A Red State’s Formidable Democrat (Kathleen Sebelius)

[brooklynite]

By ALAN GREENBLATT
Governing.com

Kansas is a Republican state, but the GOP found it impossible to recruit a strong candidate for governor this year. While incumbent Democrat Kathleen Sebelius piles up campaign cash — she already had nearly $2 million in hand by the end of 2005 — a field of largely unknown Republicans scrambles for the seemingly thankless job of running against her in November.

What makes a Democrat so formidable in such a conservative state? The answer is Republican fratricide. The Republican Party is so deeply and bitterly split between moderates and social conservatives that Sebelius has had plenty of room to position herself in the center, and she has done so skillfully. Her ability to reach out to Republicans unhappy with their state party’s conservative bent was recently exemplified when Mark Parkinson, former chairman of the state GOP, switched parties and became her new running mate.

The governor — with a big assist from the state Supreme Court — has prodded the legislature to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more annually on education. That has helped to keep traditional Democratic constituencies satisfied. But she has also claimed issues that normally would fall to the GOP.

For instance, she has been an ardent advocate of Kansas National Guard troops, visiting them in Iraq and lobbying President Bush personally for the return of military equipment that belonged to state divisions. She sent holiday greetings to 2,500 families of Kansas soldiers and airmen overseas — the first such gesture from a Kansas governor in a quarter of a century. Last November, Time magazine named Sebelius one of the five best governors in the country, in part due to her success in closing a $1.1 billion deficit.

http://www.governing.com/politics.htm
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Its worth noting that Democrats control the Governorships of Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada, none of which we've been able to win recently on the Presidential level. We should be trying to learn something about how local Dems make these states competitive.

[The Deacon]

1. It's a Western Thing

As Earl Thompson noted in the novel A Garden of Sand, we Jayhawkers (and, I think, Westerners in general) are so contrary that "we'll vote for the hated Democrats sooner than allow a Governor, even a Republican one, have more than two terms."
That said, Kathleen has been a wonderful Governor for Kansas & has worked very hard at building consensus with the more moderate elements of the Kansas GOP.

[skipos]

2. I hope some of these red state governors become presidential material

I'd really like to have a good 08 candidate who is not a senator, but is from a flippable red state.

[MuseRider]

3. I love her.

Don't get me wrong, I disagree with her on many things, she is very moderate. She has done well for my state, she has been sensible, has remained above the nastiness, fought with grace. All of those things increase her support. If she had not won I fear this state would now be drowning in Theocracy.

I know that there are many people working very hard for her and she would not have had this kind of success without them but a good part of her success is Republican RW failure. Many people here claim to be Republicans but not very many care for where their party has gone.

[liam_laddie]

4. Her family background's important too

The Guv'nor is a daughter of John Gilligan, a mainstream/liberal Democrat, former Governor
of Ohio himself. Now in his 80's, he's currently involved with Cincinnati's Board of Education,
shows at lots of Dem events in the region...a generally popular guy with a long history in Ohio.
She learned the political ropes at her dad's knee. GO Kansas! HTH...

[Stevepol]

5. She has been mum on the electronic voting issue, however.

She personally helped to recruit Robert Beattie to run for S of State (the author of the BTK book that was a best-seller for awhile and well-qualified for many other reasons as well) after it seemed that nobody was going to run for the position against Ron Thornburgh, who brags about his support for HAVA, has covered the state with electronic voting machines while saying nary a word about verified ballots and audits (concentrating on the usual vendor-supported draconian laws and requirements to protect the machines from voters) and once brought Kathryn Harris to the state to celebrate her efforts in FL as a S of S.

Beattie has expressed himself very well and strongly on the issue of having a voter-verified ballot trail and audits. The machines are useless, he has said, no matter how much they cost, if they can't be verified for accuracy.

Now, after telling Sebelius and others that he wasn't going to run, the former Dem candidate Haley (a black guy who's all over the place on electronic voting and on the issue of voting in general, sometimes sounding very progressive and sometimes as if he never met a voting machine he didn't like) decided to run again and has a good chance of defeating Beattie, since Haley has better name recognition and a certain appeal to Blacks.

If Beattie wins the primary tomorrow, I feel very sure he will do a lot to spread the news about the untrustworthiness and danger of electronic voting, and if he wins in the general election, KS will soon join the ranks of the most pregressive states in the union on the issue. It might even become one of the leaders in the movement.


Send good vibes KS's way on Tuesday.