Why an independent win in Kansas would matter

When you think about crazy and unpredictable states where anything political can happen, you think about places like California or Florida or Louisiana. Kansas does not come to mind. Kansas is flat and quiet. Kansas is where Oklahomans go to get away from the madness.

And yet here we are, a month from the midterm elections, and Kansas is the most interesting state on the map. I recently wrote about Paul Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate whose campaign was roiled by the revelation that he once walked into a strip club. And now I turn your attention to Greg Orman, a former business consultant and clean energy entrepreneur, who is running for the U.S. Senate as an independent against the state's powerful Republican incumbent, Pat Roberts.

Since the Democratic candidate dropped out to give Orman more running room, he seems to have opened up a surprising lead in the race; according to this fascinating analysis by Vox's Andrew Prokop last week, Orman is the only Senate candidate in the country who keeps getting more popular, rather than less.

Who knows if Orman's lead will hold, or if it's illusory to begin with. But if both parties aren't paying close attention to what's happening in stolid Kansas right now, they ought to be.

Orman has been described as a political enigma, which seems like a nice way of saying he doesn't seem to know very much. A onetime college Republican and short-lived Democratic politician (he ran for the Senate briefly in 2008 before dropping out), he's telegenic, wealthy and elusive. His central pitch is that both parties are "more interested in political games than problem-solving" and Washington is a "mess," and other evocative stuff like that.

I was having a nice, upbeat email exchange about a possible interview this week with Orman's press secretary, one Sam Edelen, until I mentioned that I planned to ask the candidate for his thoughts on some of the important issues of the day and where they might put him on the ideological spectrum. Edelen instantly went dark. I'm still waiting for a reply.

Orman won't say which party he'd prefer to caucus with, other than to suggest he'd stick with the majority. This past weekend, the Lawrence Journal-World performed a useful public service and surveyed all the state's candidates for federal office on some key issues in Washington. As a result, we now know that Orman can't get behind the new health care law, but he would support a new plan that holds down costs, protects quality of care and won't punish people with preexisting conditions. On immigration, he believes in a policy that's "tough, practical and fair."

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that Orman probably also supports curing Ebola, ending terrorism and educating children. You can see how this differentiates him from those career politicians.

But look, whether or not Orman is just being cautious or really has no earthly idea what he's talking about, he's brilliantly tapped a vast and rich seam running just under the surface of modern American politics. It isn't new, and it certainly isn't trivial.

In the late '90s, I spent a lot of time with a former wrestler and radio host named Jesse Ventura, who ran for governor of Minnesota as an independent against two of the state's biggest political stars with a promise to pass a tax rebate. On the eve of the election, the Minneapolis Star Tribune cautioned voters that it was time to stop having fun and to think about electing a real governor (just as the Emporia Gazette warned Kansans last week that they should forget about Orman already and reelect the guy who has seniority and influence). Ventura won easily.

I can vividly remember, in those first weeks after Ventura took office, walking with him through the Capitol and seeing longtime state employees stop what they were doing and spontaneously applaud. I've not seen anything like it, before or since. Blunt, optimistic and unencumbered by dogma, Ventura had come to embody systemic reform — and there is no more powerful idea in our politics, period.

Rarely do such independent reformers exit to the same applause that greeted them. (Look up Lowell Weicker, Arnold Schwarzenegger and, most recently, Lincoln Chafee.) Ventura was actually a much better governor than people give him credit for; he assembled an impressive bipartisan administration and later, when the economy slowed, he had the courage to stand up for a tax increase rather than slash basic services. But he was needlessly combative and inexperienced, and both parties were pretty good at exploiting those traits. By the end of one term the experiment was over.

If Orman wins, he'll be the third independent in the Senate, and odds are he won't emerge as any more of a genuine power broker than the other two, Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King. Standing outside the dysfunctional two-party system can earn you some credibility with voters at home (and with those of us who disdain the idea of party fealty generally), but it doesn't always buy you influence in an institution dominated by partisan blocs.

All that aside, though, Orman's victory would matter. Because if anyone seriously thinks that what happens in Kansas can't happen sometime soon on the national level, in a presidential campaign, then he isn't paying attention. The president is struggling to keep his approval ratings above historic lows. Congress doesn't even have an approval rating to speak of; when you're sinking toward single digits, it basically means that the only people who say they like you are trying to get off the phone so they can watch the Food Channel in peace.

Even if you really want to join a party for the first time these days, you can't sign up without getting a pile of spam telling you to contribute if you want to have your "membership confirmed." At least the Girl Scouts give you cookies.

And all the old barriers to entry that once made the idea of an independent presidency seem outlandish — getting on the ballot in every state, raising tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars — are teetering, for the same reason that Uber is breaking up Big Taxi. Technology evens the playing field, or at least lessens the slope.

Barack Obama built his own fundraising and grassroots network in 2008 almost entirely outside the party and then took it over. The next candidate who does it might just decide to skip the takeover part and jump right to the election (as Ross Perot did in a pretty impressive showing in 1992, before anyone knew the word "Internet").

My friends who run campaigns will laugh and point out I've been saying this for years (it's true, I have), but really all that's missing from this equation now is the candidate who can pull it off — someone with ability, charisma and probably some significant start-up cash, along with a galvanizing issue or vision. Such candidates are rare, and even rarer outside the traditional two-party biosphere, where only gadflies tend to thrive.

What I know is that Greg Orman can actually win in Kansas, and if he does, the independent threat should be harder to dismiss. Kansas isn't Louisiana. It's a lot like everyplace else.