I don’t know much about Kansas politics, but I expected Balloon Juice favorite Sam Brownback to have more than a four year reich (via).
Sam Brownback, who has served in Kansas as a Congressman, U.S. Senator, and now Governor, is in danger of being unseated after one term, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for KWCH-TV in Wichita. Today, the Democratic ticket of Paul Davis and Jill Docking edges the Republican ticket of Brownback and Jeff Colyer, 43% to 39%.
Has anyone heard much about an anti-Brownback backlash in Kansas?
kindness
I would make some snark about Kansas but it isn’t polite to make fun of the ‘challenged’.
burnspbesq
To my amazement, Kansans apparently favor a state government that looks out for their interests. Hoodathunkit?
Meanwhile, if you are short popcorn futures, today looks like a really good day to cover that short position and cut your losses.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/gop-civil-war/
piratedan
maybe those ALEC fuckers have let the mask slip once too often
Jeremy
I’ve heard that his approval numbers have taken a hit because of his income tax scheme and some other things.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I used to follow his Facebook page and it looked like he was pursuing a typical evangelical rightwing agenda to the peril of everything else. People are just generally tired of The Rightwing Social Agenda when there are so many pressing economic issues.
Trollhattan
Insufficiently conservative? In his case that’s hard to envision.
Also, too, the Klan might agree with Alan Grayson on the tea party (H/T LGM).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Spaghetti Lee
Kansas has actually had quite a few Democratic governors, not what most people would expect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Kansas
Seems like in a lot of states, gubernatorial politics are just seen differently than federal politics: California, New York, and Illinois elect Republican governors fairly often, Oklahoma and Wyoming had Dem governors up till recently, etc. It’s Senator where Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1932.
Turgidson
Perhaps there’s a point where even Kansas residents notice how public services and assets have been cut or sold off and decide “hey, asshole, stop strip-mining the state.” It would be heartening to see that even deep red states can only tolerate so much of that bullshit.
Botsplainer
@burnspbesq:
We’ll see. It’s a little early yet – there might be some negro who gets a t-bone steak with his EBT card somewhere that can be used to distract them.
Mike in NC
Getting rid of GOP governors is always the right move. Soon VA, then KS, then NC in a few years.
Alex S.
Kathleen Sebelius got elected by exploiting the rifts between conservative and ultra-conservative republicans. There’s still a trace of old labor sentiment in Kansas. Maybe there is some real backlash against another hardcore conservative. Survey USA is a very good pollster, but I can’t imagine that someone like Brownback loses in the end. He was no fluke like, for example, Maine Gov. LePage.
lou
I’m guessing it’s because he cut taxes and then sharply slashed school funding. Parents who might otherwise lean Republican get teed off by that, no matter how culturally conservative they are. But I’m not in Kansas so…
Zifnab25
He he. Brownbacklash. Works on so many levels.
feebog
Well, it is still a year out. Having said that, if you are an incumbent and trailing by four points, event his far out, you should be very concerned.
Violet
@Alex S.:
That kind of rift is happening all over the place right now. Maybe Brownback gets primaried for being insufficiently conservative? I can’t imagine how, but who knows.
Jeremy
Another perfect example is Bobby Jindal who went too far with his right wing screw the people agenda. Right now he is one of the least popular governors in America. It seems like the GOP always overreaches.
Dean J
Although a strong Republican state, KS has a history of supporting moderate R’s and D’s in the governorship. The last conservative governor was Mike Hayden, who lasted one term and was beaten by a crazy Democrat, Joan Finney.
debg
@lou: I *am* in Kansas, though I don’t follow state politics much (it’s too depressing). I’ve been getting a sense of despair about Brownback. Of course, I’m a hippie liberal teaching at a small university, so I may only be hearing from the echo chamber. Yet when he shows up in the news, touting another insanely regressive economic policy, the comments are generally not favorable. I can only hope this poll is correct.
Sebelius got elected governor before moving on to HHS because the Repub candidate was so over-the-top conservative. If Kansans are figuring out the same thing about Brownback (like they couldn’t have known before–ha!), we might get another Dem in Topeka.
Randy P
@Spaghetti Lee: I haven’t lived in New York for many years, but I grew up there. The reason they elected Republican governors is that the half of the population that doesn’t live in New York City is very strongly Republican. Including most of Long Island. At least that’s how it was when I was there. You never knew which half would carry the states electoral votes in presidential elections.
Kind of a microcosm of the urban/rural divide in the rest of the US.
BGinCHI
Finally the state motto, “Kansas: Not As Stupid as Missouri,” will finally mean something.
burnspbesq
An experienced woman prosecutor from KC will be leading the evidence review in the “Daisy” case.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20131025/3f67f784-ae75-4371-a4c9-3995306bdc19
low-tech cyclist
Jill Docking, huh? I knew her husband when we were both kids, going on 50 years ago. My grandfather was a big fish in the small pond of Arkansas City, KS politics, so he and (Gov.) Bob Docking knew each other pretty well, since that was Docking’s home town as well. Distant memories…
Jon K
I live in Lawrence, which is admittedly more progresssive than most Kansas towns. The primary employer in town is the State University. The local press in Lawrence (“Larry” as we call it), is focusing a lot on the cuts in education and the state budget in general.
Because of the University, education funding is a topic that is big, locally. It’s been the case for a number of years, that the more populous areas, Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka, have paid more for education to help finance the schools in the large rural parts of the state. That’s caused friction for a long time.
With the current administration, state funding for schools has been cut across the board; at both the public schools and the state colleges. At least in Larry, that’s not been very popular. It has caused the old arguments about how to allocate funds between rural and urban areas to get more attention, too.
The overall budget plan has been to reduce income tax across the board. To pay for the tax cuts, the budgets are getting cut, and property taxes are going up.
In Larry, there has always been pretty strong pushback on the conservative social agenda, but that’s nothing new. I doubt that the rest of the state has suddenly come around to join our little progressive community on those issues.
I’m just guessing, but I suspect the rest of the state is starting to figure out that supply side economics means your local schools, fire department and road crews are the folks who get their budget cut in order to give the Koch brothers in Wichita their next big tax break.
Again, I live in a more progressive community, but my feel is that Brownback is taking heat based primarily on economic issues. I don’t get the impression that the social issues are suddenly turning around.
… just my take based on what I hear around town…
Jeremy
@Randy P: I grew up in CT and we have had plenty of republican governors and the state is very blue. The republicans governors were of the moderate New England variety.
I think that most governor races end of being less about national politics so that’s why we see democratic governors in red states at times and republican governor in blue states.
kindness
@Randy P: C’mon, don’t compare North East Republicans to what the rest of the country has. It used to be NE Repubs were fiscally cheap but socially liberal. I have no doubts they aren’t as socially liberal as when I grew up there. Still, the reason CA hasn’t elected a Republican governor for a while is the party is controlled by neanderthals. And they nominate neanderthals. Plays well in a primary and then flames out in the general.
Thank god for neanderthal stupidity.
BGinCHI
@kindness: What did the neanderthals ever do to you?
Dave N.
@Trollhattan:
While not all teabaggers are racists, most racists are teabaggers.
Mnemosyne
@debg:
That’s one of the reasons a Republican won’t be elected governor of California for a long time to come — the California Republicans are, frankly, batshit crazy and run around the state declaring that they’re going to ban abortion, which does not play well in libertarian-leaning California. Social conservatism never really got a foothold here — it was always economic conservativism/libertarianism. I’m still convinced that anti-gay Prop 8 squeaked by because the sponsors made the wording deliberately confusing and some people didn’t understand that they needed to vote “no” in order to allow gay couples to get married.
Jeremy
Though I will say that New York is more blue than it was a decade or two ago. I think the reason why we are seeing blue states become more blue is because of the radicalism of the republican party. A lot of moderate republicans have left the party.
fidelio
@lou: This, in spades.
I’m hearing similar things from relatives in the Kansas CIty area, who get a lot of news out of Kansas even if they live on the Missouri side. Also, Missourians have learned to watch crazy Republicans in Kansas because that sort of thing seeps east, that being downhill, speaking in continental geography terms.
They’re upset about school funding issues, they feel (even when they are pretty socially conservative) that too much money gets wasted in losing battles over batshit crazy issues (see Phil Kline, noted pecksniff and pantysniffer) and they’re worried about the economy, and are not convinced that Brownback’s tax cuts really will bring in outside business, or spur local businesses to expand, but will result in damaged infrastructure and poor outcomes in public education, which they rightly suspect are big turn-offs for businesses.
Kansans may, in general, like less government, but they want the parts they keep to work right, and they aren’t sold on Sam Brownback’s ability to run a hotel, as the old saying goes.
Gretchen
This Kansan is hoping for anybody, anybody at all, to deliver us from Brownbackistan. We had Kathleen Sebelius, but she was sacrificed to the greater good of Obamacare, and here we are in Brownbackistan.
Benjamin
man, what a great title to this post. perfect.
catclub
@kindness: “reason CA hasn’t elected a Republican governor for a while”
Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor in 2011. so not in the most recent election. But in the next most recent, a republican.
BGinCHI
@catclub: In CA years that’s like infinity ago.
Emerald
@kindness: Yes, the CA repubs are crazy and they kept the state in bankruptcy for years and years while destroying the public school system, which used to be the best in the nation.
But the reason we got rid of them was the Latino vote. Way back when, Prop 187 (Pete Wilson’s immigrant bashing measure) woke ’em up, and voting participation has been trending up.
Thanks to the Latino vote, we have two Dem senators and a Dem governor, and finally got the state legislature to just over two-thirds Dem, which means that the Rethugs cannot continue to strangle the state economy.
We also passed a tax increase and now have a surplus–although plenty of future obligations threaten.
We also have a new commission that did actually fair, non-partial redistricting, and that got rid of a goodly number of R. congresscritters. (Bilbray, for one, but not Issa. Issa’s district–alas, mine–is less scarlet than before, but inland it’s still Tom Metzger country).
Because California Latinos started to vote. Same thing will happen nationally, eventually. We stopped the insanity here. The rest of the nation is next.
Jeremy
@fidelio: I thought I read a post from a moderate blog about Kansas politics where they talked about a few companies relocating jobs to another state after Brownback’s income tax scheme.
piratedan
@Gretchen: the folks in Arizona sympathize with your plight…
Roger Moore
@Spaghetti Lee:
Regarding California, I think you’re missing part of the story. The state has swung hard to the left in the past couple of decades, to the point that it’s hard to imagine a Republican governor beating a Democrat in a fair fight. Schwarzenegger was an anomaly who won in spite of his party. I suppose it’s possible that the new open primary system might let another moderate Republican win the nomination, but it’s hard to see how one could get far enough in the system to be in position to run as a serious candidate.
fidelio
@Jeremy: I wouldn’t be surprised. Businesses like an educated work force and reliable, up-to-date public infrastructure. Hoocoodanode?
Tom Q
@catclub: Of course, the only reason Arnold got in to begin with was using the recall process to bypass the primary system (and then running as an incumbent). He’d never have won a GOP primary, and no other Republican of his (relatively) moderate stripe will for the foreseeable future.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
Holy shit, thats a link to Rod Dreher referring to the current degenerate state of the Republican party as the “Lord’s Army” stage–i.e. the last stage in crazy like some African separatist fractional death cult.
And then you get this from his comment thread:
Lori
With a margin for error of 4.4%, that spread isn’t anything to get excited about. However, I expect the Dem’s lead will only get bigger given how the economy in KS looks. They sure as hell aren’t going to be attracting new business. Might as well go back to being a dry state at this rate.
I haven’t lived there since Carlin’s days, wouldn’t go back now, ever. I don’t even like to visit, most of the relatives are entirely too conservative, too religious, too bigoted, in other words, typical Kansans.
Hawes
I was getting all excited and then I saw that the election was a year from now. This probably IS an echo of disgust with the Congressional GOP, of whom Brownback was a member in good standing. I find myself perversely hoping for another shutdown in January to padlock that anchor around the GOP’s neck. As it is, a single poll a year out is about as predictive as tea leaves.
Rand Careaga
We may have let the Medfly get away from us, but California’s GOP Eradication Program is doing well.
karen marie
@piratedan: Are there enough unfortunate BJers for a Phoenix meetup?
Violet
@karen marie: Suzanne is in Arizona. Can’t remember where, though. Might be Phoenix.
mclaren
Brownback sounds like an especially kinky form of sex — like bareback, but more bizarre.
les
Being in Kansas, that’s hard to believe. The only real political fights are between the “moderate” repubs and the bat shit contingent. That said, Brownback is pretty up front about his plan to turn Kansas into Texas, without the oil to exploit and without the population to oppress; and to essentially give the state to the Koch brothers. Combined with his Sec O State Kris Kobach who, when he’s not traveling the country crafting anti-immigration statutes, is suing the Feds to allow split voting–folks who may have to be allowed to vote on federal candidates won’t be allowed to vote on state ballots, ‘cuz fraudulent poors–maybe sanity could prevail. I’m not holding my breath; there wasn’t even a Dem candidate on my ballot for anything but prez, last election.
WereBear
They have reached the point where they can’t win with the crazy and they can’t win without them. I sense a period of wandering in the wilderness… I hope.
The swiftness and sheer SIZE of the opinion backlash is breathtaking. The Republicans aren’t doing anything they haven’t been doing for the last decade or so… have enough people finally noticed?
Roger Moore
@catclub:
But he’s a complete party outsider and a RINO, so it’s not clear if he really counts. It’s hard to believe that anyone who comes from within the party system could win a statewide election.
feebog
The crosstabs are pretty interesting. Brownback trails with young and older adults and is essentially even with seniors. The only demo he leads is with young voters, which cuts completely against the national trend. But the young voters are the most likely to change their minds, according to the poll. All in all, not good news for Brownback.
fdrlincoln
Brownback’s approval rating has been been hovering in the 30s so this does not surprise me. His only basis of support are evangelicals and ALEC types. Conservative newspapers are turning against him as the state budget collapses and schools continue to be underfunded everwhere except the rich suburbs of KC and in college town Lawrence. The right Dem can beat him if they forge ties with noninsane Repubs and the nonALEC business community.
fdrlincoln
There is also the barely concealed purge of nonpartisan appointees in the state bureaucracy. Many career civil servants were fired and replaced with people from approved rightwing churches brought in from out of state, particularly TX and FL. That pissed alot of mainstream Bob Dole type repubs off.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
As Tom Q said, Schwarzenegger bypassed the whole part where he would be nominated by California Republicans and went straight to the general election where he got a lot of (actual) independents and conservative Democrats to vote for him. He never, ever would have made it through the nomination process as a Republican — too socially liberal (ie unwilling to bash gays).
Mnemosyne
@fdrlincoln:
Didn’t Kline land in a cushy appointed position after he lost his election?
ETA: That would have pissed me off if I lived in Kansas. You mean we took the trouble to vote this guy out of office and you just stuck him somewhere else?
fdrlincoln
All that said, Brownback will be tough to beat. He has tons of money, full support of the Christian taliban groups which are strong in many areas, and new aggressive voter suppression tactics in play. But it IS possible that he will go down if the Dem ticket of Paul Davis and Jill Docking can recreate the coaltion that Sebelius put together.
fdrlincoln
@Mnemosyne: yeah but that really made people angry and he was disbarred for ethical misconduct by the state supreme court this week.
fdrlincoln
To understand Kansas you have to study the map. Topeka is purple. The KC suburbs are reddish but usually not completely insane and Dems are known to win there sometimes. KC proper is blue. Lawrence is very blue. Wichita used to be purple but has gone ultra red hardcore wingnut over the last 20 years. Manhattan is red because of Fort Riley and all the military families who vote GOP reflexively. Rural areas are very red and taliban dominated….except that they like having schools and Brownback has been hurting them.
fdrlincoln
A winning Dem governor has to win Topeka and the KC suburbs, run up huge margins in Lawrence and KC proper, and not get killed in Wichita and the rural taliban strongholds. It has been done in the past and a well funded Dem can do it again
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
I think the right people have finally noticed. It seems as if the media has been more willing to blame the Republicans the recent shutdown rather than saying both sides are at fault. It doesn’t hurt that the Republicans can’t tell a coherent story this time around, with one group trying to blame the Democrats and another group trying to claim credit for it. I think the Republicans are also suffering from their long term marketing as the party of small government; it predisposes people to blame Republicans for a government shutdown.
WereBear
These days, they really gotta rethink that.
fdrlincoln
As for why the rural areas vote GOP taliban even when the GOP is ruining the schools and letting infrastructure crumble, that is mostly for cultural reasons…guns and gays and too many immigrants. However Brownback has pushed the ALEC economics too far, and even in Kansas, the culture war stuff is starting to lose traction. Bigotry against gays for example is not as potent as it was even five years ago.
p.a.
Self-righteous prigs can actually annoy other self-righteous prigs if there isn’t an exact alignment of issues. Maybe his conversion to Catholicism alienates the thumpers a bit?
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Although:
A) The new open primary system should allow people to run and possibly get nominated by appealing to the center rather than the extremes.
B) Schwarzenegger may not have bashed gays, but he was more than happy to veto gay marriage legislation. If you want an example of his more moderate trend, it would come in his relative greenness.
GregB
This can’t be true, I just read a very Broderesquely reasonable piece at Andrew Sullivan’s blog that declared all of the GOP Governor’s are now popular because they have learned to compromise and the Democrats are doomed.
The GOP is rebounding!
fdrlincoln
@p.a.: one thing I watch closely are small town Kansas newspaper editorials, as they reflect Mainstreet opinion pretty well in the rural areas. Most of them endorsed Brownback but in recent months many have gotten very critical or at least neutral usually as the extent of his failed and disastrous tax cut have become too obvious to ignore. People in the rural areas are not happy about the school situation or the crumbling roads and since the GOP controls all aspects of state govt they can’t deflect blame well. Brownback has been trying to blame this on obama but his approval rating and thia poll show that he hasn’t suceeded with that so far. Last I saw Obama has a higher approval in KS than Brownback does.
fidelio
@fdrlincoln: In rural areas good roads and bridges are essential–farm produce has to get to market and people have to be able to get to jobs and school and hospitals and so on.
Financial support for the schools and public facilities like hospitals is also vital, and so is getting support for things like electrical and other utility cooperatives. Small towns and rural areas cannot generate the money needed to cover all these things, and when funding is slashed they’re screwed. Property tax payments can’t fix everything; farmland is taxed at a different rate from residential and commercial properties, typically. So however conservative they may be, they need help from farther up the food chain, and they know it.
In some places, they may also cringe at the thought of being dragged into court fights that cost the state a lot of money and end up making them look like idiots, even if they may have agreed with some of the premises that led to that legislation or policy decision in the first place. No one with any self-awareness likes to look really stupid in front of the world–that’s one of the things that brought Kline low–he was an embarrassment, even if they agreed with him about abortion.
Then. as noted, there’s the fact that Brownback has brought in outsiders. It’s hard to love a carpetbagger. Especially if they turn out to be troublemakers who cause expensive and embarrassing lawsuits…
BruinKid
From the other SurveyUSA poll taken at the same time in Kansas, it’s amazing that Obama has a HIGHER approval rating than Brownback in the state. In fact, his approval number is HIGHER (38.07%) than the percent of votes in got in Kansas in 2012 (37.99%).
low-tech cyclist
@WereBear:
Even after Katrina, there was a case to be made that Bush was a one-off fuckup. And the press did its best to pretend that McCain and Romney were credible as leaders, thus fooling a lot of people into believing that Republicans could still govern.
But IMHO the shutdown and the surrounding theatrics have been to the Republican Party as a whole what Katrina was to the Bush Administration: the catalyst that made it impossible for people to disregard their gathering doubts, see through the ongoing media coverup, and realize that this is the essence of what you get when you get Bush (2005) or the GOP (2013).
SteveM
Love the post title.
SteveM
Love the post title.