This election year, it’s Republicans asking what’s the matter with Kansas.
The past few months have seen the state — usually a nonentity in national politics — become a source of heartburn for the national GOP and a fragile beacon of hope for Democrats trying to protect their Senate majority.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, and it might not happen again anytime soon in the near future, but this election night, it’s all eyes on Kansas.
Virtually all of the prominent Republicans in the state — Gov. Sam Brownback, Sen. Pat Roberts, Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and even Rep. Lynn Jenkins — are locked in desperate fights to stay in power.
They face a host of atypical challengers, including an ex-Republican and an independent multimillionaire. And the stakes couldn’t be much higher: Control of the Senate is on the line, and the governor’s race has become a national referendum on conservative tax-cutting strategy.
Things started going south during the acrimonious Senate primary, when Tea Party-backed Milton Wolf picked an ugly fight with incumbent Roberts. That contest was defined more by personal attacks than policy disagreements, with Wolf, a physician, taking enormous criticism when it came to light that he posted patients’ X-rays (along with snarky commentary) on his Facebook page.
The Roberts campaign also took a body blow when the New York Times reported that the senator slept on a friend’s recliner when he made a rare visit to his home state.
While that primary was at its zenith, independent candidate Greg Orman put up TV ads showing him exalted above the conflict, tut-tutting the mudslinging and available as a civil and decorous alternative. If Orman wins on election night, his decision to go on TV during that Republican primary may be one of the savviest (or luckiest) moves made this cycle.
When the primary’s dust settled, Kansas Republicans insisted Roberts would be a shoo-in for victory in the general election. They were wrong. After lackluster fundraising, the Democratic nominee withdrew his name from the ballot and Roberts found himself head-to-head with an opponent who had no voting record and scant political history.
Things, predictably, have been tough for Roberts. But at least he’s not alone.
Brownback made enemies when he endorsed some state Senate Republicans’ primary challengers, and lost friends when Moody’s downgraded the state’s bond rating because of a projected revenue shortfall attributed to the governor’s tax cuts. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows him with a tiny 0.6 percentage point lead over his Democratic challenger, so it’s anyone’s game.
The problems don’t stop there.
Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state, arguably one of the most conservative secretaries of state in the country, is locked in a tough battle with Jean Schodorf, a former Republican state senator who lost to a conservative primary challenger and then switched parties to face Kobach.
Kobach drew some criticism for trying to keep Roberts’ Democratic Senate challenger from removing his name from the ballot, and his path to victory is narrower than expected.
House candidates are also facing potentially tricky re-election bids. Reps. Lynn Jenkins and Kevin Yoder both saw the Cook Political Report recently move their races from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican.” A Tarrance Group poll of 400 likely voters taken Oct. 18 to 20 (with a 4.9 percent margin of error) shows Jenkins with a 12-point lead over her challenger. But it’s unusual that their seats would even be up for discussion.
Will Democrats claim a few high-profile GOP scalps or even pull off a clean sweep? Or will Republicans put all this purportedly purple Kansas talk to bed? It’s reason enough to tune in to election night returns.
