Free Republic

Suze Orman wants young people to stop “peeing” away millions of dollars on coffee. Last month, the personal-finance celebrity ignited a controversy on social media when a video she starred in for CNBC targeted a familiar villain: kids these days and their silly $5 lattes. Because brewing coffee at home is less expensive, Orman argued, purchasing it elsewhere is tantamount to flushing money away, which makes it a worthy symbol of Millennials’ squandered resources. Orman’s not alone in this view. The old guard of personal finance has spent years turning the habit of buying coffee into a shorthand for Americans’...

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) was projected to defeat Independent candidate Greg Orman, according to CBS and Fox News. The Kansas Senate race heated up in September, when Democrat Chad Taylor withdrew from the race and attempted to remove his name from the ballot. According to the AP, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach declared Taylor didn't fully comply with a state election law in submitting his letter of withdrawal, and the dispute was taken to the state Supreme Court. The court ordered the state to remove Taylor's name from the ballot. A September poll suggested the court's decision might have...

In at least two polling locations, voting machines are changing votes for Pat Roberts to votes for Greg Orman. The machines were located in Overland Park, Kansas. Both changed votes to Orman, but did not change votes from Orman to Roberts. According to a local report, voters who noticed that their votes were changed were allowed to vote again. The Johnson County Election Office confirmed that they were aware of the issue and were looking into the matter. They said "the voter was allowed to vote on another machine" and the broken machine, which they said was calibrated wrong, was...

Vice President Joe Biden blew Kansas independent Greg Orman's cover in a radio interview today. Orman hasn't stated which party he'll caucus with in the Senate--actively avoiding announcing whether he'll be with Republicans or Democrats--but Biden stated definitively that Orman "will be with us" if he's elected. Listen here:

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) is in the fight for his political life. Current polls show him barely trailing his opponent, which would make Kansas look like a golden pickup opportunity for Senate Democrats, right?Not so much. In early September, Democrat Chad Taylor suddenly dropped out of the crowded Kansas Senate, leaving a two-man race between Roberts and Greg Orman, who insists that he’s totally an independent and not a partisan Democrat. Orman even swears that he has no idea who he’ll support for Senate Majority Leader if he wins the election next Tuesday. That’s how independent he is.But if Orman...

In the tight race between incumbent Republican Pat Roberts and "independent" candidate Greg Orman in Kansas, the Democrats are implicitly pro-Orman. The two-way race between Orman and Roberts has been close ever since Democrats pressured the official Democratic candidate to drop out of the race. But now, the Kansas Republican Party has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the Kansas Democratic Party for illegal "in-kind" contributions to the Orman campaign. Kansas Democrats have hung pro-Orman signs at official Democratic Party offices which, according to the GOP's complaint, is illegal: Parties have traditionally used the volunteer exemption for...

Beloved Kansas State University football coach Bill Snyder on Thursday endorsed Sen. Pat Roberts for re-election and is appearing in a new television ad for the three-term Republican incumbent, potentially giving the GOP a boost in a race with national implications. Roberts’ campaign launched the statewide spot just five days before the election, which has Roberts locked in a tough contest with independent candidate Greg Orman, a 45-year-old Olathe businessman and co-founder of a private equity firm. Snyder is highly respected throughout the state and college football and has largely remained aloof from politics....

Currently, Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are the lone Independent members of the Senate, but their caucus could double in size with victories by Independent candidates Larry Pressler in South Dakota or Greg Orman in Kansas. Pressler, a former Republican senator, is trailing in the three-way race behind Republican Mike Rounds and Democrat Rick Weiland and is seen as having little chance of winning. However, one recent SurveyUSA poll shows him within three points of Rounds. In Kansas, Orman is in a statistical dead heat with Republican incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts, according to recent polls....

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- The image some conservatives have of Greg Orman, the wealthy businessman running as an independent against veteran Republican Sen. Pat Roberts here in Kansas, is that Orman is, in the words of a recent Weekly Standard story, a "vacuous cipher." Watching Orman's performance in a recent debate with Roberts before a business group in this large suburb of Kansas City, it's safe to say that image is wrong, or at least incomplete. Calling Orman a cipher suggests he has no positions, or nothing to say. But on some important topics, Orman outlined policies in more detail...

This week the AFL-CIO threw its considerable weight behind Democrat-turned-independent Greg Orman in his bid for U.S. Senate in Kansas. This came on the heels of a debate that was all about defining who Greg Orman really is: ... 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. The AFL-CIO had previously endorsed Kansas's Democratic Party's gubernatorial nominee, Paul Davis, who is locked into one of the country's most competitive gubernatorial contests with incumbent Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. During Wednesday's debate, incumbent Sen....

Liberal Greg Orman Says He's Pro-Choice, Abortion Not Important At Debate - VIDEO:

When U.S. Senator from Texas Ted Cruz ’92 set out on a bus tour last week, kickstarting the campaign for incumbent U.S. Senator from Kansas Pat Roberts, he also set out on a small-scale political battle against Greg Orman ’91, a Senate hopeful with whom Cruz spent three years at the University as an undergraduate. Orman, a businessman and independent candidate, has been accused by the Roberts campaign of being a stealthy democratic candidate. “I’m reminded of another candidate who ran in 2008 who ran on empty promises. He ran on hope and change, and he figured a whole bunch...

It's hard to overstate how worried national Republican operatives have been about the Senate race here in Kansas. "I think Pat Roberts is in real trouble," a GOP strategist who is deeply involved in the midterm effort said of the Republican incumbent Tuesday morning. "If the election were today, he would clearly lose." That was then. Now, just 48 hours later, two new polls suggest the Roberts campaign has life in it, after all, and that Roberts' opponent, the former Democrat and self-styled Independent businessman Greg Orman, may no longer be leading the race. One of the new surveys, by...

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) has taken the lead in two new polls released on Wednesday as his opponent Greg Orman again endorsed amnesty for illegal immigrants during Wednesday's debate. In a Fox News poll, Roberts leads Orman, the liberal Democrat running as an "independent," by 5 points. Roberts leads Orman by a point in a CNN/ORC poll. Three weeks ago, Orman was leading Roberts by six points. In Wednesday's debate, Roberts accused Orman of supporting amnesty after Orman tried to convince voters that he did not. The Kansas City Star reports that Orman does indeed support "a path to citizenship...

Independent Greg Orman says he could change parties even after he has allied himself with Democrats or Republicans if he wins the Kansas Senate election in November. In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, Orman says he would initially caucus with whichever party has majority control in the Senate, because “it’s in the best interests of the voters of Kansas that they have a senator in the majority.” But, he added, he wouldn’t limit himself to an alliance with one party over the other, especially if the Senate is evenly split. “If four or five months goes by, and...

In the race for U.S. Senate in Kansas, independent candidate and businessman Greg Orman leads Republican incumbent Pat Roberts by 10 points among likely voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate. Orman’s lead is bolstered by better than a two-to-one lead among independents likely to vote. Voters’ impressions of incumbent Republican Roberts is upside down with nearly half of likely voters viewing him negatively. In contrast, Orman is more positively viewed by likely voters and has lower negatives. Turning to the contest for governor in Kansas, the Republican incumbent, Sam Brownback, faces a tough challenge from...

Vanquished Republican Senate candidate Milton Wolf is expected to endorse Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback before the midterm elections, GOP sources said Wednesday. Brownback, a Republican, faces an unexpectedly tough re-election bid in usually deep red Kansas, and the GOP has worked hard to unite the party in the aftermath of a bitter Senate primary. (SNIP) National Tea Party endorsements have poured in for Roberts, among them pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson and talk radio host Laura Ingraham. Expected to roll through Kansas and endorse Roberts this month are Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, as well...

Greg Orman, the upstart Senate candidate threatening to unseat longtime Republican incumbent Pat Roberts in Kansas, says it’s liberating to run as an independent: “I can go to Washington as a problem solver, not a partisan.” But not having a party also liberates Orman from taking positions — especially on controversial issues that might alienate partisans. Greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline? Orman said he doesn’t have enough information to say yes or no. What about gun control? He said gun restrictions should be “strengthened” but would not specify whether he backs an assault-weapons ban. And on the biggest question of...

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) declared his opposition to granting amnesty for illegal immigrants and contrasted this with his Independent opponent’s support for amnesty on Friday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.” “[Orman] says he that wants to grant citizenship to all illegal aliens if they pay a small fine and promise to obey the law, these people have already broken the law. I have fought amnesty every time I will always fight amnesty, that’s a big difference in our debate" he said. Roberts added that he would “absolutely not” support increasing guest workers in the United States.

There will be no meeting Friday in Kansas between former tea party Senate candidate Milton Wolf (R) and independent Senate candidate Greg Orman, a person familiar with Wolf's thinking told The Washington Post, in response to rumors of a potential Wolf endorsement of the independent candidate. "Dr. Wolf is not meeting with Greg Orman and there is no consideration of a Wolf endorsement for Orman," said the person, who was informed of that information directly by Wolf. The person was granted anonymity to speak freely about Wolf's plans.