Local no more

When he was Speaker of the House in Washington (1977-’87), the late and magnificent Tip O’Neill often said “All politics is local.”

Not anymore.

A couple of days before the August primary elections, the Hutchinson Tribune reported that local Republican candidates for the state Senate and House of Representatives had received more than $75,000 in campaign contributions from Washington, D.C. area political action committees.

Nearby in Sedgwick County, the Wichita Eagle said that $90,000 came to a candidate for Sedgwick County Commission from two out-state political action committees ‒ one based in Texas, the other in Wisconsin.

The candidates said they had not had asked for the money. It just came.

The Sedgwick candidate, Wichita City Councilman Greg Ferris, had raised about $37,000. He was surprised when Rural Economic Development PAC, based in Wisconsin, gave him $65,000. Another $25,000 came through a mysterious political action committee (“Great America Coalition”) in Washington, D.C., including $5,000 from a Wichita developer who said his Wisconsin contribution was in error.

The motive for the Sedgwick contributions is unclear, but there are ties to a front group advocating tax breaks and subsidies for big wind and solar energy projects. A Sedgwick County moratorium on large-scale wind and solar power is about to come up for review.

It may not matter. Ferris lost the election.

In Reno County, “Make Liberty Win”, a conservative PAC based in Alexandria, Va., gave more than $38,000 to Michael Murphy’s Republican campaign for the state Senate. Murphy’s primary opponent, Bob Fee, received $23,000 from Americans for Prosperity, a prominent conservative organization also headquartered in Alexandria and led by Charles Koch of Wichita. (Murphy won the primary.)

Make Liberty Win also gave nearly $13,000 to Tyson Thrall, a GOP candidate for the 102nd Kansas House district. Americans for Prosperity gave $1,450 to his opponent, Kyler Sweely. (Sweely won.)

In Missouri, pro-Israel groups spent more than $8 million supporting Wesley Bell’s successful primary campaign to unseat Rep. Cori Bush in a St. Louis-area Democratic primary election. Bush, a member of the progressive group of lawmakers known as “the Squad,” had been an outspoken critic of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack and repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Solicited or not, it’s unlikely that gifts from national cause lobbies were limited to these local candidates. Money talks. Sooner or later, the donors come knocking.

Politics these days is about labels, not party affiliation. Campaigns have become battles among special interests with Republicans and Democrats dressed up for the brand. The cause lobbies are there for the power and the spoils.

This explains why, for example, 70 percent of Kansans favor Medicaid expansion but a Republican-dominant legislature keeps saying No. Cause lobbies keep us in the backwater with such health care stalwarts as Mississippi and Alabama.

Or why the legislature sidetracked billions in aid to cities and counties with a bogus billion-dollar “tax reform” and, on the same day, offered at least $4 billion in new stadiums to lure the Chiefs and Royals across the river into Kansas.

It is why impactful legislation at Topeka comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative cause lobby in Alexandria, Va.. ALEC’s president, Ty Masterson, is also president of the Kansas Senate.

Property taxes and health care become an afterthought when sports stars

come calling, or when special interests dump money into local elections.