August 2004

Aug. 26, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 23, 2004)

Running as not someone?

Kansans’ November general election ballot is going to be interesting, if all the pieces fall into place in the next week or so to line up the candidates for U.S. Senate.

The race is literally going to be incumbent U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., versus three, maybe four, candidates whose primary attraction to voters is that they aren’t U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

It’s as simple as that.

Democrats in their primary election this month voted in large numbers–more than 107,000–between two candidates who basically aren’t Sam Brownback, the conservative Republican who six years ago won a full term in the Senate after having won the race in 1996 to fill out the remaining two years of the term of Bob Dole, who resigned his seat to run for president.

Democrats this month, embarrassingly, chose a railroad retiree who just entered the Democratic primary race to make sure that there was a Democratic name on the November ballot so voters would have a choice. Well, that wild-card candidate, Robert A. Conroy, Shawnee, drew an ace. He won the primary election over serious candidate Lee Jones, of Lenexa, and is in the process of waiting for the state canvassing board to officially confirm his primary nomination so that he can resign the race and Democrats substitute Lee Jones on the November ballot.

Conroy’s real issue was that he wanted a Democrat on the ballot. Jones’ real issue is that, if he picks up the Democratic mantle on the second bounce, he isn’t Sam Brownback.

And there’s a second "I Am Not Sam Brownback" candidate, and a third "I Am Not Sam Brownback" candidate, and maybe, just maybe, a fourth "I Am Not Sam Brownback" candidate hoping to wind up on the general election ballot.

That "maybe" candidate is Republican former Kansas Secretary of Transportation Horace Edwards, who has gathered just a few more signatures than is required to win a spot as an independent on the November ballot, and frankly, things don’t look good. Signatures on petitions have to be validated by the Kansas Secretary of State’s office, and typically, a candidate needs to gather 25 percent more signatures than the roughly 5,000 needed to make sure that in their zeal to participate in the Democratic process, most who signed Edwards’ petitions are genuine, registered Kansas voters.

Edwards may make it onto the ballot, but don’t bet your next house payment on it.

The two firm, order-the-ink candidates are George Cook, Mission, of the Reform Party and Steven Rosile, Wichita, the iron horse of the Libertarian Party in Kansas.

Those third-party candidates are always good for several thousand votes, either from members of their small parties or from voters looking for a "none of the above" candidate to garner their votes to make a personal political statement that is quite frankly lost in the real world of politics.

Jones with the Democratic Party label of course has the biggest potential voter base for the November challenge to Brownback. But, that’s in a state that is top-heavy Republican. If every Republican and every Democrat and every Libertarian and every Reform Party member votes–and votes their party–Brownback wins reelection in a landslide.

Now, of course, everyone won’t vote and not all Democrats are going to vote for Lee and not all Republicans are going to vote for Brownback. It’s the chance Lee can shanghai Republican voters which makes this interesting. Republicans can be pulled away from their party... that’s why Kansas has a Democratic governor now, Kathleen Sebelius.

But it’s that possible fifth candidate, Edwards, who remains the political question mark. He’s a Republican, of course, and if he winds up on the ballot he may provide a new option for voters... almost a Ralph Nader of the Kansas U.S. Senate race. If Republicans who don’t want Brownback vote Nader... er, Edwards... then it’s all over. It’s that simple.

But there are a lot of pieces that have to fall into place. Nobody’s going to vote for Brownback by accident. Nobody’s going to vote for Jones by accident. Which leaves Edwards as the accident... the wild card... if he gets on the ballot.

This just may become interesting...

Aug. 19, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 16, 2004)

What is suitable?

A legislative committee next week is going to take a look at one of the most complicated, divisive issues in the whole arena of school finance: a suitable education.

It’s the key because the Kansas Constitution requires the state to arrange for a "suitable" education for every school child in the state, and once you figure out what the Legislature believes is suitable, then you have a building block for determining just how much money each school district needs to provide that suitable education.

The issue which the Legislative Educational Planning Commission will hear testimony about next week has all the hallmarks of a conservative/liberal firefight months before the Kansas Supreme Court delivers its decision on whether the state’s school finance formula is constitutional and deals fairly with rich and poor, big and small school districts.

"Suitability" is an area where even in the complicated world of education, simple solutions are the most frequently used and can appear to be persuasive. Reading, writing and arithmetic–the basic 3-Rs that most grown-ups have heard for decades–are the bottom rung, of course. Nobody hasn’t talked about reading, writing and arithmetic. Everyone believes that’s where to start, and it sure is, but do those three disciplines define "suitable" anymore in an age when re-booting a computer has become a basic skill, essential to not only classroom work but figuring pesticide application for crops and buying books that aren’t available in the local stores?

What if the Legislature, which sets the bar for suitability, decides that public education is getting too expensive and in order to avoid tax increases determines that suitable is just reading, writing and arithmetic, the skill set that served Kansans and Americans well in the 1940’s? Well, the start of what happens then is that most of the state’s schoolteachers are overqualified for their jobs and ought to be replaced with lower-cost, less-educated teachers, maybe just smart high school kids who can teach others how to divide and multiply.

The real question may be suitable for what? If the key is an education suitable for high school graduates to get a job in a lumberyard or as a retail store clerk, then we’ re not talking spending much money. But is clerking in a store or selling burgers or writing simple and understandable letters to friends or describing a bid for a tree removal project a suitable skill set for all young adults to raise and support a family and buy a home and cars and all the rest of the things Kansans want their children to do?

That’s why defining "suitable" tends to get mushy. It takes the tack of learning skills that empower pupils to enter the job market, understand their state and nation and world and how people and countries interact, and to learn how to learn specialized subjects at post-secondary institutions whether they are trade schools or universities or medical schools.

The mushy stuff, the "I can’t define it but I know it when I see it," is probably the most important part of a suitable education because it is the departure point for everything else in life. Sure, you ought to know how to read and write and do arithmetic, but that’s just a start.

So, where does the Legislature go with suitable? There’s the in-your-heart feeling that suitable is probably all the skills that teachers can pump into their pupils, learning French, learning something about arts, learning something about humanities, culture, history and everything that their minds will absorb.

But, there’s still that budget stuff in the background. How smart can Kansas afford to make its elementary and secondary school pupils, once it comes down to how many teachers to hire and what skills those teachers need? That’s the question on suitability. Because at some point it becomes possible to do the long division and the arithmetic to determine the cost of suitable education and provide enough money for just that and no more to schoolchildren.

It’s going to be more important than it sounds, this suitability stuff...

Aug. 12, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 9, 2004)

"Takings" take a new turn...

Thirty years ago, for those who will admit that they were paying attention to anything except maybe stacks of toy blocks, Kansas used to figuratively turn its eyes toward Michigan to see what was new in the way of automobiles when September was "new model" month from the place that produced most of our cars.

Well, there’s a new model this year, released earlier this week, and it isn’t a car or a vehicle of any sort but what could well become a milestone in a tricky and controversial area of law known as "takings."

Takings, as the term has become known in conservative political circles in the past 23 years, means government at some level either outright taking property from its owners through condemnation or putting so many restrictions on the use of property that its value to its owner is diminished.

A taking can be as simple as, say, a zoning agency saying that you can’t build an outbuilding or shed at the back of your lot or that even though you have 20 acres, you can’t divide it up and sell off housing lots. Or, it can be condemning your property, determining its fair market value, paying you that amount and telling you to move.

Taking is vital in a handful of cases. Say, when the nation was forming and railroads were built or pipelines were necessary to move water or fuel for the benefit of the general public that needs water and fuel. It’s also important for public safety and health in some instances—like urban renewal or to build a dam to tame a dangerous flooding situation.

In the last 23 years, a Michigan Supreme Court decision that allowed Detroit to condemn and buy hundreds of parcels of land for the expansion of a General Motors plant there, known as the Poletown case, established the principle that government could force people off their property, and then resell that property to a private business concern... for a car plant, in the Poletown case.

Last week, Michigan said it got it wrong in 1981. It may be public interest, but probably not strictly public safety, and handing land to another private owner doesn’t mean the land will be for public use.

What’s it mean in Kansas? Well, it probably means that a lot of projects in which local units of government, in order to provide land for some business enterprise that will bring jobs and capital and higher taxes to the community, won’t be able to condemn land. It certainly would have had an impact on aggregation of land for the Wyandotte County NASCAR auto race track and would have stopped dead in its tracks a Johnson County maneuver a few years ago in which a used car lot was condemned, the property taken by government and sold to a luxury new car dealership that will provide more tax revenues to the county.

Now, it’s a Michigan case, of course, but the principles of Poletown were widely cited by Midwestern states in condemnation or "takings" law and cases, and it is sure to chill cases and create new law in Kansas when the Legislature meets next winter.

Cities have long sought to increase prosperity and tax revenues, create jobs and economic activity so that they can prosper. That way, their residents live well, their kids can stay in town and work and raise families, and all that nice, quality-of-life stuff that we all enjoy happens. But when that requires essentially forcing people off their property, well, that gets real touchy real quickly.

What’s it likely to mean? After all, it is a Michigan case.

It means that there will be hours of testimony, that economic development types are going to have to lobby their hearts out to make sure that they are still able to aggregate property for that just-right industry or development, and it means that seizing property from one person to give it to another who may make better use of it suddenly has become more difficult.

Now, just in case you are looking toward Japan or Korea or Germany for you next new car, don’t think that a sizable number of Kansans aren’t going to be looking toward Michigan... again...

Aug. 5, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 2, 2004)

It changed everything...

BOSTON–There is a real sense of wrestling above your weight class at a national political convention, where Democrats by dint of having worked on campaigns, licked envelopes, planted yard signs around the nation became delegates to the biggest and most intense political event of their lives.

The focus of politics shifts dramatically from the in-state concerns about whether that last precinct or two will change a Kansas Senate district from one in which Democrats have a chance into one where new precincts and their conservative inhabitants may change the outcome of a local election. It gives delegates a chance to look far outside the box where they live and have concerns about whether a new county commissioner will OK wind farms or a new WalMart or replace that too-old bridge that leads to a school.

From Boston, Kansas delegates and delegates from other states were looking at a big picture and for the first time in decades of covering national political conventions, there is a quiet almost unconscious realization that the 2004 presidential election is one of the most important that the nation has seen in years...

And for all the time that President George Bush has said that Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything, well, it has. The 2000 presidential election was essentially about "our guy" and "their guy" and it was hard-fought and ugly and Democrats (especially the delegation from Florida, the deciding state) remain upset about it. For 1996, it was hometown hero Bob Dole vs. President Bill Clinton, and, again it was pretty much an "our guy" vs "their guy" deal, because 9-11 hadn’t happened yet.

From Boston, it seems as if there is genuine fear among Democrats for what may happen if their guy doesn’t win. It’s not just the national security business, because that almost takes care of itself. There are probably ways to discourage terrorism in the U.S. and enough leashes have been jerked in the past three years that the nation is paying attention. Reaction to a new attack would be troubling, of course, but in terms of responding domestically to put out fires, help the injured, restore basic services, the U.S. probably is at the top of its game. Not a pleasant thought, but America has learned now to treat its injured, bury its dead and restore cable service...

There’s this fear among Democrats that falls short of major tragedies that ranges from will there still be national parks to whether older Americans are going to get the prescription drugs they need to whether the nation is on the brink of seeing overtime pay (and the bass boats and the re-roofings and the saving for retirement) eliminated as we know it now.

That’s big stuff for Democrats—issues that their party tends to talk about more amongst themselves than Republicans do, and Democrats are wondering just how to make those issues important to Republicans and unaffiliated voters for the November election. Big national security issues are just flat a toss-up. Nobody wants the nation bombed, and chances are good that neither presidential candidate can prevent it or would stop short of doing all possible to prevent it. Most of life in the U.S. is in sync with smaller issues, household issues that sound almost piddling when compared to airliners-as-weapons, but which Democrats want to stress without looking unconcerned about security and such.

Some aspects of the Democratic National Convention itself may have indicated the tough row that Democrats have to hoe this fall. Thousands of delegates walked from their shuttle buses to the Fleet Center in Boston past a tiger cage filled with protesters who were against most everything–there was even a guy chanting about brushing and flossing daily who probably wasn’t a real threat to anyone, but got tossed into the protest cage anyway. They attended a convention where the convention itself didn’t do much in the way of threat
assessment, but instead caged everyone...

Will the Republican National Convention fire up the GOP the way Boston did Democrats? Is there a sense of the importance to this election year that Democrats are feeling? We’ll see, because we’ll be in New York for the convention (press credentials willing), to watch the focus, and the follow-through to that focus, just as we’ll all be watching what fired-up Democrats do.