Schmidt bets big on social issues, conservatives. Does he risk ceding center to Kelly?

Kansas Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt is making a final effort to bolster his support among conservatives and fans of former President Donald Trump in the last days of the race for governor, a strategy that risks alienating moderate voters that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is aggressively courting.

In the homestretch before the Nov. 8 election, Schmidt has released a video of Trump praising the GOP nominee, campaigned with former Vice President Mike Pence, addressed a hard-right “Kansas Patriots” rally and sought to link Kelly to drag shows.

The right-wing outreach comes as Schmidt faces an insurgent independent opponent in state Sen. Dennis Pyle, who left the Republican Party earlier this year to run a campaign dedicated to painting both Schmidt and Kelly as too liberal. Pyle hasn’t run an extensive campaign but could nevertheless cause problems for Schmidt if he pulls just 2 or 3% of the vote in a tight race.

Some Republicans have encountered voters who appear ready to back the independent candidate.

“Two weeks ago I would have said I’m having a really hard time convincing some people to not support Pyle,” said state Rep. Samantha Poetter Parshall, a Paola Republican.

As the election approaches, however, Poetter Parshall said more voters she has spoken with are beginning to believe the only viable path to removing Kelly is supporting Schmidt.

“I would give Derek the odds on this one,” said former state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a Leavenworth Republican. Still, Fitzgerald said Pyle “could throw it the other way. It could happen.”

Schmidt has made appeals to conservatives a central component of his campaign all fall, including a September rally with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rising Republican star, and an October bus tour of the state that brought out the Republican faithful.

But the pace of that outreach has accelerated in recent days as early voting has begun and the window to influence voters closes.

“It’s desperation. They’re trying to find something that they can make some headway on,” former Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said of Schmidt’s effort this past week to connect Kelly to drag shows that have been held in Kansas.

Very few independent polls have been released in the race. A mid-September survey by Emerson College Polling and The Hill placed Kelly at 45% support and Schmidt at 43% — within the margin of error. Pyle had 3% support in the poll.

Schmidt, speaking to reporters last week, said his campaign is offering voters a “solid conservative option.” His campaign is talking to Republicans, independents and “quite a few Democrats,” he said.

“As we come down the homestretch it’s always important to make sure all of our supporters are fully engaged and turn out,” Schmidt said.

Last Monday, Schmidt seized on a report in The Daily Mail, a conservative-leaning British tabloid, that taxpayer dollars had supported Wichita-area events that included drag shows, based on the use of state logos to promote the events. However, the Kansas Department of Commerce said no taxpayer money funded the shows.

Schmidt held a news conference to promote the report, but was unable to provide evidence that Kelly or anyone in her administration had any knowledge that state logos had been used in promotional materials for the events.

A day earlier, Schmidt posted a video of Trump encouraging voters to support him and calling him “outstanding in every single way.” While Trump endorsed Schmidt in January, Schmidt’s campaign over the past year hasn’t focused on the former president.

That same weekend, Schmidt addressed a hard-right “Kansas Patriots” rally outside the Kansas Statehouse. Democrats quickly highlighted that one of the rally’s speakers was a staunch anti-mask protester who had previously been arrested in Lawrence. Schmidt also issued a news release promising to block any attempt to make the COVID-19 vaccine a mandatory vaccination for schoolchildren.

And on Oct. 21, Pence joined Schmidt in Wichita, where the former vice president linked Kelly to Democratic President Joe Biden, who remains relatively unpopular nationally.

“There’s definitely a shift to the right and I often call it a shift to the hard base,” said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University in Topeka and a long-time observer of Kansas gubernatorial races.

Seeking conservatives, risking moderates

The November election is widely expected to favor Republicans across the country, with predictions of a “red wave” carrying the party into control of the U.S. House and possibly the Senate. The party that controls the White House typically suffers losses in midterm elections.

But in Kansas, signs suggest the wave may not crest very high in some parts of the state. The overwhelming Aug. 2 vote to reject an amendment to the state constitution that would have given the Legislature to power to restrict or ban abortion excited Democrats, who have worked throughout the fall to translate opposition to the amendment into support for their candidates.

In Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, a New York Times-Siena College poll this week found Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids enjoys a strong lead. And as of Friday in FiveThirtyEight’s projections of the governor’s race, Kelly wins 60% of the time.

Davids’ Republican opponent, Amanda Adkins, and national Democrats have both cast doubt on the poll, suggesting the race is much closer in reality. Still, a strong win by Davids would bode well for Kelly, who would benefit from high Democratic turnout in the 3rd, which includes Johnson County, the state’s most populous county.

However, Beatty emphasized that Schmidt’s strategy for courting conservatives may work. He pointed to former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s successful 2014 re-election campaign.

Among other severe attacks, Brownback used the gruesome Wichita killings in 2000 by Jonathan and Reginald Carr to suggest his Democratic opponent would appoint liberal justices to the Kansas Supreme Court. The court at one point overturned the brothers’ death sentences, but the sentences were later reinstated.

It’s still a strategy that carries risk. “It’s hard for me to assess, but it’s a gamble to own an issue like that when you don’t have to,” Beatty said of Schmidt’s decision to call a news conference on the drag show controversy.

While Kansas is a Republican-leaning state, Democrats regularly win the governor’s office – often by pitching themselves as a moderate or centrist leader who can speak to voters in both parties. Kelly has followed in that tradition, releasing ads that show her literally standing in the middle of a road.

The support of independents, and some moderate Republicans, is crucial for Kelly. More than 543,000 Kansans are registered unaffiliated voters, compared to about 519,000 registered Democrats.

“There’s a lot of moderate Republicans and such that are very concerned about Derek’s coming across. That’s playing probably more of a factor than it should,” state Sen. John Doll, a Garden City Republican, said of his area.

Doll briefly left the Republican Party four years ago to be Greg Orman’s running mate in the Johnson County businessman’s independent campaign for governor. Orman ran as a centrist and ultimately won 6.5% of the vote.

Some Democrats credit Orman’s campaign with helping Kelly defeat Republican Kris Kobach in 2018. Kobach’s focus on right-wing issues in his own campaign, which attacked Kelly over illegal immigration, also helped turn moderate voters away from him and toward Kelly.

‘Republican does not equate to conservative’

Unlike Orman, Pyle has run as a hard-right conservative. While Kelly disappointed some liberals by signing legislation largely overturning a immigration-oriented ordinance in Wyandotte County, she doesn’t face a similar left-wing opponent or any organized liberal opposition.

In an interview Pyle said he has reached out to what he called educational freedom and health care freedom groups – an attempt to harness the explosion of opposition to remote learning and COVID-19 vaccination requirements in 2020 and 2021.

Pyle said he noticed additional support for his campaign after Pence campaigned with Schmidt. Some Trump supporters view Pence as a traitor for refusing to aid Trump in attempting to block certification of Biden’s electoral victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence, as president of the Senate, had no constitutional authority to intervene.

Asked about Pence, Pyle didn’t mention Jan. 6 but argued the former vice president supports “more moderates and left-wing Republicans than others.”

“The more and more people see that Republican does not equate to conservative, the more they’re going to move toward me,” Pyle said.

Schmidt campaign manager C.J. Grover said in an email that the campaign, in both the last week and in its entirety, has been focused on returning “Kansas Common Sense and conservative values” to the governor’s office and welcoming support from individuals of all political philosophies. Grover said the Schmidt campaign hadn’t seen any evidence of Pyle cutting into its support among conservatives despite Democrats seeking to elevate him as a spoiler candidate.

In recent days, a group called American Center has begun placing orders for radio ads about Pyle, according to required disclosures filed with the Federal Communications Commission. American Center shares a Washington, D.C., address with the law firm Perkins Coie. The group’s website says it “works to identify and amplify the voices of Americans who want better results from our government.”

Schmidt largely avoided a competitive primary contest, which could have forced Schmidt to fight harder, earlier for conservative support. Schmidt’s only significant rival for the Republican nomination, former Gov. Jeff Colyer, dropped out of the race in August 2021, citing a prostate cancer diagnosis.

Poetter Parshall indicated the lack of a competitive primary left some Republican voters dissatisfied.

“A lot of people were upset about not having a choice in the primary and when it comes down to it and voting it’s different,” Poetter Parshall said. “They’re gonna go with Schmdit because that’s the only way but they’re still frustrated.”