Last of five articles on the history of trouble in the Kansas Republican party
At the last general election, party affiliation among registered voters in Kansas was split:
Republicans, 858,429;
Unaffiliated, 565, 871;
Democrats, 503,746;
Libertarians, 23,053.
To understand politics in Kansas is to grapple with two states in one ‒ rural and urban ‒ and the persuasions that rise in each of them.
There are 200,000 more Democrats and independents than Republicans, and yet Republicans are elected to the state legislature in massive majorities. That dominance comes from a strong conservative persuasion in the state’s rural counties and farm cities.
It’s different for the state’s five metropolitan counties, which elect nearly two-thirds of the 125 members of the House of Representatives and 40-member state Senate. In the 2022 election for the House, Johnson, Shawnee, Douglas, Wyandotte and Sedgwick elected an even split ‒ 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats.
The other 100 counties ‒ rural cities and farm country ‒ provided Republicans a veto-proof majority, electing 47 Republicans and two Democrats, marking their overall House predominance, 85-40.
The pattern holds for the Senate and its four-year terms. In 2020, Democrats came only from metropolitan counties. The Republicans’ 29-11 majority includes ten rural Republicans who tilt the senate’s power balance.
Although Republican power comes from the rural vote, the party is ruled by urban leaders from Johnson and Sedgwick Counties and heavily prompted by out-state cause lobbies. Well-heeled advocacy groups and policy institutes draft their heavyweight legislation, the sponsors not listed because they prefer to operate behind the scenes.
The legislators’ mission is less about hearing constituents than selling them hot issues that generate attention and money. Local concerns are sidetracked; constituents are told that the crusades of distant legions are a better fit for them than their own ideas.
Conniptions over voter fraud and dirty books roll over such local concerns as declining school enrollment, vacant towns, hospitals on life support and rising property taxes.
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Across the state’s vast rural stretch, its sense of isolation and distance, man and nature remain hard at work in the production of food and fiber. Elections report this as Republican country. In truth it is Landon and Eisenhower country, its root conservatism modified and reinforced by Frank Carlson, Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum.
The spotlight may reflect a callous party image but the life force here defies stereotype. Beneath the veneer’s sharp edge are durable citizens who put community interests on a plane with their own interests; quality of life is more important than standard of living. Fierce independence remains cherished. An old Republican philosophy insists that responsibility in private life and community life is as great as the responsibility of government to shape the life of communities.
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And yet elected Republicans ignore local interests while bowing to a more provocative national agenda.
Example: For the past 20 years Republican legislatures have denied more than $1.5 billion in relief ordered for property taxpayers and demanded by state law. This revenue-sharing statute, dating to 1937, requires that 3.63 percent of state sales tax revenues be consigned to a Tax Relief Fund and returned yearly to local governments.
The idea was to stabilize and reduce property levies, a reward for locals collecting state taxes. Routinely ignored, this withheld city-county tax relief has been estimated recently at more than $100 million annually.
The legislature since 2003 has suspended the transfer each year, sluicing it into more favored political causes. Meanwhile, local taxes increase.
Republican leaders defend the theft by accusing local governments of incompetence. Last month Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover (Wichita) Republican, dismissed the transfer, saying it “never worked as intended.”
Masterson believes cities and counties would waste their share. Most local governments, he told the Kansas City Star, “failed to use the money to reduce property taxes, but rather used it to spend more money.”
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Local issues are sidetracked for national crusades ‒ vaccines, gay athletes, abortion,” woke”, renegade teachers, multiple conspiracies and immigrant invasions, among others.
Across Kansas, genuine topics wait: Health care, hospital closings, population loss, college tuition, nursing shortages, water depletion, taxes, Medicaid expansion, affordable housing, child care, and more.
In times past, legislators were entrusted to define and address concerns of their constituents.
So long as hot-button issues ‒ abortion, book bans, woke, guns ‒ remain heated for the national show, the money rolls in for the advocacy groups. Common purpose is no longer cost-effective. Attempts at moderation (problem solving) threaten the ghost grievances and campaign spigots of cause lobbies and their politicians.
