They have an odd sense of ‘longtime’ in Kansas

roberts

Or at least, at The Washington Post.

I was struck by the above headline on the Post’s iPad app this morning. I immediately thought, “Longtime? Well, Pat Roberts wasn’t a U.S. senator when I was in Kansas, working as the news editor of the Wichita paper. The senators then were Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. Or am I remembering it wrong.”

No, I was right. And while I admit my stint in Kansas was a  “long time” ago, he wasn’t elected to the office until many years after I left there, in 1996.

Which means he has served three terms. LIndsey Graham is running for a third term, and by South Carolina standards, he just got there. He replaced a man who served in the office from 1954 to 2003 (with a brief respite in 1956 when he resigned and was immediately re-elected to the office). Fritz Hollings was still our “junior senator” when he had been in office for 37 years!

Kansas just seems terribly fickle by comparison. People come and go so quickly there…

8 thoughts on “They have an odd sense of ‘longtime’ in Kansas”

  2. Norm Ivey

    This has been a bizarre storyline. The Democratic candidate dropped out of the race and threw his support to the independent in an effort to defeat Roberts and prevent the Republicans from controlling the Senate. The Republicans sued to keep the Dem on the ballot, but lost in court. Politics make for strange bedfellows….

  3. Bryan Caskey

    Doesn’t say anything about a scandal or anything. What it looks like (to me) is this:

    1. Taylor wins the Democratic nomination.
    2. Subsequently, Taylor realizes he does not have a chance to actually win. (maybe because Orman is splitting Democratic vote?)
    3. Taylor decides to drop out of the race in a “discretion is the better part of valor” kind of way.

    Weird, but whatevs.

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