Second District voters will choose between Tobias Schlingensiepen (say schling-in-zee-pen), Lynn Jenkins and Dennis Hawver for Congress next Tuesday.
As the incumbent, Jenkins is a known quality. She votes straight party line. If she were any closer to Speaker John Boehner, Mrs. Boehner would slap her face.
Hawver is a perennial candidate whose similar anti-tax spiel must somehow leave voters cold.
The Rev. Schlingensiepen is well known in Topeka where he is on leave from First Congregational Church, is chaplain to the Topeka police force and has been an active worker — knocking on doors and working in direct mail rooms — for Democratic candidates for years.
His campaign’s cupboards are bare. He is not a wealthy man. The Kansas Democratic Party is just as poor. And Kansas doesn’t offer good hunting for those independent Superpacs who don’t spend money where the odds are so stacked against them.
The reverend will do OK in Topeka where he is known and appreciated for his work for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. Elsewhere in the district — Allen County, for instance — he’ll be smothered under a predictably heavy Republican vote.
He deserves better because the Second District deserves a member in Congress who studies the issues and makes decisions on the basis of facts. Look him up on the Internet. Compare his quiet reason to Ms. Jenkins’ loud, totally predictable, partisanship. Decide which approach seems wisest to you.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
