Rick Santorum faces an easy win in Kansas today, where neither Mitt Romney nor Newt Gingrich have made much of an effort to woo the state’s conservative voters. With 40 delegates at stake, the normally overlooked Sunflower State caucus will give Santorum the boost he needs to be competitive in two major primaries this Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi.
No polling has been done in Kansas, but as a fourth generation Kansan and a former Kansas political reporter, my instincts say Santorum will win most, if not all, of Kansas’ delegates based on the way delegates are apportioned in the state, the results of the 2008 Republican presidential caucus and how much time each of the four candidates spent in the historically Republican bellwether state.
Kansas, along with North Dakota, tops the list of conservative states by most standards, making it prime ground for a Santorum win. Although Kansas had a Democratic Governor for eight years until the election of former US Senator Sam Brownback to the post in 2010, it has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 1932. Furthermore, all of Kansas’ four Representatives to the US House are Republicans. Every current elected federal and state level official in Kansas is a Republican.
In 2008 former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee won with state with 60 percent of the vote to Arizona Senator John McCain’s 28 percent and Ron Paul’s 11 percent. Huckabee even won moderate Douglas County with 44 percent of the vote and ended up winning all of Kansas’ delegates.
The Kansas caucuses were held an entire month earlier in 2008 on February 9, yet each of the three candidates managed to make it make it to Kansas to hold at least one rally ahead of the Saturday caucuses.
By comparison, only Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have made campaigning in Kansas a priority this year, despite the increased importance of winning the state this time around. Newt Gingrich had originally planned to hold a rally at the Kansas GOP headquarters in Topeka yesterday and speak at the Kansas Tea Party Convention in Wichita opted to stay in the South after it became clear his hopes of becoming President will be over if he does not win both Alabama and Mississippi next week.
Ron Paul held several rallies in the state’s biggest college towns this weekend: Lawrence (home of my alma matter, University of Kansas aka KU), Wichita (the largest city in Kansas and home to Wichita State University) and Topeka (the state capitol and home to Washburn University). Paul is likely to pick up a larger percentage of delegates today than he did in 2008, but I wouldn’t count on him winning the caucus, as it is well-documented – even by his own campaign – that his college age supporters are not a reliable voting base.
The University of Kansas chapter of Youth for Ron Paul reportedly has 1,600 supporters and is the second biggest chapter behind the University of Maryland, but I will be shocked if Paul receives that many voters in Douglas County, where KU is located. Only 873 people caucused in Douglas County in 2008 – and that was only because two surrounding counties decided not to have a caucus, forcing interested Republicans to caucus elsewhere. I predict Paul will take third in the caucus.
Even though Romney is the front runner in the overall presidential primary race, he also chose not to campaign in Kansas in favor of focusing on next week’s primaries. A friend of mine who plans to vote for Romney today said Romney doesn’t even have a state contact person. Nevertheless, expect Romney to take second place today as he did receive the support of former Senator and presidential candidate (and very influential Kansan) Bob Dole. He has also been endorsed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is the author of the controversial “Arizona Law” – SB 1070 – which forcefully addressed illegal immigration through what opponents call ‘racial profiling.’
That brings me to Rick Santorum, who has spent nearly as much time in the state this week and Ron Paul. Wednesday Santorum held a rally in Lenexa (a suburb of Overland Park and Kansas City) and held rallies in Topeka and Wichita on Friday. He has been endorsed by RNC Committeeman and former Kansas congressman Todd Tiahrt (who lost the US Senate primary in 2010 to my then-boss congressman Jerry Moran, but is still very influential, particularly in the business community) and pro-life group Kansans for Life (of which Tihrt’s wife, Vicki, is a board member).
Tiahrt is not as revered at Bob Dole, who is the third most beloved Kansan in Kansas history (the first being former President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the second being pilot Ameila Earhart), but his connections across the state in particularly in Southeast Kansas will be more beneficial to Santorum, practically speaking, than Dole’s, who is now a permanent resident of Washington, D.C.
Santorum is unlikely to pull a Huckabee repeat and win all of the state’s delegates. Because 25 of the delegates will be distributed proportionally, I predict Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will also win a few delegates. But because Rick Santorum will probably win the entire state, he will pick up all 15 of the delegates awarded winner take all style per Congressional District, making him the big winner today despite Romney’s victories in the non-binding caucuses held in Guam and the Mariana Islands earlier today.
How correct I was at predicting the results of the Kansas caucus remains to be seen. But considering that both Paul and Santorum are campaigning in Missouri today ahead of the Sunshine State’s non-binding caucus next Saturday, rather than speaking directly to causing Kansans, I’d say the results of today’s Kansas caucus are pretty set.
