As Kansas, national election races heat up, talk of brokered convention looms

? With fewer than 100 days before Republicans and Democrats in Kansas go to their caucuses to select their presidential candidates, Kansas GOP executive director Clayton Barker says he’s already noticing something unusual.

“They’re fighting over every delegate,” Barker said.

Based on phone calls and emails from presidential campaign officials, Barker said, “They’re working under the assumption that no one will have a majority of delegates going into the convention. They call and go down our rules very carefully. They even ask who the county chairs are.”

As of mid-November, according to national polls, Donald Trump remained the frontrunner among a crowded field of GOP candidates.

But those polls consistently show him with support from less than one-third of the Republican base, indicating that as of now, barely two months from the Iowa caucuses, no GOP candidate is close to being in a position to secure the nomination.

Legislative races

The possibility that Republicans could hold the first brokered convention of any major party since the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago is just one of the factors sparking heightened interest in the 2016 elections, officials from both parties say.

Kansas Democratic Party operative Abbie Hodgson, who is recruiting candidates to run for the House, said there is also growing interest in state legislative races, where Democrats and moderate Republicans are hoping to gain back at least some ground after a steady series of losses in recent elections.

“I would say it’s going really fantastic,” she said of the party’s efforts to recruit candidates. “Coming out of the session we just had, I would have thought we’d have trouble recruiting, but it’s been the exact opposite. There’s been a large number of people that have announced or have said they’re planning to announce in the last month.”

In 2006, Democrats held 48 seats in the House, a sizable minority in the 125-seat chamber. But the Republican caucus was sharply divided then, and by forming a coalition with moderate Republicans, they were able to form a working majority that could out-flank conservatives on key issues, namely school finance.

That, however, is no longer the case. Today, Democrats are down to just 32 seats, and conservative Republicans have consolidated their power, making it next to impossible for them to influence legislation, even when they team up with moderate Republicans.

The same is true in the Senate where Democrats have seen their numbers dwindle to just eight seats in the 40-seat chamber, and conservatives have consolidated power much as they did in the House.

But there is a down side for Republicans in that equation heading into the 2016 elections. Barker himself conceded that Democrats are now confined to relatively “safe” Democratic districts, mainly in the urban cores around Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita, and the university towns of Lawrence and Manhattan.

That means there are few places left where the GOP can make gains, and lots of places where they now have to play defense.

So far, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s website, 47 candidates have filed to run for the 165 seats in the Kansas Legislature, a sizable number considering candidates traditionally wait until the legislative session has begun, or nearly ended, before officially filing.

The majority of those filing, 25 of them, are Republican incumbents, many of whom already have, or are expecting challengers next year, either in the general election or the GOP primaries.

Meanwhile, five Democrats – two in the Senate and three in the House – have already filed to challenge sitting Republicans. And there are more Democrats, like Kansas Association of School Boards President Don Shimkus of Oxford, a Senate candidate, who have announced plans to run but haven’t yet officially filed.

Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka said that at least two more Senate challengers plan to announce in the coming week.

State Board of Education

Meanwhile, one of the lower-profile races already grabbing some attention is in the Kansas State Board of Education’s 4th District, which includes Lawrence.

There, two-term incumbent Carolyn Campbell, D-Topeka, recently ran unsuccessfully for appointment to a vacant seat in the Kansas House. In an election in which only six people voted, Democratic precinct committee members from the 58th House District chose Rev. Ben Scott over Campbell to replace Rep. Harold Lane, who resigned.

Campbell had reportedly told other Democrats that she did not intend to seek a third term on the state board. Some Democrats have speculated that Campbell may file to seek a full term in the House against Scott, who has already filed for the race.

That would leave a vacancy on the state board, where each district is made up of exactly four State Senate districts.

Last week, former Rep. Ann Mah, D-Topeka, filed for the state board seat.

Mah served four terms in the House until she was narrowly defeated for re-election in 2012 by Republican Ken Corbet. She tried to win the seat back again in 2014, but lost again to Corbet, 46-54 percent.

No Republican has yet filed in that race. Three of the four Senate districts that make up the 4th KSBOE District are considered safe Democratic strongholds. They are currently held by Sens. Marci Francisco, of Lawrence, and Laura Kelly and Hensley, of Topeka. The fourth is held by Sen. Vicki Schmidt, of Topeka, a moderate Republican.