Election 2018: This is the first of a series of articles on the five candidates for Kansas governor.
On the evening of July 13, 1992, former Texas Representative Barbara Jordan, suffering from multiple sclerosis, was wheeled onto the stage at the Democratic National Convention in New York, where she gave the nights keynote speech. Jordans remarks emphasized inclusion, acceptance, diversity. She urged those watching to reject the greed and hatred and selfishness of the previous era, and embrace a political future characterized by a devotion to the public interest, public service, tolerance, and love. We are one, we Americans, said Jordan. We seek to unite the people, not divide them.
Four weeks later, at the Republican convention in Houston, Pat Buchanan, reading from a different set of notes entirely, delivered his now famous Culture War speech, in which he informed his audience that there was a religious war taking place for the very soul of America. We must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country, pleaded Buchanan, who described an America beset by division, whose only rescue could come from the complete vanquishment of ones political opponent.
Strident, pugilistic, deeply ideological, Buchanans speech was criticized ?at the time for its bitter tone ? most notably by ?moderate Republicans?, who ?feared his uncompromising message would only deepen the rift between the party establishment and the new, fired-up set of Young Turks bent on upending the perceived coziness of the partys status quo.
Meanwhile, a million miles from either convention, the palpable contrast between the two speeches was enough to spark in one future Kansas lawmaker, state Sen. Laura Kelly, something of a political awakening.
And while this was the occasion that inspired Kelly, then in her early 40s, to change her political affiliation from independent to Democrat, the main lesson had less to do with party affiliation party labels have never mattered to me, Kelly has said and more to do with political values.
Now, [Buchanan] didnt start the culture wars, said Kelly, the current Democratic candidate for Kansas governor, but he certainly fanned the flames. And this sort of moral partitioning bothered Kelly. Ive just never been comfortable with that. Ive looked for ways to be very inclusive in my life. With my family, with my classmates, with people I work with. I thought that was a really bad way for our country to go, and I think Ive been proven right.
But with fewer than 20 days to go before the general election, Kelly has found in her principal opponent, Secretary of State Kris Kobach a descendent of Buchanan if ever there was a candidate eager to redraw those stark lines and eager to depict the current political landscape as a locked contest between two irreconcilable world views.
The effect not only of Kobachs florid rhetoric but of his policies, while no doubt drawing passionate admiration in certain quarters, has triggered a significant exodus among a number of moderates in his own party.
As of today, more than 50 prominent Republicans, citing the Democratic nominees strong reputation for working across the aisle and her history crafting bipartisan legislation during her 14 years as a state senator, have announced their endorsement of Laura Kelly for governor.
BUT ON MONDAY, seated in a small office at Kelly headquarters a bare-bones storefront near a Chinese buffet in a strip mall in southwest Topeka it wasnt the noise of the contentious campaign that occupied Kellys thoughts. She wanted to talk governance.
A self-described policy wonk, Kelly has served in the Kansas Senate since 2004, where she has been a consistent opponent of the programs advanced by former Gov. Sam Brownback, especially his years-long experiment with radical tax cuts a policy that resulted in a dramatic drop in state revenue, a decimated network of social services, and years of budget turmoil.
As one of the leaders of the bipartisan coalition that last year managed to repeal this supply-side experiment, Kelly warns voters that a Kobach administration would simply be a retread of the Brownback years. And while its true that Kobach has vowed, if elected, to restore the same severe income tax cuts, he believes that the Brownback administration hit the skids not because they slashed taxes but because they failed to sufficiently cut spending at the same time a mistake Kobach says he wont repeat.
