The Nation's Pulse: Kansas Clean Sweep
Neumayr, George
THE NATION'S PULSE by George Neumayr Kansas Clean Sweep A day before the November election, Newsweek, reporting on conservative House freshman Sam Brownback's Senate race against Jill Docking,...
...50 January 1997 • The American Spectator [would] instead tilt seriously to the right...
...Dan Glickman, now secretary of agriculture, was ousted in 1994 by Todd Tiahrt—hoped to slow the conservatives' rise by filling what they perceived to be a moderate vacuum...
...The media's obsession about Brown-back wasn't surprising...
...Bob Kerrey said on behalf of Sally Thompson...
...When asked about Snowbarger's exposure of the falsehood, Hancock's press secretary shot back, "It's his typical extremist style of desperation politics...
...Ryun and his old-time values won by 7 percent.44 Kansas was ripe for a conservative takeover once Dole, Kassebaum, and Meyers announced their retirements...
...Not exactly frightening words to Middle America, but that didn't keep the national media from seizing on them...
...For the mainstream media's belief, meanwhile, that conservative Republicans can't and shouldn't ever win, the 1996 elections should put them in mind of the old political adage: "As Kansas goes, so goes the nation...
...John Frieden, a trial lawyer backed by organized labor and pro-abortion groups, read from the same playbook, and repeatedly brought up the "specter" of Newt Gingrich to scare voters away from the conservative ticket...
...I think the trust issue became the deciding factor...
...What was there to mock...
...As Dole fell (and two other pro-choice moderates, Nancy Kassebaum and Jan Meyers, GEORGE NEUMAYR is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...Operating in this climate, noted pollster Stuart Rothenberg predicted on "The McLaughlin Group" that "Jim Ryun, the great former track star who's running for Congress in Kansas, who started with a 3o-point lead, will lose...
...udy Hancock, who opposed Vince Snowbarger for Jan Meyer's old seat, also proved clumsily partisan...
...Addressing the Johnson County Bar Association, Hancock said, "I hope to follow in the steps of Nancy Landon Kassebaum...
...Senate was one of the most carefully watched primary contests of the season...
...After Charlton Heston visited the state to campaign for Brownback, Docking charged: "Brownback has only tied himself closer to the extreme agenda of the National Rifle Association...
...The strategy dovetailed nicely with the national media's doomsday coverage of Kansas conservatism...
...The Democrats even tried to pin the extremist label on the understated conservative Pat Roberts...
...That was "more than any other Kansas congressman," Thompson added when she made the same charge...
...It completed the party's move "from underneath Bob Dole," as University of Kansas political scientist Burdette Loomis described the conservatives' rise over the last decade within the state's GOP...
...The Associated Press even quoted Dr...
...Some con-servatives are now eyeing the governor's seat as well...
...At this very first meeting or phone call," the Ryuns wrote, "the father explains that the family believes in courtship, which means that the young man must be spiritually and financially prepared to marry her if they fall in love...
...Ruth warning that "it's cruel to send a young person to a regular college with these kinds of interdictions...
...To the victor go the spoils," says former speaker McGill, acknowledging the conservatives' intense political commitment...
...Crossing David Miller, Graves backed the pro-choice Frahm in her primary against Sam Brownback...
...Largely composed of pro-lifers, evangelicals, and unapologetic Reaganites, the conservative right has come to dominate most every area of Kansas politics...
...Our polls showed we were at least ii points ahead," says Murray...
...Conservative in Tight Race for Kansas Seat...
...In the end, the Democrats were just as deluded about the Kansas Zeitgeist as the media, losing even some socially conservative Democratic voters to the Republicans...
...Social conservatives are within striking distance of controlling the state senate...
...What with all its huffing and puffing, the media missed the larger story in Kansas: the inexorable march towards victory of the conservative right...
...Though pro-life and supportive of smaller government (his Freedom to Farm bill has made pioneering strides against farm subsidies), Roberts is no starry-eyed flag-waver...
...Democrats, not especially strong to begin with—recall that nine-term Rep...
...Pat Roberts voted 95 percent of the time for Newt Gingrich," Sen...
...As a senior Senate staffer put it, the right-wing victory marked "the collapse of the ancien regime...
...K ansas was ripe for a conservative takeover once Dole, Kassebaum, and Meyers announced their retirements...
...His American Conservative Union rating is 86...
...But Bob Murray, Brownback's press secretary, had little reason to worry...
...They howl a lot and contribute a few dollars...
...While the leader of his party, Bill Clinton, was defending family values and popping off about school uniforms and curfews, Frieden had his campaign team flood the airwaves with attacks on "Courtship Makes a Comeback" — an article Ryun and his wife wrote for James Dobson's Focus on the Family...
...Meanwhile, she liked to claim that her own "centrism" was supported by Nancy Kassebaum (who in fact courted moderate voters for Brownback...
...His disdain for social conservatives would do Pete Wilson proud...
...She looked 250 people in the eyes and said she had voted for Kassebaum," Kevin Yowell, Snowbarger's campaign manager, said...
...No matter...
...After state Republicans drafted a conservative plank last January, he sniped, "Other than about twenty things, I think it's a great platform...
...whom I voted for...
...The Democrats were unable to pin extremist labels on these candidates," observes Allan Cigler, a University of Kansas political scientist...
...This year's triumph, in other words, was no fluke...
...The Kansas City Star reported, "The fight for Bob Dole's seat in the U.S...
...The state's moderate governor, Bill Graves, whose office traditionally selected the GOP chairman, was powerless to stop Miller...
...Jill Docking, the millionaire stockbroker running against Brownback, repeatedly tarred her opponent with apocalyptic warnings, saying that his election would mean that the Senate would "no longer be the moderating influence on the extremism of the House, but Democratic alarmists and their buddies in the press said it would never happen—but in Kansas, "extremists" rule...
...The Democrats are as demoralized as I have ever seen them...
...David Miller, a former political director of the state's immensely powerful pro-life organization Kansans for Life, occupies the state GOP chair...
...As well they should be: crying wolf has brought them a loss of credibility and near political oblivion...
...Graves, who'll be up for re-election in two years, tried to repair his ties with the right by working, at least outwardly, on behalf of Republicans at all levels last fall...
...The Washington Post fretted over Brown-back, too, headlining its story, "In Republican Redoubt, Doubts About Senate Hopeful...
...Says Ryun, "His approach was to attack me and not define himself...
...She denounced prayer in schools: "I will fight that with every fiber in my being...
...His primary run against Sheila Frahm had also prompted such headlines as "Race for Dole's Senate Seat Provokes Ideological Split...
...And quite a barn burner it was: Brownback won by only 13 percent...
...And the polls were right: Brown-back defeated Docking by around ioo,000 votes...
...Not surprisingly, the anti-conservative rhetoric drew Frieden into some inconsistent positions...
...The American Spectator January 1997 51...
...Nonetheless, his past blunders may come back to haunt him...
...Moderates are lazy and they won't dedicate their time and effort," he allows...
...In fact, her opponent's people discovered, during the years Kassebaum was on the ballot (1978, 1984, 199o) Hancock was either out of the state election day, not registered, or did not vote...
...retired), a considerably more conservative slate won both Senate seats (Brown-back, Pat Roberts) and all four Kansas slots in the House—Jim Ryun, Todd Tiahrt, Vince Snowbarger, and Jerry Moran...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by George Neumayr Kansas Clean Sweep A day before the November election, Newsweek, reporting on conservative House freshman Sam Brownback's Senate race against Jill Docking, gasped, "Even in the land of Dole, moderate voters are turning on unabashedly conservative politicians...
...Newt Gingrich is running in the Third District," one of her news releases blared...
...he campaigned against them in previous elections and is expected to remain cool toward a state party controlled by social conservatives...
...Frieden used the anti-Gingrich saw so often in his race against Jim Ryun (the three-time Olympian and former world-record holder in the mile) that Ryun says he once told Frieden that if he wanted to run against Newt, he should "move to Atlanta...
...As a prominent old-liner, former speaker of the Kansas House Pete McGill, put it, "There wasn't a damn thing he could do about it...
...He replaced Kim Wells, a reliable Dole hand who stepped down in 1995 conceding his day was over...
...Tim Shallenburger, who along with Miller bedeviled mainstream Republicans in the late 1980's, now leads the Kansas house as speaker...
...At the same time, she tried to pass herself off as a quasimoder-ate Repub-lican—which led to an enormous gaffe...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
