Kansas Democrats: Backing Sanders, seeking unity for Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a rally in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday, July 12, 2016, where Sanders endorsed Clinton. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

? Kansas is sending a delegation dominated by Bernie Sanders supporters to a Democratic National Convention controlled by Hillary Clinton, and local party leaders are hoping past divisions heal enough that the presidential race in their Republican-leaning state isn’t a blowout.

Sanders delegates go into this week’s convention in Philadelphia with differing opinions about whether a proposed party platform is progressive enough. Republican nominee Donald Trump made a direct appeal in his acceptance speech to Sanders supporters on trade and campaign finance reform.

But the issue for Kansas Democrats appears more to be whether the Vermont senator’s backers embrace Clinton or stay home, rather than whether Trump can win them over.

Asked whether Trump has appeal, Sanders delegate Julie Perry, a registered nurse from Mission, said: “Could you let me know if Hell has frozen over? Or should I look out my window and see if pigs have wings?”

Kansas has long been considered a safe GOP state because the last Democrat to carry it was President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Democratic nominees have averaged less than 37 percent of the vote, starting in 1968.

State Democratic Party Chairman Lee Kinch is hoping for a relatively close race this year, something that would boost candidates down the ballot. Kinch argued that Trump’s personality and his proposals — such as building a wall at the Mexican border and suspending immigration from Muslim nations — alienate large swaths of voters.

“Trump provides a really powerful, powerful incentive for Democrats to unite,” said Kinch, a Derby attorney.

Republicans don’t expect a close race. They are confident that Clinton is unpopular in GOP-leaning Kansas. President Bill Clinton averaged 35 percent of the state’s vote in 1992 and 1996.

Ex-state Democratic Chairwoman Joan Wagnon, a Clinton delegate and former Topeka mayor and state revenue secretary, said Republicans have engaged in a “bashfest” against the presumed Democratic nominee. Wagnon acknowledged that she’s hoping for a convention with “a lot less shouting” than its GOP counterpart.

Wagnon added, “If she (Clinton) asked me today what I advise her, I’d tell her, ‘I think you need to clean up your image and talk about what you stand for.”

But Clinton still has to win over some Kansas Democrats. Sanders scored a convincing victory over the former U.S. secretary of state, in the state’s March caucuses. Sanders captured 23 delegates; Clinton has 14 with the state’s four party-leader superdelegates endorsing her.

The Vermont senator has endorsed Clinton, and Democrats have drafted a platform that some party members view as among the most progressive ever.

Chris Pumpelly, a Sanders delegate and communications consultant from Wichita, agrees with the description. He is especially pleased that the platform calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that has allowed millions of dollars of unregulated independent, special-interest election expenditures.

“There’s so much that brings us together as Democrats rather than divides us,” said Pumpelly, a communications consultant from Wichita.

But Perry, a labor representative for National Nurses United, the largest union for registered nurses, said she’s not pleased with the platform. She wants it to endorse universal health coverage like the Medicare program for elderly Americans and to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade pact. She also wants the party to eliminate superdelegates.

She’s also highly skeptical of Trump, arguing that he benefited personally as a businessman from the economic and political systems he now decries as rigged.

“The needs are too great for the average working person, for the average family, for the senior citizens in this country, and Donald Trump has not convinced me that he’s the guy to fix it,” she said. “He can build big, tall skyscrapers and he can make a lot of money.”