By John Lindstrom
Publisher
Posted: June 27, 2019 1:59 PM

Could a Lindstrom finally stand in the U.S. Senate chamber? Maybe.

No, no, no, this reporter is not running for the U.S. Senate. The only thing this reporter will run for is president of the Alfred Hitchcock Film Society, and even then, he'd lose over the vexed "Jamaica Inn" question.

However, cousin Dave is running, in Kansas.

David Lindstrom, one of the six sons of Uncle Paul and Aunt Harriett Lindstrom of Weymouth, Massachusetts, officially announced Thursday he is running for the Republican nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat in the JayHawker state.

Cousin Dave arrived in Kansas because he is one of three of Paul and Harriet's boys to play pro-football (the Lindstrom family's prowess in football is legendary. People still marvel at this reporter's renown for bench-sitting as a third-string defensive tackle) along with his brothers Chris and Eric. Chris's son, Chris Jr., was just drafted in the first round by the Atlanta Falcons after a stellar career as the top offensive guard at Boston College. Dave had the longest career of the three brothers, playing for the Kansas City Chiefs and living in the Kansas suburbs of the Missouri city.

Possibly Dave's first major claim to post-football fame was as the focus of a lead story in the Wall Street Journal more than 20 years ago, which looked at his efforts as a Burger King franchise owner to hire folks on welfare and help them move into the working life. Not quite as famous was the reaction of my neighbors when I shouted to them early that morning, standing on the front porch in my bathrobe while holding the paper, "Hey, this story is about my cousin!"

Dave was the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Kansas in 2002, and the GOP ticket that year, um, lost. He was then a top county official and has been a major local philanthropist.

He's running because current U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) is not. He's stepping down after four-terms in the chamber.

And Dave is getting in early for what a number of Kansas political observers think could be a crowded and fraught GOP field for the nomination. Only one other candidate has so far announced. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Kansan and former U.S. House member, has said he will not run for the seat.

Dave is pushing all the right conservative Republican buttons, which one might expect in Kansas. In a newspaper interview before he announced Dave said he worried about a growing embrace of "socialism," and that, "I think our country's under attack." Dave said he worries that some politicians are helping create an environment of "entitlement, as opposed to hard work." That, he said, is how he views socialism.

Now if Dave hired this reporter's brother Peter, a top opposition-research specialist out of Washington, D.C., to handle that part of his campaign, he'd be a guaranteed winner.

Except that Peter is a Democrat. Hey, just like football, we Lindstroms hit 'em from both sides.