Political experts see upcoming legislative races as referendum on Brownback

photo by: Mike Yoder

A voter heads to a polling precinct at Central United Methodist Church before noon Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012.

? The 2016 election season in Kansas is about to get into full swing, and political experts in the state see the upcoming races for the Kansas Legislature as a referendum on Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

That means there is a big opportunity for Democrats and moderate Republicans to gain seats in the Legislature. But whether they can cobble together the same kind of working majority they had during the era of Govs. Bill Graves and Kathleen Sebelius remains an open question.

And much of that could depend on how voters respond to the presidential race, where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — two candidates with unprecedented negative approval ratings — threaten to be a drag on their parties’ down-ballot candidates.

That’s the assessment of three political science professors who have studied and written about Kansas politics and elections: Patrick Miller at Kansas University; Michael Smith at Emporia State University; and Joe Romance at Fort Hays State University.

“The driving issue is Brownback,” Miller said. “Democrats are trying to tie him to incumbent Republicans. But obviously that depends race-by-race how that gets framed by candidates.”

“Brownback’s unpopularity is going to be big,” Smith said. “Education funding is going to be huge, and we haven’t heard the last from the courts on that.”

Romance agreed that Brownback’s low approval ratings — measured at just 26 percent by a recent Morning Consult poll — will be a negative for some Republicans further down the ballot. But he said Brownback is still more popular in western Kansas than in other parts of the state.

“This is western Kansas,” he said. “Of course, all of Kansas is conservative, but he’s in stronger shape out here.”

The Trump and Clinton factors

Miller is the author of a spreadsheet analysis, widely quoted in Kansas news media, showing how Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis fared in each House and Senate district in the 2014 race, as well as how President Barack Obama performed in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races.

From that, he has identified about two dozen House districts and eight Senate districts that he sees as vulnerable because they are currently held by conservative Republicans allied in varying degrees with Brownback, but where voters supported Davis, and in some cases Obama as well. Many of those are located in Johnson County and other parts of northeast Kansas.

And that’s where having Trump at the top of the GOP ticket could be bad news for Republicans, Miller said, because even among Republican voters, Trump polls poorly among highly educated, upper-income suburban voters.

“Johnson County really epitomizes that kind of voter,” he said. “Johnson County, Sedgwick County, maybe Shawnee and Leavenworth counties, in those areas, if nothing changes, you might see a bit of a Trump drag. If you go out to western Kansas, you probably won’t see much of a Trump effect among the more rural, conservative voters.”

“If I’m someone like (Rep.) James Todd (R-Overland Park) or (Rep.) Amanda Grosserode (R-Lenexa), I’d be worried,” he said.

Smith at Emporia State agreed that Johnson County will be a battleground, but he said the presidential race will likely play out differently in various parts of the county. Although the county as a whole is traditionally seen as a Republican stronghold, the newer communities south of I-435, including the Olathe and Blue Valley school districts, have been much more conservative than the older neighborhoods in the northern, Shawnee Mission school district areas.

“I can easily see some of the older sections of northeast Johnson County turning out for Clinton,” he said.

And that could cause trouble for Republican legislators from that area such as Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a staunch social conservative. She’s being challenged this year by Democrat Vicki Hiatt, a retired Olathe school teacher who has been endorsed by key education, labor and environmental groups.

“Mary Pilcher-Cook could be someone who’s vulnerable,” he said, because even Republicans who vote for Clinton in opposition to Trump might have trouble voting for a conservative like Pilcher-Cook on the same ballot.

“But that’s not a very Republican area,” he said. “In more Republican areas, whether it’s in Johnson County or elsewhere, Republican candidates would be smart to run against Hillary rather than with Donald Trump.”

Romance at Fort Hays State agreed. “I don’t think Trump will have any trouble carrying western Kansas,” he said.

Western Kansas

Driving around Ellis County, Romance said, there still aren’t many yard signs out for presidential candidates, and the signs he does see are the ones touting Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“That may be a good sign for Trump,” he said. “There’s just a lot of anger, and it could channel either way. Lots of people are angry at the system, but not necessarily to the left or the right.”

Ellis County, which was established a few years after the Civil War, has long been a small bastion of Democratic voters in what is otherwise a Republican-dominated region, some say because it became home to many German immigrants who sided with Democrats over the issue of Prohibition in the later 1800s.

But even among Democratic voters there, he said, Hillary Clinton remains unpopular. She lost the entire 1st Congressional District to Sanders in the Kansas Democratic caucuses in March by more than a two-to-one margin.

In legislative races, though, Romance said he still sees Brownback as being the main issue for western Kansas voters, although he predicted the governor will be less of a drag on the ticket there than in other parts of the state.

One race to watch, he said, is the 111th District of Ellis County where Democrat Eber Phelps, a longtime former legislator who lost his bid for re-election in 2012, is seeking to win that seat back from incumbent Republican Rep. Sue Boldra.

Challenge for moderates

All three political scientists agreed, however, that Democrats by themselves have virtually no chance of winning a majority of seats in either chamber. Thus their only hope of changing the direction of Statehouse politics is to hope that moderate Republicans can take seats away from conservatives in the upcoming Aug. 2 primaries, just as moderates will have to depend on Democrats to unseat conservatives in the November general election.

“Moderates face such a huge hurdle with the closed Republican primary,” Smith said, referring to GOP rules that say a voter has to be registered as a Republican well in advance before he or she can vote in a Republican primary. “It’s hard for anyone other than real conservatives to come out of that primary. They’ll pick up seats, but unknown whether they’ll pick up enough to make governing majority.”

And one of the areas where moderates may have trouble is in Emporia itself, where Rep. Don Hill, a Republican who is frequently at odds with Brownback and the conservative House leadership, announced last week that he will not seek re-election.

KU’s Patrick Miller and FHSU’s Romance were both cautious about predicting how much of a turnover there will be in the Legislature this year.

“It’s too soon to say it’s a wave (year) in Kansas,” Miller said. “But Democrats and moderate Republicans are definitely on the offensive this year.”

“If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the Democrat-moderate Republican candidates look good this year,” Romance said. “Of course, we haven’t seen all candidates in all the races. I have a strong feeling they’ll pick up seats. How many is hard to say. The interesting thing will be if they pick up enough seats to form that coalition. I don’t imagine Democrats picking up either chamber, but maybe they’ll win enough to be a semi-working majority.”

The deadline for candidates to file for the 2016 races is June 1.

PARTY AFFILIATION DEADLINE APPROACHING

Kansas election officials are reminding registered voters that they have until noon Wednesday to declare or change their party affiliation in time for the upcoming Aug. 2 primary election.

The new law affects voters who are already registered and affiliated with a major party but want to vote in the other party’s primary. Those registered as unaffiliated may vote in either party’s primary, if they fill out a new registration form at the polls declaring themselves as being affiliated with that party.

New voters, or those who are not currently registered in Kansas, have until July 12 to register in time for the primary.

Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew says registered voters can change their party affiliation online, either through the Kansas Department of Revenue website, https://www.kdor.org/voterregistration, or through the county clerk’s website, www.douglascountyks.org/depts/voting-and-elections.

Voters also may print out the voter registration form, fill it out and return it to the county clerk’s office by mail, or go to the Douglas County Courthouse at 1100 Massachusetts St. and fill out a party affiliation form in person.

New party affiliations must be postmarked by June 1 to be accepted.