Jerry Moran: One of the good guys

My freshman year at Fort Hays State University, I was assigned to write a paper about a controversial topic. I picked "compulsory military service."

During my research, I decided to e-mail my representatives in Congress to ask if there was much chance of the idea being implemented into national law, and how they'd vote on it if the debate came to the floor.

The first response was from Sen. Sam Brownback: It was a short form letter thanking me for corresponding, and (in a way that was understandably bland) briefly explaining his opposition.

Sen. Pat Roberts trumped that vanilla response a few days later, with a more personalized e-mail. Mr. Roberts included the following inside information: "I have spoken with the chairman of the relevant committee. He has not scheduled any hearings on the matter."

Then, about a week later, in my mailbox I found a big document-stuffed manilla envelope. Inside was a form letter like those from the Senate. But this package also included a thick, detailed report, recently commissioned by Congress to help members decide if "compulsory military service" was worthy of discussion. As it turned out, that report was the best source for the paper.

The manilla envelope came from Congressman Jerry Moran.

I'll share one more anecdote, and I hope it illustrates that Mr. Moran is — in addition to being an excellent congressman — a genuinely good man.

One night a few weeks before the 2006 election, a group of FHSU students organized a voter registration rally at a bar in Hays. Knowing the kind of intense effort it takes to orchestrate such an event, Mr. Moran decided to attend.

It was when I was a reporter for The Hays Daily News. I covered that rally and — political nerd that I am — I was disappointed in the turnout. That stereotype about young people being apathetic is true; only about 20 people attended the registration drive, and most of them were political science majors who participated all the time anyway. It was an election year, but with such a paltry crowd it was obvious that no lucrative vote haul was available that night.

Based on the size of the group, Mr. Moran clearly was not just politicking; that night, he was not just trying to win votes. But he visited with the political science nerds about electioneering. He visited with other students about national policy. He even visited with me about the type of coverage he'd seen from other newspapers in the state.

Mr. Moran stayed at that small rally for hours.

Any western Kansan who pays even a moderate amount of attention to current events can see that Mr. Moran has been a top-notch congressman for the last decade. He took Kansas common sense to Washington and, applying it at different times, knew enough to vote for enormous tax cuts, and against No Child Left Behind, the over-expensive Medicare Part D, umpteen stupid "stimulus" bills, every immoral taxpayer-funded bailout, and Obamacare. Mr. Moran's conservative common sense is exactly what we need in the U.S. Senate right now.

And he's one of the good guys. That'll make it fun to vote for him.