Pat Roberts, who has been an elected official in Washington for almost 40 years, will retire after his current term ends in 2020. He was first elected to the House in 1980, and then won the Senate seat in 1996 when Nancy Kassebaum retired. He ran for office 24 times and never lost an election. He will be 84 years old when he retires.
As a Kansan, I say good riddance. He hasn’t done anything of note in 40 years, except to head the Senate Agricultural Committee and oversee the passing of the various Farm Bills.
It could make for an interesting Republican primary, and perhaps, just perhaps, the Democrats could make a play for the seat as well.
Unfortunately, there’s no one Democrat in Kansas with statewide name recognition or support, except perhaps our newly-elected Governor, Laura Kelly. And I seriously doubt if she’ll resign her current office to run for Senate. We only have one Democrat in Congress, Sharice Davids, and she also was just elected in November.
I was convinced that Kris Kobach would run for this seat if he was elected Governor, and would probably win it. Now, I seriously doubt if the party will let him run for another statewide contest. I think that Roger Marshall, who represents the First District of Kansas, which covers about 2/3 of the state, probably is the front runner at this point.
Yes. But I would love to see him throw his hat in the ring. He would be running as a Trumpeter, and that might be dangerous in 2020. I would love to see a fractured GOP in this state.
No such thing. A GOP candidate could be flat-earther, who campaigns on getting rid of all jet passenger travel because of the evils of contrails, while appearing in full KKK robes, and he would still be elected.
I’ll point to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who had to contend with a strong third-party candidate, although I admit I don’t know if he pulled more support from Kobach or her. At any rate, Kobach is insanely popular with the right-wing crazies, so your caricature above is apparently not true.
If I were ever out that way again (unlikely now that my last relative in that part of the country has died), I’d invite you along on a drive going east out of Arkansas City towards Dexter. You’d be surprised.
2020 elections are really going to come down to a referendum on Trump. So where a candidates stands on the president will really lean the election.
Trump’s been underwater nationally - in terms of approval - for the vast majority of his term. But in Kansas he’s sitting at about 52% according to the latest numbers I could find - which are pretty outdated, I admit. If the trend of declining approval continues it will create a market opportunity to the right democratic politician. But he or she had better be good on agriculture, subsidies and so forth and be a church goer. Kansas is what Kansas is.
Now if we can get all two dozen or so of the Dem Presidential candidates to stand on the President at once, wherever they could find room, that might do some good.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’ll be serious now.
Trump’s national approval ratings have been pretty steady over the past eight months, so unless your Kansas numbers predate that, they should be pretty close to what they are now.
I agree with the ‘Kansas is what Kansas is’ part; no getting around that. But the current decline in Trump’s national approval is something that’s only been happening for the past three weeks, and assuming the shutdown doesn’t outlast January, I’d bet against it being more than another local fluctuation in the numbers that’s gone by April if not sooner.
Absolutely correct. Virtually all of the advertising in the failed gubernatorial campaign of Kris Kobach centered around his endorsement by Trump. In response, we Kansans elected a Democrat woman instead.
