Negative light

Daniel Desrochers

For years, Republicans had a pretty clear message on abortion. They wanted judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to the procedure and allowing states to implement strict bans.

Then it happened. As the dust settled, Republicans were divided. Some said the decision should be left to the states. Others began pushing for a federal ban.

After the ballot measure to remove the right to an abortion in the Kansas constitution failed, I wanted to get a clear answer on where Kansas congressional candidate Amanda Adkins stood on the issue. I asked, given a federal effort to ban the procedure, whether she would support that type of legislation. I was told she wanted the issue to be left to the states. Weeks later, she made it even more explicit, penning an op-ed in the Star, saying she did not support a federal ban.

But then she said she supported a budget by the Republican Study Committee — a group of Republican House members — to balance the country’s budget in seven years. Among the provisions in the study committee’s plan was support for a federal ban on abortion.

Democrats pounced. Presented with Adkins argument that she would not support a federal ban on abortion and her support for a budget that indicated she would, incumbent Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids’ campaign chose to focus on the latter.

Davids’ campaign then ran ads saying Adkins supported a federal abortion ban based on her support for the Republican Study Committee budget and her past campaign work. Adkins managed the 2004 Senate campaign for vocal abortion opponent Sam Brownback and served as Kansas Republican state chair in 2010, the year Brownback was elected governor and the state party’s platform included support for an abortion ban.

Adkins campaign called it “dishonest” campaigning.

It wasn’t the last time the Davids campaign would put something Adkins did or said in the most negative light. In the Shawnee Mission Post, Davids wrote that Adkins was listed on a list of candidates that denied election results. Adkins was, indeed, included on that list when it was initially published by The Washington Post.

Adkins has said she believes President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The last time she said it, she was campaigning with Sen. Ted Cruz, who was one of the senators who attempted to overturn 2020 presidential election.

The Washington Post later removed Adkins’ name and issued a correction after the paper determined that it had not correctly applied its criteria to identify election deniers. The Shawnee Mission Post has removed the sentence referencing the list from Davids’ quote on its website, but it has not issued a correction.

Adkins’ campaign again called Davids dishonest.

Political attacks often splash around in the muck. The standard for campaigns isn’t usually whether an attack is honest. When they run them by their legal teams, they’re looking to see if they contain any slander.

Adkins’ campaign, for example, has been running ads pinning the blame for inflation on Davids, taking votes she cast for bills economists say contributed to the higher prices and treating them as if they’re the sole reason we’re seeing global inflation.

They are both trying to use whatever information they have to paint their opponent in the worst light possible. It’s an effort to sway voters on the fence and to get a strong emotional reaction out of their base to ensure they vote.

Instead, negative attack ads often just drive down turnout and make people disenchanted with the process, according to political scientists.

More from Missouri

Missouri State Highway Patrol distanced itself from an ad supporting a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana. The ad showed a state trooper riding a motorcycle and claimed that legalizing marijuana would help the police focus on violent crime. But the Highway Patrol are overseen by Gov. Mike Parson, who is adamantly opposed to the ballot measure. The state police agency has sent a cease and desist letter to get the group to stop running the ad.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

Amanda Adkins, the Republican nominee has spent time on the campaign trail using fentanyl overdoses as a way to talk about crime and immigration in the suburban 3rd Congressional District. In doing so, she associates the deadly fentanyl problem with illegal immigrants in what one professor says is a textbook case of scapegoating.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

Marshall and Walker

Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, went on the campaign trail this week to support Herschel Walker, the embattled Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia. Walker, a former Heisman winner, is running against Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who narrowly won his seat in a run-off election in 2020.

Walker, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump early on in the campaign, has weathered a number of scandals, from allegations of domestic violence, to hiding the fact that he was the father of three children he hadn’t publicly recognized, to allegations that he paid for one of his ex-lovers to get an abortion, even though he has said he believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest.

Yet, despite the scandals, the race is still considered a toss-up.

It feels far removed from 2017, when it surfaced that a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, Roy Moore, had sexually assaulted two minors when he was in his 30s. When the scandal surfaced, prominent Republicans called for Moore to drop out of the race and he eventually lost to former Sen. Doug Jones in a state that is reliably Republican.

But we may be in a post-scandal era, where parties will still rally around candidates so long as they’ve denied the allegations. Marshall was in Georgia with Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican; and Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.

No prominent Republicans have called on Walker to drop out of the race.

Hawley and Walker

Speaking of Walker, after the report that he had paid an ex-lover to get an abortion, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, again reiterated his support for the scandal-plagued nominee. Previously, Hawley affirmed his support after domestic violence allegations.

But while Hawley has verbally endorsed Walker, his campaign finance reports tell a different story.

Fighting for Missouri, the leadership PAC associated with Hawley, has donated to a number of Republicans running in tight elections this November, like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona and Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

He had not donated to Walker, as of October.

Voter guide

This week, we released a voter guide for the Missouri and Kansas elections. You can use it to figure out who’s on your ballot and see where they stand on some of the issues most important to voters.

I find this type of guide particularly helpful. There’s no opinion in it, we’re not telling you who to vote for. Instead, you can see the candidates’ answers in their own words (or, no words if they declined to respond) and it can help you learn about some of the candidates on the down ballot races that don’t get as much attention as those running for Congress or governor.

It also has explanations about the various amendments that are on the Missouri ballot, including whether to legalize recreational marijuana and whether to give the state legislature more power over Kansas City’s police budget.

You can find the Kansas voter guide here.

And you can find the Missouri voter guide here.

Happy Friday

Read this about conservative power broker Leonard Leo. It’s fall, have an apple cobbler... cocktail? Listen to this song by Ashe, who was recommended to me by Katie Bernard.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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