Synopsis
The fall election of 2010 became the opening act of a ten-year political drama in Kansas that was loaded with material for commentary. During that decade:•Far-right Republicans first seized control of executive and legislative offices and powered through a radical agenda but later suffered setbacks.•A long-standing bipartisan coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans was initially crushed but rose again and by the end of the decade returned to power.•Grassroots democracy triumphed as years of brash partisanship, turmoil, and dysfunction forced voters to reject Republican radicalism and reset the state’s path forward.The decade began with the landslide election of Sam Brownback as governor in November of 2010. His victory was aided by an extraordinary “red wave” that swept across the country in the first midterm elections encountered by President Barack Obama. More important from the standpoint of Kansas politics, however, Brownback’s election marked a huge victory for the far-right faction of Kansas Republicans. Their gubernatorial candidates had suffered through four consecutive defeats, 1994 through 2006, at the hands of Republican moderate Bill Graves and then Democrat Kathleen Sebelius. The 2010 election emboldened Brownback and his allies to embark on a revolutionary course and remake Kansas into an ideological model for red-state governance. They moved aggressively to eliminate the state income tax, abandon merit selection of judges, and block federal funds. They purged dissident lawmakers of both parties in 2012. Their radical tax policy described by Brownback as a “real live experiment” gained national, even international, attention but, predictably, devastated state finances. As Kansans came to learn how far Brownback and his far-right acolytes were willing to go, the political tide started to turn, and Brownback’s fortunes began to sink.The interim elections of 2016 restored a legislative majority of moderate Republicans and Democrats to the statehouse. Brownback’s infamous tax experiment was unceremoniously abandoned in 2017. Brownback vacated the governorship one year early under a cloud of public disapproval. Then, the decade came to an end with the election in 2018 of moderate Democrat Laura Kelly, as voters rejected the brash partisan politics of far-right Republicans and their nominee, Kris Kobach, a favorite of President Donald Trump.Thus, Kansas politics began a new decade in 2020 much as it had functioned for years prior to 2010. In its earliest years Kansas had experienced intense political moments—abolition, prohibition, populism, progressivism—laying a foundation that counseled political moderation. This instinctive preference for moderation kept the pendulum of state politics within a modest arc and guided Kansans through most of the 20th century. Republican governors, Democratic governors, and legislative leaders of both parties favored this centrist path. The lurch to the far right in the second decade of the 21st century will likely be viewed by historians as an aberration, though grassroots politics will require tending in order to flourish.This book represents a compilation of commentary by H. Edward Flentje on this saga in Kansas politics written for publication in Kansas newspapers, 2010 to 2020. Flentje, a retired professor at Wichita State University, writes as a serious student of politics and as a former Republican appointee in Kansas government during the 1970s and 1980s.
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