January 2003
Jan. 30, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 27, 2003)Galvanizing Responsible Republicans
Republicans from across the state have headed home to scrape the sticky stuff from the stick-on badges and labels off their clothing after Kansas Day Weekend 2003, a low-octane affair in Topeka that suffered, of course, because the governor of Kansas is, of all things, a Democrat.
They came to Topeka ready for two days of finger-pointing about the election of Kathleen Sebelius as governor and wondering who among them crossed the party line to vote for her over Republican nominee Tim Shallenburger, who wasn't visible all weekend.
And they left Topeka with the words of the new, unanimously elected Republican State Party Chairman Dennis Jones ringing in their ears.
Jones, of Lakin, you see, just sees one stripe of Republicans. He won't use the words "moderate" or "conservative" or pro-life or pro-choice, or any of the phrases that the press and most Kansans use to sort Republicans.
None of that for Jones. He sees just two sorts of party members: "Responsible Republicans" and "all others." Responsible Republicans will scratch and claw through primary election battles and then, win or lose, rally behind the primary election winners.
They won't form clubs of Republicans to vote for Democrats, won't issue press releases about their choices and won't write campaign checks to Democrats. Jones also won't stand for Republican organizations deciding a candidate is not Republican enough for their November general election votes and jumping the fence to find a minor party candidate to support. And, if Republican liberals and conservatives do any of that, they'll be confronted, faxed and criticized by the Responsible Republican leadership that Jones hopes to galvanize.
Jones figures there are enough Responsible Republicans to elect to public office just about any Republican who manages to emerge from primary election battles.
It's not the first time that Republican leaders have tried to conjure up a label that is big enough to fit everyone in the party, one that doesn't deal with the hot button issues that cleave Republicans, one from another.
Will it work? Will the 2004 election-year Republican Kansas Day celebration be a grinning contest, with the attendees stepping out of cars bearing the stylistic outlines of fish (anti-evolution), and embracing other Republicans whose cars have evolved from Tin Lizzies?
Jones has the unfortunate-for-Republicans lack of a sitting governor of his party as an advantage for the next few years. With no clear leader for his flock, party members can't look to a governor who may be publicly pro-life or pro-choice for guidance, mucking up Jones' "Responsible Republican" theme.
And a movement by the party's skein of statewide elected officials to not take part in primary election battles may further reduce the likelihood that Republicans will look to Topeka for guidance on whether one wing of the party or another is somehow in favor.
Left to their own campaigning skills and philosophies, Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate, Congress, State Board of Education, and House and Senate may indeed have to campaign on the promise of being Responsible Republicans.
Now, it might be logical that Republican statewide elected officers--the treasurer, insurance commissioner, secretary of state and attorney general--aren't the folks you immediately think of when you are looking toward Topeka for advice on a primary campaign for, say, candidates for the State Board of Education, or the state representative in a district where more roads are unpaved than paved. But there's something to be said for letting candidates rise on their own merits and campaign skills.
Oh, and let's not forget, though, that the statewide officials who aren't going to be getting into primary campaigns and favoring one candidate over another or making endorsements themselves will be running for reelection in just three years. They might be looking for a little reciprocity in not having officeholders in Kansas endorsing any of their potential primary election opponents. Is there a new day dawning for Kansas Republicans? Are there going to be "RR" pins sprouting on lapels across the state? Too early to tell.
But Dennis Jones might make it work. He has some advantages going in on his campaign.
We'll, of course, be watching...
Jan. 23, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 20, 2003)Focus on little issues?
Maybe it was the snow and cold, but the first week of the 2003 Kansas Legislature had old-timers around here thinking of the week of April 30, when coats will be left in the car and the Legislature is scheduled to begin its crucial veto session.
What? The House and Senate members are just arriving, just getting comfortable and we're thinking about Spring when the leaves will be popping and the first flowers of the summer season are blooming?
Sure.
And the reason is that besides a fairly predictable budget message from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, there really isn't any reason for legislators to be thinking long-range. Oh, long-range for legislators is two years, when the House and Senate will all be up for reelection.
Neither the governor's budget nor her first-ever State of the State address gave legislators any reason to think beyond adjournment.
That might be a problem, or it might not.
Lawmakers convened this year amid press reports of a $1 billion budget deficit that actually was never real. It sounded strong in stories and it made for cheap and easy dire predictions. It gave legislators something to respond to, something to worry about, but when the numbers came in from Sebelius' budget message, it made the successful conclusion of this legislative session relatively easy. She took away money that cities and counties thought they might get for the next year, and provided for no ending balance in the state treasury, and she leaned on the cash-heavy Kansas Department of Transportation for assistance for the rest of the state.
Practically, Sebelius put together a fairly mundane, predictable, but workmanlike plan for state finances. There will be some grousing and some whining and some pontificating, but the budget itself is solid if unimaginative.
She even at her first-as-governor press conference said she'd prefer to have some money in the bank on June 30, 2004, but left it to the Legislature and the ides of March to come up with a plan to create that budget surplus.
So, while the budget itself was unremarkable, did she give Kansans anything positive to look forward to? Is there a shining city on the hill that Sebelius intends to transplant to Kansas? Nope.
That was probably the surprise from the governor's State of the State address. Besides some talk about local communities getting together to talk about prosperity, and attending what sounded like little more than a catering opportunity this spring in Topeka to share their ideas, there wasn't a big picture out there.
What's that mean? When there is no "official, from the top" vision for the state during the remaining three years of her term, the first year becomes essentially just a way to mark time until the economy gets stronger. She's left the Legislature to its own devices, and didn't even set little goals by which to mark progress.
Does that mean the Legislature is going to just march in place? No. It means instead that the Legislature may take time to deal with issues that generally don't get a lot of attention.
Only a small fraction of the 40 senators and 125 House members are going to be actively involved in most of the complicated committee work that goes along with shepherding even an unexciting state budget.
That means that the majority of the Legislature, with no giant issues to focus on, gets to spend time pumping up smaller issues to consume their its under the dome. And that means that issues that are below-the-radar but important get more time spent on them. Like what to do with the ever-shrinking Department of Agriculture, on water quality and quantity issues, whether the telephone companies have to share lines into your homes and switching equipment in those window-starved buildings around the state, and whether the budgets of school districts are comprehensible.
This may even be the session when legislators decide about slot machines at race tracks and whether to build more prison space, or take steps to reconsider whether everyone in prison really needs to be there, or whether we just need to know where they are at all times.
Budget? Sure, it's important. Vital. But there are going to be a lot of mouse-sized issues scurrying around for most legislators to ponder. With no big-picture stuff to steal interest from those smaller issues and the economy slowly recovering its health, we're looking forward to a session where little issues get their due.
And that's why we're thinking spring. With little guidance from the governor's office, legislators are going to have to make their own issues and solve problems that don't make the front pages everyday.
We'll see what they have in mind. We're willing to be surprised.
Jan. 16, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 13, 2003)Bad credit score = costly insurance?
There's an interesting little issue facing the Kansas Legislature this year, one that is both important and embarrassing to the auto insurance industry.
Anyone out there except insurance sales staff who is going to get upset, maybe forget to eat lunch, because of the possibility of embarrassing the insurance industry? We thought not.
Here's the deal: It's called "credit scoring" and the principle is that people with poor credit ratings often turn out to be poor risks for auto insurance. They tend to crash their cars more frequently and cost insurance companies more money than they produce in premiums.
Using credit scoring, which is a service insurance companies buy from database snoops, insurers can decide whether an applicant for insurance is likely to be a good driver. Now, there is some complicated stuff that goes into the creation of a credit score, but it really boils down to insurers getting information on which they base rates for car insurance.
Bad credit? You may pay higher premiums for your car insurance. Good credit? You may pay a lower rate than others. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Premiums are supposed to be based on the likelihood of a claim being filed. That's why fire insurance is generally lower on homes with fireproof roofs than on homes with wood shingle roofs. Again, nothing wrong with that.
The embarrassing part is that the whole business of credit scoring comes up when the stock market is down, and besides vigorously pursuing claims and trying to weed out reckless drivers, stock market gains are the real moneymakers for insurers, who take your premiums and invest them until they are needed to pay claims.
When the stock market is roaring, and insurance companies are making big returns there, insurers will toss out policies to anyone who can pay the premiums. Getting the money to invest is almost as important as whether the premium payer is really a safe driver.
But when the stock market is sick, well, then insurers have to turn to that mundane but key principle of insuring the safest possible drivers they can find, so they make their money from underwriting risks, not just investing premiums.
With the stock market sick, we're hearing about credit scoring. If your credit is bad enough, even though you have a good driving record, you may not be able to buy insurance at reasonable rates, and the fear is that people are going to be driving around without insurance to cover damage if they hit your car or my car or anyone's car.
The real issue is that apparently credit scoring works. It's relatively new, but it really works, and that means that applying it to auto insurance means some will pay higher premiums and some won't get insurance at all. And in a state where auto insurance is mandatory, it means that poor credit may turn a motorist into a pedestrian--or should.
And that's why the Legislature is getting involved in the issue of whether insurers can deny coverage or shoot up rates based on something that doesn't have anything to do with driving, but does apparently predict whether a client will have accidents. It works, but the reasons are socially suspicious.
Strangely, if credit scoring works, it would have been nice for insurance company stockholders, or policyholders in the case of mutual companies which are owned by their policyholders, to have thought it up while the stock market was booming. Stock companies would have made even more money and rates would have dropped for policyholders of mutual companies.
But, this seems to be a new tool, one thought up in bad times. And that makes it suspicious to legislators.
So, is credit scoring good or bad both on the level of assisting insurance companies in determining risks and premiums and on the level of what happens to motorists who are required by state law to buy insurance at whatever price it is available to them?
The last question is up to the Legislature to decide, maybe to limit the uses of credit scoring, or to dissect the whole scoring business to find out whether it is fair to insurance buyers.
The first question? Is it good business for insurance companies? We'll not worry too much about that because we have it on good authority that when insurance executives send out for a new wool suit, they kill the sheep instead of just shearing it...
Jan. 9, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 6, 2003)Picking silly fights
We've seen in the past week two examples of people picking fights that they didn't have to, and Railsters are wondering whether there are any grown-ups in charge of two institutions: the Catholic Church and the Kansas Republican Party.
It's all about abortion, we're hoping.
The Catholic deal? It's Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas James Keleher writing in the Leaven, a well-circulated newspaper for Catholics in northeast Kansas. He said that Gov.-elect Kathleen Sebelius, who is pro-choice, probably shouldn't be allowed to have an interfaith service in Assumption Catholic Church, which is her church and which is on Statehouse square, as part of her inauguration.
The Republican deal? It's the little notation in the calendar of events for the Republican's high holy days--Kansas Day, the party's annual political festival--that the Kansas Day Club "does not necessarily support the views of the organizers of the events listed."
Where are the grown-ups in these outfits?
Keleher didn't have to pick a fight over Sebelius wanting to start her inauguration day, and her term as governor, with a prayer service. And what looks even sillier is that Keleher didn't stop the service, but merely whined about Sebelius being pro-choice. She's had no sudden epiphany. She's been pro-choice for years while she attended Assumption and either nobody noticed or nobody cared...until her inauguration is just days away.
And the Republican Kansas Day Club, which has made room in its schedule for a Kansans for Life breakfast for several years, just this year decided that it would let thousands of Republicans who get the mailing/order form for tickets to GOP events that it didn't care for some of the events.
Now, the Republican Kansas Day Club was clever enough not to mention the pro-life breakfast specifically. But that, too, represents a problem for the organization that puts on Kansas Day. Was it just the Kansans for Life Breakfast? Or was it the receptions by ABATE, the anti-motorcycle helmet law group that has been hosting receptions at Republican and Democratic events for years? Is it the traditional "Attorney General's eye opener" that has always featured breakfast alcoholic drinks like Bloody Marys and mimosas?
Or...especially in a year when the GOP has been wracked on a national level by racial issues, the Black Republican Council's reception, or the Hispanic Council's party? See, the Kansas Day Club stirred up more dust than it probably meant to stir up, and all for no good reason.
We'd have thought that someone edits the Leaven, which is produced by and for Catholics and probably doesn't have a lot of interest in further dividing the church. And, we'd also have bet that Kansas Catholics are on some level proud that the governor of the state is a Catholic and not, say, a Nazarene. There's always the chance, we guess, that Keleher, as a sort of district manager for the church, is starting a purge of non-pro-life members. But if that's the case, he should have written about that, not Sebelius' prayer service.
And, similarly in the Republican Party which institutionally keeps talking about "big tents" as a way to increase membership, you'd have thought someone would have read that little disclaimer and told the Kansas Day Club that the GOP isn't interested in dividing the party so that more Democrats get elected to public office, and in an overwhelmingly Republican state, party members start grazing through the fence.
Like Keleher, the Kansas Day Club merely whined. We're guessing Keleher probably could have just said no, ordered the prayer service out of Assumption and forced Sebelius to reprint her invitations and hold the service at any of a handful of non-Catholic churches within walking distance of the Statehouse, or even at the county fairgrounds. Surely the Kansas Day Club could have just left the pro-life prayer breakfast--if that was its target--off the schedule of events.
But either of those actions would have had hard-edged consequences that Keleher and the Republican Kansas Day Club were too timid to invoke.
An interesting week, wasn't it?
Jan. 2, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Dec. 30, 2002)A wild political ride?
It doesn't happen often in Kansas, a year when nearly everything that we have come to depend on changes...
New governor, lots of new legislators, lots of budget pressure, lots of opportunities to change the way Kansas does business, shake-ups in the Kansas Democratic and Republican parties. Does it get much better than this for the group of people who closely watch politics and government?
No, it doesn't.
First, what doesn't change. Luckily, Gov.-elect Kathleen Sebelius is Kansas' second girl governor. That means with any luck, the novelty of having broken the string of boy governors who have generally run this state can be quickly put aside. One or two cute stories about what is no longer a novelty ought to about do it so we can move on to government and politics. The job of being governor isn't gender-based, and frankly, the state has some fairly important problems facing it that don't have a thing to do with gender.
Sebelius is putting together her Cabinet, and so far she's selected just two members, both Republican crossbreds, and now it's time to see how cleverly Sebelius can work with what is left of her own political party. Finding Democrats with specific job skills is going to be tough because eight years of Republican administration has winnowed many of the state's most talented Democrats out of state government and into the private sector where salaries are generally better.
That means Sebelius is going to have to look for not only smart Democrats, but smart Democrats who either actually believe in public service, or who can afford a mild ratcheting-down of their lifestyles. That's two hoops to pull potential Cabinet nominees through.
Sebelius is going to have to do that trick while telling those Cabinet secretaries that they are gong to have less money to work with than their predecessors. That means real management skills.
The upside is that under the umbrella of lack of money, Sebelius has one of those rare opportunities to actually change how government in Kansas works.
We hear about that all the time and it generally doesn't mean much. So far, real change in state government has generally meant doing with one fewer special assistant to the secretary, or something like that. Not much change except for the press conference to announce it.
What are the possibilities? Maybe putting all the state's crime-fighting resources into one department, like cities and counties have been doing for generations. There could be a unified Kansas Highway Patrol and Kansas Bureau of Investigation--sorta like uniformed cops and detectives, under one management.
Maybe the whole idea of probation, prison time and parole, the continuum of what we do with lawbreakers, ought to be in one agency.
There are possibilities here that not enough money for business-as-usual presents a new governor.
Legislatively, Sebelius has in both the House and Senate enough Democrats to start with...and the good possibility of playing conservative Republicans off against moderate Republicans. Odds for her putting together a conservative Democratic bloc that will join forces with moderate Republicans are not bad, not bad at all, if she can prove that she is as close to the center of the political highway as she can get...and convince old-line Democrats that they ought to follow her to their political advantage.
Political party-wise? A year in which both Republicans and Democrats choose new state party chairs will make for some off-stage excitement. The GOP remains bitterly split between conservatives and moderate/liberals, and now that Sebelius is the top gun, we'll see whether she moves her whole political party to the right. Remember, two years ago, she proposed a state party chairman who was a conservative lawyer whose firm had done a little union-busting. Unions rejected that tactic, elected old-style Democrat Tom Sawyer as party chair, but still came across with substantial campaign money for Sebelius.
What's the outlook?
We're either ready for someone to throw the switch on a wild governmental and political ride...or not. The potential for change in state government and politics is high...yet it's not entirely safe. But we've done safe before and merely doing the same things on a reduced scale due to budget problems isn't very satisfying. It changes nothing.
And we ought to know in about two weeks whether this ride is going to be a good one.