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Tag: kansas elections 2014
Midterm Roundup: Hagan Hanging On In North Carolina

Midterm Roundup: Hagan Hanging On In North Carolina

Here are some interesting stories on the midterm campaigns that you may have missed on Monday, October 20:

• Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) continues to lead Republican Thom Tillis by 3 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Monday. The poll marks the third consecutive month in which PPP has found Hagan ahead by 3 or 4 percent. The incumbent Democrat is up just 1.2 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll average, but she has led in nearly every public poll since the summer.

• Despite Senator Hagan’s consistent lead, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is not relenting on its expensive campaign to discredit Tillis. The group’s latest effort is a TV attack ad blasting the Republican’s “horrifying” record on women’s health.

• The National Republican Senatorial Committee may have given up on Michigan Republican Terri Lynn Land’s Senate campaign, but the Michigan GOP is still airing ads on her behalf. It’s not going well. Their latest effort, titled “Gary Peters Loan Sharknado,” is about as awful as the name suggests — and seems extremely unlikely to turn the tide of the race, which Land trails by 9 percent in the poll average.

• A new KHOU-TV/Houston Public Media poll of Texas’ gubernatorial race finds Republican Greg Abbott pulling away from Democrat Wendy Davis. Abbott is up 47 to 32 percent in the poll, and has opened up a 12.3 percent lead in the poll average. Despite Democrats’ lofty hopes, it appears that Texas isn’t ready to turn blue quite yet.

• And this seems extremely unlikely to help Senator Pat Roberts’ (R-KS) efforts to convince voters that he hasn’t lost touch with Kansas: The senator’s website features images of a field that is supposed to represent the Sunflower State — but is actually located in Ukraine.

Photo: Third Way via Flickr

Kansas Must Send Kris Kobach To Political Oblivion

Kansas Must Send Kris Kobach To Political Oblivion

By Steve Rose, The Kansas City Star

If Sam Brownback wins re-election as Kansas governor, the world will not end.

If Pat Roberts wins re-election to the U.S. Senate, for sure the world will not end.

If independent candidate Greg Orman upsets Roberts for the U.S. Senate, again the world will not end.

If Kris Kobach wins re-election as Kansas secretary of state…well, that’s another story.

Kobach would fill the secretary of state’s seat for four more years, where he will continue to ignore his duties and spend his time in courts fighting one thing after another. But that’s only the beginning of the havoc he would to wreak.

Kobach, who is only 48, would then find himself in the catbird’s seat to run for governor in four years or to seek in six years the U.S. Senate seat that either Roberts or Orman would hold.

Kobach has to be nailed by the electorate in such a way that he goes away. Long, long away into political oblivion.

Of all the politicians I have covered in more than four decades, starting with a campaign trip with Richard Nixon in 1968, I have never run across a meaner, nastier, more egomaniacal politician than Kris Kobach.

Kobach is also the most brilliant and clever politician I have ever covered. The man is dripping with Ivy League degrees.

The combination of his traits is lethal, which makes him so dangerous.

I have known Kobach since he was first elected to the Overland Park City Council in 1999, when on his questionnaire he stated he was in favor of abortions. Four years later, when he ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress, he switched to a pro-life position.

Kobach knows how to play the public like a fiddle, although there is hope that Kansans have finally figured out that they have been played for saps.

He stokes anti-immigration fears by championing the most vicious laws and then travels from state to state, spewing his hate through the laws he writes — for huge fees. It is one thing to fret over undocumented immigrants, but Kobach seeks with his obsessive plots to make their lives as miserable as possible, while he personally gains.

But because he presents himself as waging a heroic battle, too many Kansans have, at least until now, met his grandstanding with oohs and aahs.

The handsome, charismatic candidate in 2010, running for secretary of state, told Kansans he was going to stamp out voter fraud. More oohs and aahs. Who wouldn’t be for that?

But there had been, on average, only a dozen cases of voter fraud each year between 1997 and 2010, despite Kobach’s best efforts to dredge up more. He was scamming the electorate, plain and simple.

That did not stop Kobach from ramrodding through legislation that has disqualified almost 20,000 would-be voters because the state now requires them to come up with identification papers such as passports or birth certificates. The secretary of state, who is supposed to encourage voter turnout has, instead, crushed it. Between 2008 and 2012, voter turnout in Kansas declined more than other comparable states. A federal report finds this was likely due to Kobach’s voter registration laws.

Because of a quirk in the court rulings on Kobach’s scheme, it has left Kansas with a two-tiered voting system. New voters who have not presented their passports or birth certificates can only vote for federal candidates but cannot vote for state officials

Kobach’s swan song, I hope, was his creepy efforts to keep Democrat Chad Taylor on the ballot for U.S. senator, thereby splitting the vote with independent Orman, which, in turn, undoubtedly would have elected Roberts through the back door. Fortunately, the Kansas Supreme Court stomped on his shenanigans in a unanimous vote. Both Republicans and Democrats on the bench rejected Kobach’s attempt to mastermind the outcome of the vote.

After the courts ruled against him, Kobach attempted to intervene in a subsequent lawsuit that would have forced Democrats to put someone else on the ballot. The courts said Kobach could not intervene, and then ruled against the Kobach position.

Kansans, this man is truly from the dark side.

Kris Kobach must be stopped now, before we find him in an even more powerful position to ply his diabolical schemes.

Steve Rose is a longtime columnist based in Johnson County, Kansas. He wrote this for the Kansas City Star.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Midterm Roundup: Deadlocked In Georgia

Midterm Roundup: Deadlocked In Georgia

Here are some interesting stories on the midterm campaigns that you may have missed on Monday, October 13:

• As early voting begins in Georgia, a new poll has the Peach State’s top races dead even. The Landmark Communications poll finds Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue tied at 46 percent in the state’s contentious Senate election. In the gubernatorial race, Democrat James Carter and Republican incumbent Nathan Deal are tied at 45 percent. Perdue leads by 2.7 percent and Deal leads by 3.2 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll averages, but it appears increasingly likely that both races could be headed for a January runoff.

• Another poll has found South Dakota’s Senate race getting tighter. The new survey, from GOP firm Harper Polling, shows Republican Mike Rounds hanging on to the lead with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Democrat Rick Weiland at 33 percent, and Independent Larry Pressler at 23 percent. Rounds’ lead has dipped into single digits in the poll average, and given the unpredictable nature of three-way races, it’s still anybody’s game.

• Polls of North Carolina’s Senate race have consistently shown Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan with a narrow lead, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee clearly believes that Republican challenger Thom Tillis still has a chance. On Monday, the group announced that it is buying an additional $6 million in airtime on his behalf.

• Republican Joni Ernst is clinging to a narrow lead in Iowa’s Senate race, according to a Rasmussen poll released Monday. It finds her ahead of Democrat Bruce Braley, 48 to 46 percent, with 5 percent still undecided. Ernst leads by just 1.2 percent in the poll average.

• And Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) may not be finished yet in Kansas’ wild Senate race. He trails Independent Greg Orman by just 3 percent in the latest Public Policy Polling survey, down from 10 points in the group’s previous poll. Orman now leads by less than 1 percent in the poll average.

Photo: Heather Kennedy via Flickr

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Could Latino Voters Decide Kansas’ Elections?

Could Latino Voters Decide Kansas’ Elections?

By Franco Ordonez, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Kansas may not be considered Latino country, but the small, albeit growing, Hispanic community across the state is emerging as a potential threat to shake up the political landscape.

The state’s approximately 121,000 Latino voters make up just 6 percent of the electorate, but experts say they could make a difference in the tight races for governor, U.S. Senate and secretary of state.

Armando Minjarez, a 28-year-old Wichita artist and activist, has been talking up the need to vote with his neighborhood bread maker and knocking on doors at the homes of Latino registered voters in the heavily Hispanic-populated communities across western Kansas.

“Races are being won by 300 votes,” said Minjarez, who works on voter turnout drives with Kansas People’s Action and Women for Kansas, left-leaning groups that say they’re pushing for change in Kansas’ leadership. “So if those two, three hundred people I have talked to, if half of those go out and vote … if a third of them go out and vote … that’s a huge impact.”

If turnout is low, as expected, and Latinos mobilize, even a small percentage of them — like any other group — could alter the election, said Chapman Rackaway, a political science professor at Fort Hays State University in Kansas.

“A block of 10,000 votes by the Latino population could have a profound impact on the race,” Rackaway said.

Kansas is one of five states where the number of Latino voters exceeds the difference between the two leading Senate candidates in polling, according to an analysis by Latino Decisions, which conducts research and polls on Latino voting. And it’s one of nine states where Latino voters exceed the polling difference between leading gubernatorial candidates.

“Crazy, right?” said Gary Segura, a Stanford University political science professor who runs Latino Decisions. “Kansas is a state where Latinos could shape the outcome.”

After the 2010 election, no Democrat held an elected statewide office in Kansas. But Democrats now are within striking distance of the governor’s mansion. Gov. Sam Brownback, who has steered the state far to the right, has suffered in the polls.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican who has made immigration a campaign issue, is suddenly in danger of losing to independent Greg Orman after the nominated Democrat in the race, Chad Taylor, dropped out.

On immigration, Roberts speaks almost exclusively about the need for stronger border patrol. Orman also speaks of the need for a stronger border, but he’s argued that 11 million immigrants who are already in the country illegally can’t be deported and, provided they pay a fine, he thinks they should be allowed to “get in line” for eventual U.S. citizenship.

Rackaway said Latinos also could be a factor in Democrats’ efforts to unseat Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is known nationwide in the immigrant rights community for his controversial role in helping to draft some of the strongest immigration enforcement policies in Arizona and Alabama, among other states.

Latino turnout is a big question. Nationwide groups have complained that Latino voters who would otherwise vote Democratic have become disillusioned with the party since President Barack Obama decided to delay an executive order that would allow more undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally. He had promised to issue the order by the end of the summer.

A Latino Decisions poll in June found that 54 percent of Latinos said they would be less interested in voting in the midterm elections if Obama decided not to take action on the executive order.

Speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala last week, Obama tried to curtail some of those hurt feelings and said he would act on the order by the end of the year.

Photo: J. Stephen Conn via Flickr