Republican Sen. Pat Roberts announced Friday that he would not seek a fifth term in 2020, setting off an open-seat race to replace him. Robertsās departure wasnāt a big surprise, especially after his chaotic 2014 re-election campaign, but the GOP will be favored to keep this seat. In fact, Kansas hasnāt elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, at the height of the Great Depressionāby far the longest such streak of any state in the nation.
Jeff Singer at Daily Kos Elections:Ā
Republican Sen. Pat Roberts announced Friday that he would not seek a fifth term in 2020, setting off an open-seat race to replace him. Robertsās departure wasnāt a big surprise, especially after his chaotic 2014 re-election campaign, but the GOP will be favored to keep this seat. In fact, Kansas hasnāt elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, at the height of the Great Depressionāby far the longest such streak of any state in the nation.
Robertsās announcement caps off a long congressional career that began in 1980, when he first won a heavily Republican House seat in western Kansas. Roberts easily won re-election until he decided to run for the Senate in 1996 to succeed retiring Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, a moderate Republican. He took the nomination that year with little opposition and defeated Democratic state Treasurer Sally Thompson 62-34.
Roberts likewise had no trouble winning re-election in 2002 and 2008, and he seemed to expect that his 2014 campaign would be just as easy. However, the senator badly underestimated how tired the GOP base was with longtime establishment figures like himself, an exasperation that earned him a primary challenge from tea partying radiologist Milton Wolf, a distant cousin of Barack Obama and therefore a favorite of the right-wing media circuit. (Wolf was also a bizarre figure who posted leering comments about gruesome X-rays of his patients on Facebook.)
