Topeka ? The latest poll in the Kansas governor’s race showed troubling news for Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign. After winning his first term in 2010 with 62 percent of the vote, the Republican governor now finds himself running 10 points behind a Democrat with little statewide name recognition.

Even more troubling, the Rasmussen Reports survey showed Brownback losing 30 percent of his own party’s voters to Rep. Paul Davis, of Lawrence, the Kansas House minority leader.

Those numbers were not surprising to people who have followed the campaign. A month earlier, more than 100 high-profile moderate Republicans, mostly former office holders, announced they were endorsing Davis. And in the primary election Aug. 5, a virtually unknown candidate, Jennifer Winn, captured 37 percent of the GOP vote against the sitting incumbent governor.

But instead of shifting his political message toward the center in hopes of winning back some of those votes, Brownback has held fast to a hard-line message of both fiscal and social conservatism.

Unveiling his economic agenda for the next four years, Brownback vowed to “hit the accelerator” on his plan for cutting taxes and state spending while easing regulations on businesses.

The weekend before the primary, Brownback spoke in Pittsburg at a gathering of the Culture Shield Network, a Christian conservative group that seeks to “mobilize the Body of Christ as the moral conscience of society.”

And earlier that week, he brought in former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a 2012 presidential candidate who was known for his staunch opposition to abortion and gay rights.

“I don’t know that I’d characterize this as making a concerted effort to go one way or the other,” Milburn said. “But certainly there are constituencies that in any campaign — you go to your base, and there are events that tie into that base.”

“The way we win is by continuing our message of what we’ve done and what we intend to do to build on that. The governor is going to be consistent with who he is and what he’s done, his vision,” Milburn said.

Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University in Topeka, said the strategy is similar to the one used successfully in President George W. Bush’s re-election bid in 2004 — appealing first to the conservative base, then trying to make moderates in the party feel uncomfortable voting for the Democrat.

“That’s part of that linking Davis to (President Barack) Obama,” Beatty said. “When a moderate goes into the voting booth, ultimately what they want is for that moderate to be thinking is that they’re voting for Obama, which they did not do in 2012 to a great degree.”

Beatty said the strategy might be risky for Brownback, given his generally low approval ratings and the trouble he has had with the moderate wing of his party. But in the end, it’s one that could pay off.

“All campaigns are gambles,” he said. “You have to make choices. Some campaigns try to be everything to everybody, but most campaigns try to be strategic in who they’re trying to get out.”