KS-SEN: For the first time in almost a century, Democrats can win a Senate seat in Kansas

[RandySF]

Donald Trump is about to ransack the Supreme Court because—he's admitted—he wants a pliant bench that will comfortably rule in his favor on any disputes that follow November's election. And if he gets his way, it'll be because the lapdog Republican Senate has abandoned all pretense of being an independent body of government, content instead to serve Trump's every authoritarian whim.

The stakes this year were already as high as they come. Now they're even higher. That's why Daily Kos is redoubling our efforts to retake the Senate and adding an excellent new candidate to our slate of endorsements: state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who's running for an open seat in Kansas—yes, Kansas—that Democrats have a real shot to win this fall.

It's true: The last time Democrats won a Senate race in Kansas was during the FDR monsoon of 1932. But the state has been changing dramatically in recent years. As we've seen in so many parts of the country during the Trump era, droves of once reliably Republican voters in the suburbs have defected from the GOP and helped hand the governorship to Democrats two years ago.

One such Republican was Bollier herself, a longtime moderate who switched parties in 2018 after growing fed up with the GOP's extremism. But make no mistake: She is right at home with us. Bollier, a former physician, has long been one of the leading advocates for LGBTQ rights in the Kansas legislature and introduced a bill to outlaw anti-gay discrimination—which of course Republicans have thwarted. She's also been a vocal proponent of expanding Medicaid for a decade, and she's a stalwart defender of reproductive rights.

Her opponent, meanwhile, is as miserable as they come. While Bollier's been fighting for health care, Republican Rep. Roger Marshall has been trying to snatch it away. He supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, and just a few years ago, he notoriously declared, "Just like Jesus said, 'The poor will always be with us.' There is a group of people that just don't want health care and aren't going to take care of themselves.




https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/24/1980091/-For-the-first-time-in-almost-a-century-Democrats-can-win-a-Senate-seat-in-Kansas-yes-Kansas

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. One thing to understand about Kansas

is that because it is so overwhelmingly Republican, a lot of otherwise Democratic voters will register as Republicans so as to be able to vote in the primaries. In the general election, they will vote for the Democrats in various offices.

When I lived there, I often argued with such voters, pointing out that their Republican registration artificially depressed actual Democratic numbers, which meant that a sensible Democrat, who was thinking about running for office, might look at the registration numbers and conclude there was no point in running. Which meant, there was no Democrat running against the Republican in lots of races.

Additionally, some of the Democrats registered as Republicans would vote for the most extreme Republican in the race, figuring that then the sensible and moderate Democrat would win. Others would vote for the moderate Republican in that race, so that at least they could live with the Republican in the end. Essentially the two groups cancelled each other out, and I kept on trying to persuade the Democrats registered as Republicans that they needed to support the political party they really did favor. I was rarely successful.

I did run for the Kansas State House in 2004. I lost, but did well enough that the Democratic Party saw that it was a winnable district, and put money into the race of the man who ran in 2006, who I persuaded to run in my stead. He won that election, and was re-elected in 2008. Alas, the increasing move to the right in that state meant that he lost in 2010, which is a shame. I recently donated money to the person running as a Democrat in that specific district. I hope she wins.