Voters keep sending politicians the message: Moderate Kansas is no radical red Florida

Kansas chose sensible moderation in 2022.

If you want to sum up the year in Sunflower State politics, that’s probably your headline: not terribly sexy, but important and true all the same. Voters were asked twice this year to make big, even radical changes — once by upending our abortion laws, and then by tossing out a popular Democratic governor — and both times they refused. Kansans chose the status quo instead.

Extremism isn’t really our thing these days. Familiarity is. Perhaps the state flag should feature a comfortable pair of old brown shoes.

This isn’t our reputation, of course.

Kansas is supposed to be red in tooth, claw and voting habits. Whenever that turns out not to be the whole story, the entire country sits up and suddenly pays attention to us, shocked that we defied expectations.

That’s what happened in August, when voters overwhelmingly rejected the “Value Them Both” abortion amendment, which would have allowed the conservative majority in the Legislature gut women’s reproductive rights. And it happened again in November (albeit to a lesser extent) when Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won a second term in office.

The first vote — coming on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — let Democrats nationwide know that abortion rights can be a winning issue. And Kelly’s victory was part of a terrible election cycle for Republicans, one that has GOP leaders and thinkers openly debating whether it’s time to make a break with Donald Trump. That seemed unthinkable a year ago, even in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

None of this should have been a surprise, though.

Yes, Kansas is a reliably Republican state when it comes to national elections. But we’re also the state where voters sent Attorney General Phill Kline packing in 2006, fed up with his stumbling anti-abortion rights crusade. We’re the state whose most recent conservative governor, Sam Brownback, wrecked local school budgets with his tax cut experiments. And we’re the state that once made popular figures of moderate Republicans like former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum and former Gov. Bill Graves.

Radical ideas and crusading politicians don’t tend to last long around here.

We also don’t like lies and half-truths. The “Value Them Both” amendment probably would have lost anyway, but the cause wasn’t helped by backers’ refusal to admit the obvious truth that the measure was a first step toward outlawing abortion. (Misleading texts linked to a PAC chaired by former U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp probably added to the backlash.) And Derek Schmidt, Kelly’s GOP challenger, didn’t win with his relentless efforts to paint the incumbent as a San Francisco-style drag queen-loving progressive radical. That simply didn’t ring true for voters who had already lived through four years under her leadership.

Of course, sensible moderates didn’t win all the battles this year. Perennial candidate Kris Kobach won election as the next attorney general — though it should be noted that he at least left the replica machine gun at home during the latest campaign.

What’s more, Kelly will still contend with a Kansas Legislature dominated by a GOP supermajority that doesn’t sound much interested in compromise, moderation or meeting in the middle on topics such as Medicaid expansion.

“Laura Kelly won reelection with less than 50% of the vote because of a split in the Republican electorate who wants bold leadership like we’ve seen out of Florida and in other states,” Senate President Ty Masterson told Politico after the election. “Nowhere in the election was there a message to lurch to the left or grow government by expanding Obamacare and making people more dependent on programs.”

That’s not entirely true. Polls show that most Kansans want Medicaid expansion, which is the norm even in many red states. And if voters really wanted Ron DeSantis-style leadership for the state, they could have elected Schmidt. They didn’t.

Kansas moderates had a good year in 2022. But Masterson’s comments prove that eternal vigilance is necessary. The radicals aren’t going away.