Feel free to offer any thoughts you might have on the subject. As I recall, in the last race, Sam Brownback had many Republicans standing in opposition to his re-election and yet he failed to lose.
This year, there is an interesting twist,
which has led to
a few of whom may be under 18 at the beginning of the upcoming term. And of course
legislators scrambling to plug the “loophole”.
Perhaps a good idea, since it has become evident that trusting the voters to make decent choices is not always (ever?) wise.
I used to have a pretty good opinion of Kansas. It was the home of reasonable people like Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. Arlen Specter was raised there, I believe.
What gets me about this is it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Except that normally it’s just one high school joker and only gets a small writeup in the local paper that’s quickly forgotten. The only thing different this year is how the press picked up the first one, which led to the others me-too-ing.
I’m a lifelong Kansan, and it saddens and sickens me to see what has happened to our state politically. IMO, this is a prime example of what happens when our hometown boys, the Koch brothers of Wichita, are able to influence virtually every contested race on the state level. Kansas used to have a ‘3 party’ system, consisting of Democrats, moderate Republicans, and conservative Republicans. Beginning in about 2010. the Koch-backed candidates began to win the Republican primaries; the number of Democrat winners severely declined, and the legislature was soon dominated by right-wing Republicans. The 2010 election of Sam Brownback helped to seal the deal, and we have been suffering the consequences ever since.
However, there was a glimmer of hope in 2016, as a number of incumbent Republicans were defeated in the primary, and the number of Democrats in the legislature is now approaching pre-2012 levels. Last year the legislature was able to overturn the disastrous tax bill that was passed in 2012 that has bankrupted our state.
Brownback won a close election in 2014 over state Senator Paul Davis; one of the clinching issues was the disclosure that Davis, at age 26, was in attendance at a Gentlemen’s Club during a 1998 drug raid by the authorities. That fact was trumpeted every day throughout the campaign, and I have no doubt that it was a major factor in the election. Fortunately, Brownback just resigned, so we no longer refer to our state as Brownbackistan.