Here’s one Senate Republican who will win re-election in the turbulent year of Trump | McClatchy Washington Bureau

He stands a bit taller than most of his colleagues, yet he keeps a fairly low profile. He holds doors for staffers and even reporters and can sometimes be seen emerging from his office in running shorts.

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran is up for re-election this year, but you wouldn’t know it for all the attention paid to competitive Senate races, such as Missouri’s barn-burner between Republican Sen. Roy Blunt and Democratic challenger Jason Kander.

Still, Moran has paid for TV ads that highlight his record. Moran served many years in the House of Representatives before his election to the Senate in 2010.

And in a turbulent year in which Republicans nationwide face downward pressure from their party’s volatile presidential nominee, Donald Trump, Moran’s all-but-certain re-election is a bright spot on an otherwise bleak map.

Republicans may lose their Senate majority in next week’s election, a majority Moran quietly helped engineer as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, known as the NRSC, in 2014.

Should Republicans salvage their majority, or win it back in two years, Moran, 62, would be in a good spot. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would get to decide committee chairmanships, and Moran could be rewarded for his work for the party.

In any case, he’ll have more seniority in a second term, and more influence.

“I think Jerry Moran’s natural tendency is to lie low, climb the ladder and not make waves,” said Patrick Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas. “You don’t take NRSC chairman unless you have leadership ambitions of some kind.”

Earlier this year though, Moran uncharacteristically broke ranks with Republican leaders over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

While many Senate Republicans backed McConnell’s refusal to hold a vote on Garland’s nomination or even meet with him, Moran told a town hall audience in western Kansas that the process ought to go forward.

After drawing a sharp rebuke from conservative groups and the threat of a primary challenge from Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, Moran relented.

Moran, who won the August Republican primary with 79 percent of the vote, declined to comment for this story.

The Supreme Court dust-up notwithstanding, Moran is in good shape. He’s raised $4.3 million this election cycle, a fairly good number for a secure incumbent.

His leadership political action committee has been active, helping his colleagues in more competitive races: Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Joe Heck in Nevada, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Mark Kirk in Illinois.

Moran’s leadership PAC also has given a boost to two members of Kansas’ House delegation, Kevin Yoder and Lynn Jenkins.

Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, and Moran’s challenger, Lawrence attorney Patrick Wiesner, isn’t likely to break that dry spell. Wiesner has raised only $23,000 and the national Democratic Party has seen fit to invest its resources in states where they have a better chance of winning.

An October 18 SurveyUSA poll gave Moran a comfortable, if not overwhelming 56 percent to Wiesner’s 31 percent.

Moran hasn’t won everyone over. Chuck Henderson, who’s involved with the Flint Hills Tea Party in Moran’s hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, said Moran wants nothing to do with his group. Its members haven’t forgotten that Moran actively worked against its preferred Senate candidates in 2014.

Those included physician Milton Wolf, who lost to longtime Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts in that year’s Republican primary, and Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge to another veteran Republican, Sen. Thad Cochran.

“It was more important to stay cool with Haley Barbour in Mississippi,” Henderson said, referring to the former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman.

Henderson said he’s already cast his ballot in the November election, but did not vote for a U.S. Senate candidate.

“I left that line blank,” he said.

Others hold him in high regard. Olathe Mayor Mike Copeland said he’s known Moran for close to 20 years. He attended the wedding of Moran’s daughter in Manhattan.

Copeland said he saw a powerful U.S. senator who was as nervous as any father would be on such an occasion, with tears streaming out of his eyes.

“He didn’t have his game face on,” Copeland said. “He was a real dude.”

Copeland said Moran is accessible, and he’s always traveling around the state, taking him away from his wife, Robba, and his family.

Just a week and two days after the election, Moran plans to attend a dinner at the community center in Olathe.

“He’s highly engaged,” Copeland said. “He cares about what everyone in the room has to think.”