Tea Party-backed Milton Wolf, the radiologist who unsuccessfully challenged Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts in the Republican primary last year, is fueling speculation that he will try again for the Senate, this time against incumbent Jerry Moran, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USDA and FDA spending. Wolf asked Moran at a town hall meeting whether he knew in advance of damaging information about him that was released during his campaign to unseat Roberts, said the Wichita Eagle.
At that time, Moran was chairman of the Republican Senate campaign committee. Moran said he did not, according to the Eagle. “Wolf refused to tell reporters whether he intended to run, but said that he wanted to get Moran ‘on the record’ about whether he had involvement.”
In an interview with Roll Call, Wolf criticized Moran as insufficiently conservative and said, “I really do mean it when I say I’d rather be a doctor than a politician, but our country is in trouble and it’s clear that Washington is failing us.” Wolf told Roll Call he has “not yet made a decision about 2016.” Wolf lost the 2014 Republican primary to Roberts by seven percentage points. He publicized his plans to confront Moran at the town hall meeting for days before the event on Monday.
Kansas is a strongly conservative state and political tip sheets rate the 2016 election as a certain win for Republicans. In a size-up of 2016 Senate contests, Sabato’s Crystal Ball pointed to the possibility of “serious, divisive primary challenges from the right” in Arizona and Kansas.