By C.J. JANOVY
Kansas Reflector
Before we close out primary week, let’s toast the members of the Kansas Legislature who can already plan victory parties on Election Day three months from now.
A few special folks can take leisurely walks from now until January because no one from the opposing party filed to run against them.
To no one’s surprise, most are Republicans. Democrats pre-emptively conceded 34 out of 125 seats in the Kansas House of Representatives by not putting anyone’s name on a ballot. It’s also no surprise that much of the uncontested territory is in rural areas.
There’s District 120, for example, where Rep. Adam Smith, a farmer/rancher from Weskan, is in the middle of his second term representing 22,453 people spread out over six counties in the Colorado-Nebraska corner. Holding down the Oklahoma-Colorado corner to the south of him is a spread of four districts — 122, 123, 124 and 125 — where no Dems filed. But not all of the empty-Dem ballots represent ranchland. One’s in Overland Park, where Rep. Chris Croft just survived a primary challenge from one of his party’s moderates.
There are also districts so heavily Democratic that Republicans didn’t bother, either. Each member of the Kansas House represents around 20,000 people, and some places are so thick with members of one party that running from the opposite party would be a waste of time, effort and money.
But it also just seems sad.
“We’re definitely playing catch-up,” says Vicki Hiatt, chair of the Kansas Democratic Party. “We’ve been building our bench, because statewide we did not have Democrats in local positions at all. In 2017, we really targeted candidates to run for city councils and school boards. I think we recruited almost 600, and around 400 of them won.”
Rural areas are tough, though.
“Democrats in rural areas still have the mindset that, ‘I’m the only Democrat here,’ and they don’t want the communities to know that they’re Democrats,” she says. “People think, ‘I don’t dare run for office and let them know I’m a Democrat, because I own this small business and it’ll kill it.’”
Let that sink in, friends.
Still, Hiatt points to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s election for some encouragement.
“Our numbers show, even though people might not be broadcasting that they’re Democrats, they’re voting for Democrats. We didn’t win some of those rural counties, but she certainly decreased the margin (of loss).”
Over in the Senate, where 40 people generally represent around 70,000 Kansans, one Democrat and ten Republicans can coast.
With Democrats having surrendered a quarter of the upper chamber, the lone member of that party with no Republican opponent is Sen. Marci Francisco, of Lawrence, who has represented District 2 since 2005.
Of the Republicans who now face no contest, five at least saw a little bit of action this week, either surviving a primary challenge (Sen. John Doll, of Garden City) or beating incumbents (Michael Fagg, of El Dorado; Virgil Peck, of Haven, assuming the 35-vote edge he had on Thursday holds through the final mail-in count; J.R. Claeys, of Salina; and Alicia Straub, of Ellinwood).
But let’s wrap up the week with special recognition of six others, whose constituents are apparently so happy that no one, Republican or otherwise, felt it necessary to throw in for the seat:
- Sen. Dan Kerschen, of Garden Plain, who has represented District 26, west of Wichita, since 2009.
- Sen. Larry Alley, of Winfield, whose District 32 consists of a handful of rural counties along the Oklahoma border, which he’s represented since 2017.
- Sen. Rick Wilborn, of McPherson, who has served the residents of Chase, Ellsworth, Marion, McPherson and Morris counties in District 35 since 2015.
- Sen. Elaine Bowers, of Concordia, who moved up to the Senate in 2013 after three terms in the House, and whose District 36 covers 11 counties — Cloud, Jewell, Lincoln, Mitchell, Osborne, Ottawa, Republic, Rooks, Russell, Smith and Washington — in the central part of the state along the Nebraska border.
- Sen. Carolyn McGinn, of Sedgwick, who has represented District 31, which includes Harvey County and part of northern Sedgwick County, since 2005.
McGinn doesn’t need any ads but she made a video anyway, and it’s so quintessentially Kansas that we all ought to pause for 46 seconds and enjoy it:
As McGinn’s closing joke about manure confirms, serving as a Kansas legislator is a high-cow-pie, low-cash job (it pays $88.66 per day during the session). Running for office is fun only for certain types of people, and losing is no fun at all.
But not even trying? That’s worse than losing.
C.J. Janovy is a veteran journalist with deep roots in the Midwest. Before joining the Kansas Reflector, she was an editor and reporter at Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, KCUR. Before that, she edited the city’s alt-weekly newspaper, The Pitch.