Kansas, Aug. 5

In seeking a fourth term, Pat Roberts has witnessed how drastically Washington connections have shifted from an asset to a liability. The Republican lawmaker has faced criticism for keeping his main residency in Northern Virginia and staying with donors and supporters when he visits his home state. The New York Times detailed his efforts to re-establish himself in Kansas without even having an address there.

Roberts’ challenger is a Tea Party-aligned radiologist named Milton Wolf, whose claim to fame is that he is a distant cousin of President Obama. Wolf has painted Roberts as the ultimate Washington insider who lost touch with his constituents during a multi-decade tenure in the nation’s capital. Wolf, on the other hand, has been plagued by problems of his own making after posting unsettling X-ray images of dead and wounded people to his Facebook page.

A recent poll shows Roberts 20 points ahead, but Wolf has been making gains. He has run ads in the state targeting his opponent’s residency, and has pestered the incumbent for refusing to debate. The two candidates had an awkward run-in on the street this week.

While Kansas is reliably red and Roberts’ appears poised for re-election, the incumbent has spent as $3.4 million this cycle, compared to his challenger’s $650,000. He has been logging time back in Kansas recently, and is airing ads there. Wolf’s candidacy is not as strong as other challengers in other races and in other cycles. But it nonetheless has spotlighted the importance of home state ties over Washington ones in Republicans primaries these days.