Jason Kander saw his surprisingly narrow margin of defeat to incumbent Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., in 2016 as a referendum on whether progressives can win in red states while being open about their values. Rather than test-driving that approach in 2020’s presidential primary, as many expected him to, Kander is taking it to 2019’s mayoral race in Kansas City.
Kander, who announced his bid mayoral bid on Monday, is convinced progressives can win in states like Missouri by going bolder, not masking their beliefs with feigned centrism. “I got 220,000 votes from people who also voted for Donald Trump,” the former Army intelligence officer said at Netroots Nation last August. “I did not do that by pretending to be a conservative Democrat.”
“Voters will forgive you for believing something that they don’t believe so long as they know that you truly believe it,” Kander asserted, later reflecting on his own three-point defeat by claiming, “we were willing to make our argument, to do it unapologetically, and that’s what people are looking for.” (You might remember Kander from this viral campaign ad.)
On his last day in office, former President Obama answered a question about the rising stars of the Democratic Party by pointing to Kander, or “my guy in Missouri,” as he called him. Since his defeat, Kander, who served one term as Missouri’s secretary of state, has traveled the country on behalf of his nonprofit, Let America Vote, fueling 2020 speculation by making repeated stops in Iowa and New Hampshire.
At the heart of his argument is the contention that people vote less on policy and partisanship than on personality. That may be less true in local elections than national ones. That’s why a 2020 run from Kander would likely have made for an interesting experiment, as Democrats look to reconcile their leftward shift with their need to recapture support between the coasts. (No matter how “authentically” progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. is, she won’t win Missouri.)
NBC’s Steve Kornacki had an interesting reaction to the news of Kander’s mayoral bid. “With the party coalition increasingly urban/metropolitan, seems like we’re about to see a lot more ambitious Dems, especially in red states, use mayoralties as direct steppingstones to the national arena — less imperative to win statewide office in between,” he tweeted. (Democratic mayors Eric Garcetti, Mitch Landrieu, and Pete Buttigieg have already generated 2020 buzz of their own.) As he seeks office in a blue city, Kander’s compelling roadmap to statewide progressive victories in the heartland won’t be a factor in 2019. But if he wins, it could set him up for a better shot at national success in the future.
