicaid program.
Thats a big one, he said. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on drugs through Medicaid, but we do a terrible job of negotiating prices. I know how to negotiate prices because Ive had to do it in my businesses.
