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 for some of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S.”
“If you’re here on an undocumented basis, you should register with ICE, pay a fine, obey our laws, hold down a job and pay taxes — and then I think you should be able to stay here,” Orman recently said. During the debate, Orman reportedly said, “We are not going to find and send home 11 and a half million people — nor would it be advisable.”
Roberts has always opposed amnesty legislation — he even opposed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 — and it was a big reason why he survived his GOP primary. There simply was no daylight between Roberts and Milton Wolf on the illegal immigration issue.
“Greg Orman has repeatedly laid out a plan for immigration — it is amnesty plain and simple,” Roberts campaign manager Corry Bliss said in a Wednesday statement. “Mr. Orman is trying to take both sides of every issue to hide the fact that President Obama and Harry Reid want Greg Orman elected to the Senate because they know the only thing that can stop executive amnesty is a Senate Republican Majority with Pat Roberts.”
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