(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Oct. 31, 2016)
Remember when mom told you she didn’t want you hanging out with “that crowd”?
When you were growing up, “that crowd” might have been the guys with tattoos, or car without mufflers, or for girls it was “that crowd” that wore their skirts too short or wore mascara to junior high school.
Well, we’re in the final week of campaigning for Kansas House and Senate seats and your mailbox is going to be filled with flyers either for or against your local candidates.
Now, of course, if you live down the street from a candidate, you can literally toss out the campaign mailers. You know whether he/she keeps the yard mowed or has obnoxious yard art.
And you know based on seeing the candidate around town and maybe from talking to him/her about taxes or schools or the off-ramp into your town.
Those personal relationships, or maybe just seeing them at the parade or city festival, are the most solid bases on which to cast your vote. But many Kansans couldn’t pick their local senator or representative—and much less a new candidate—out of a group photo of the local Rotary.
So, it is probably time to bring out the reading glasses to see the tiny type at the bottom of those flyers in your mailbox or stuffed in the screen door or which wind up in your e-mail.
Very practically, if that flyer says it was sponsored by the candidate, and his/her campaign treasurer, you know it is the candidate and PR consultants painting the rosiest possible picture of the candidate. That’s direct selling, and you can easily sort out the candidates by what they say about themselves. If they are for issues that you aren’t, well, that makes things pretty simple, doesn’t it?
But it gets different when the flyer or advertisement is sponsored by someone else.
Now, we can figure out that if the Kansas Rifle Association supports a candidate, that candidate is likely going to be OK with the right to have guns. But even 2nd Amendment folks probably need to make a phone call to the candidate or the KRA to see just where guns are OK. Should criminals be able to carry guns? College freshmen carry them to class which is likely after next July 1, or are there little provisions that are important to you?
That might mean a little more investigation if it turns out that your district’s candidates get a gun lobby endorsement.
And everyone’s for good schools, but it is probably worth a call to that political action committee that talks about schools to see just what it is that it is encouraging a legislator to do. Raise taxes, or at least divert money from something else in state government to school districts? Encourage proliferation of private schools by letting students take the money that the state spends on their education to a private school?
Just examples, but “that crowd” becomes something that will take some extra work if you want a legislator to take issues where you want them, regardless of the catchy and friendly name of the group supporting the candidate.
So, in the last week of the campaign, while candidates are making their final round of door-knocking and campaigning anywhere they can find a crowd, voters probably ought to be spending some time doing research on what an endorsement really means—to what you want your legislator to be voting for or against, or amending this way or that.
With the national campaigns pulling the oxygen out of the room this year, the energy level for electing legislators who deal most closely with you and your district and your home is ebbing. So, you might want to doublecheck what crowd you’re hanging with.