(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers July 25, 2016)
If there is news from the just-completed Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the just-getting-started Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, it’s that Kansas politicians probably ought not talk much about what happens outside the state border.
Kansas Republicans, with just nine of the state’s delegates committed to vote for Donald Trump, saw the rest of its 40-member delegation get to take a deep breath. Kansas’ Republican delegate votes were, of course, settled at the Kansas GOP caucuses across the state this spring, but the best news for Kansans was that they were locked into their votes before the convention opened. And with no non-Trump candidates (6 for Marco Rubio, 24 for Ted Cruz and 1 for John Kasich) releasing their delegates to vote for others, Republicans in Kansas pretty well have insulated themselves from whatever happens in the November presidential election.
Democrats who are meeting this week will likely see Bernie Sanders pick up the majority of the state’s 37 delegates, but Hillary Clinton win the nomination.
Best guess: Both Republicans and Democrats are best-served by staying away from any national candidate endorsement and simply running on issues that they can see from their front porches.
Both Clinton and Trump have serious likeability issues, and who wants to be friends with the person voters don’t like?
Now, Kansas is a generally Republican state and Trump’s chances of losing Kansas are slim…unless he continues to depress voters with the dismal future he has outlined for Kansas and other states, and makes the future so bleak that nobody thinks even Trump can fix it.
But strangely, this might just be the year that angst over Trump deciding by executive order the future of Kansans might just cost him the state, or at least narrow the margin to the point that down-ballot races are shaken.
An unconventional Republican president probably needs balancing with a Democratic Kansas House or Senate. It’s unlikely to be a party-line vote headed by either Trump or Clinton, with those down-ballot offices more likely to represent voters’ request for redemption than a solid party preference on a ballot headed by unpopular, or at least shaky, candidates.
This voting business does go clear to the bottom of the ballot, and if the ground is shaky at the top, it gets shakier the further down you go.
Who’s going to be president? Too early to tell, but at this point there appears to be considerable reticence about voting for either Trump or Clinton.
But for those down-ballot folks, we might be at the point where those races are going to be less party-oriented and leaning more toward closely defined statewide issues.
Want to talk about courts? Trump and Clinton are hotly debating filling that vacant U.S. Supreme Court slot, and with five Kansas Supreme Court justices on the ballot for retention, Gov. Sam Brownback is pushing for a house-cleaning of the high court save for his personal justice Caleb Stegall. If Kansans don’t retain the current skein of justices, then Brownback makes the appointments after a long and sticky legal procedure that sounds much like the presidential nominee scrap over the issue.
Or is it about public works with both Clinton and Trump touting investments in highways long and loud; Kansas has stripped hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax money from the Kansas Department of Transportation for use in balancing the budget. The fix for the budget problem is undoubtedly higher taxes. Who wants to be the Republican or Democrat to harmonize with either Clinton or Trump about the need for road work when Kansas has sharply reduced spending on that issue?
Both presidential candidates are talking about spending more money on law and order. Does Kansas have the money to spend? Probably not but everyone likes the idea of more law enforcement. So do Kansas legislative candidates propose bumping that property tax lid lawmakers imposed on local units of government to allow more property tax-financed police? Which side of that issue do Trump Republicans and Clinton Democrats take? Law and order candidate whom?
Keep it in Kansas…