Kansas Democrats recruited me to run for office via text. And really, it’s a good idea | Opinion

Kansas Democratic Party officials must be desperate. They’re asking me to think about a run for office.

I have the text messages to prove it.

The first text arrived on my phone on Saturday: “Hi Joel, we’re looking for Dems in Lawrence to run for local office. Would you like info on how to run? - Mari, Kansas Dems.”

That was unexpected. I’ve voted in the Democratic primaries the last few election cycles, but that’s been my total participation in the party. I’ve never donated a cent to a candidate, never been to a party event except in my capacity as a journalist. And I’ve never met or texted with Mari.

Maybe somebody made a mistake?

Or maybe not. A second message came on Tuesday. “Hi Joel, I’m Tonya w/ the Kansas Dems. We’re looking for Dems in Douglas County to run for local office. Want info on how to run?”

Well, no, not really. But something was going on. And — confession time — I am not special. I was not plucked from the crowd for a chance at political stardom. Lots of folks were getting the texts.

I posted screenshots of the texts to Twitter and found that several of my friends and neighbors had received similar messages. So had a professor at Wichita State. Whatever was happening was happening across Kansas.

Part of me was suspicious. Everybody remembers the misleading texts about the “Value Them Both” antiabortion measure sent last summer by a PAC run by former Kansas congressman Tim Huelskamp. Was this some sort of con?

Part of me was incredulous. Is the Democratic Party in Kansas really recruiting its next generation of candidates in Kansas with spam?

And part of me, frankly, thought the whole thing was kind of hilarious. What a way to launch a political career!

The good news here is that, yes, the texts really did come from the state Democratic Party. There was no con. And yes, there’s a strategy involved.

“We are aggressively recruiting candidates at all levels who will fight to pass commonsense legislation on behalf of their constituents,” new KDP chair Jeanna Repass said in a written statement provided by a party spokeswoman. “We’re reaching out to and encouraging people who maybe haven’t been recruited before or have never thought running for office was an option to bring more people with different backgrounds into this process.

“To do that, we must ensure our reach is far and wide.”

Or as state Rep. Rui Xu, a Johnson County Democrat, put it on Twitter: “People get mad when we don’t proactively recruit, people get mad when we do.”

Fair enough. Remember Howard Dean? The former presidential candidate was chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the late 2000s and responded to the party’s string of losses with a “50-state strategy” to make sure Democrats competed in every political race on the map, no matter how overwhelming the Republican advantage.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, after all. Dean’s strategy always seemed smart to me.

If local Democrats can take a similar approach to make Kansas politics even a tiny bit more competitive — say, reducing Republicans in the Legislature to a mere majority instead of a veto-proof supermajority — it might be worth it.

But Kansas Democrats might’ve done a better job telegraphing their intentions. Some activists were apparently caught by surprise by the texts.

“When the text hit our town, we already had candidates for every seat (but not publicly),” Keith Davenport, a former Democratic candidate in Johnson County, wrote on Twitter. “So now I am waiting to see if we end up with Dems competing for the same seats which would really hurt in our at-large races.”

Democrats say they’ve already received a number of positive responses to the text campaign. But there is no political future for me, though. As a great man once said: “If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.” I’d rather write about politics than participate in the fray.