With about a month left in the Kansas governor’s race, independent candidate Greg Orman is no longer on television, a campaign spokesman said this week.
As rivals Kris Kobach and Laura Kelly start kicking their ad buys into gear, a spokesman for the Orman campaign confirmed that the independent hasn’t been on the air since mid-September.
Orman spokesman Nick Connors said the campaign was on television for about the first two weeks in September but hasn’t been on the air since.
“We have our strategy laid out,” Connors said in an interview this week. “I’m not going to divulge what our strategy is or what our plans are for any kind of media buys.
“For all our opponents know, I’m dropping a million pieces of mail at the current moment, or I could be getting ready to buy a considerable number of points on TV in the next week.”
Orman has been crossing the state on an eight-day bus tour that wraps up this week after stopping in a number of cities including Pittsburg, Fort Scott, Independence, Wichita, Hutchinson, Colby and Abilene.
“We’re on an eight-day bus tour meeting voters, talking to people, hearing their concerns and getting really positive feedback and energy,” Connors said.
Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University, said it is too early to think that Orman is hoisting a white flag by pulling off the air. Orman has said publicly he is in the campaign for the duration.
However, Beatty said he thinks the Oman campaign may be recalculating after spending heavily on television before and after the primary without seeing any substantial movement in the polls.
“I don’t think anybody would argue in terms of the polling, Orman didn’t get the bounce he would have wanted on their relatively large ad buy right before and after the primary,” he said.
“They’re probably at the moment trying to figure out the strategy that is going to get him in the hunt,” Beatty said.
“That big ad buy in the primary didn’t seem to do it. It could be a matter of recalibrating the ads or going in a different direction.”
Connors dismissed social media speculation about the lack of Orman ads on the air.
“People will speculate just to speculate and try to push you in one way or the other because they don’t want to see Greg in the governorship,” Connors said.
“The people who are going to speculate are simply speculating,” he said. “They have no insight into our strategy and how we plan to implement media buys and getting our message out.”
Orman’s retreat from the airwaves — if perhaps for only an abbreviated period — comes as Kobach, Kelly and outside interests execute their TV strategies for the last month of the campaign.
Kelly and Kobach, as well as groups such as the Kansas Values Institute and the Republican Governors Association, are booking hundreds of thousands of dollars in airtime going into October.
The Kobach campaign has already spent some money on cable but expects to lay in a new ad buy in the next couple of days.
Kelly’s campaign has already placed more than $200,000 in television ads for late September and October.
The governors association already booked $1.1 million in Kansas for the governor’s race and recently announced an extra $250,000 ad buy in the Topeka and Wichita markets.
The Kansas Values Institute, meanwhile, has already purchased at least $160,000 in ad time on behalf of Kelly in the governor’s race in the Topeka and Wichita markets, federal records show.
Kobach, the Republican secretary of state, and Kelly, the Democratic senator, have been nose-to-nose in all the polls done so far, with Orman trailing in a distant third.
Orman’s performance on Election Day could swing the outcome of the race, which is why Democrats have been pushing for him to get out of the race, fearing he could hurt Kelly and help Kobach.
Kelly has been able to lure many prominent moderate Republican leaders, such as former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves and former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, as she woos centrist GOP voters who might be alienated by Kobach.
Beatty said this a key moment for any campaign that is struggling to map out its strategy for the closing days.
“This is about the time where a campaign that is in second or third does need to recalibrate, figure out how they’re going to get in the hunt,” Beatty said. “At this point, I don’t see him dropping out or making some huge, dramatic statement.”
