Election Day has come and gone with a plethora of ruby red results that pundits and political scientists alike will be studying for years to come. This is your 2024 post election Kansas reflector Podcast. I'm opinion editor clay wirestone, and here to help me sort through the results are our senior reporter, Tim Carpenter, reporter Anna Kaminsky and editor in chief, Sherman Smith, we're going to have an informal discussion today and try to cover the highlights. Welcome to all of you.
Thank you, Clay.
So let's start quick round, Quick Fire question here, were there any surprises to you on Tuesday night, Jim.
So I think when you look at the results Kansas and nationally, it should have been easier to understand how these election cycle was going to go. If you go back to 1992 with Jim Carvel, the Bill Clinton's strategist. He said, hey, when you get out there and work on the campaign. Just keep saying the economy stupid. And I think the economic issues and the anxiety people felt about the cost of living and inflation was really a driver in some of these results.
Okay, Sherman,
well, first, I appreciate the shout out to James Carville, who is called the Kansas reflector, the best news in Kansas. I think the big surprise for me was seeing how little of an impact Governor Laura Kelly and her pack had on these legislative races. She formed a middle of the road pack last year, raised $2 million also spent last fall, touring the state, promoting Medicaid expansion with the promise that if the legislature did not adopt this, it would become a decisive factor in campaigns this fall. And of course, it didn't happen. They targeted maybe a dozen or so competitive races, and Democrats lost all of them. They didn't unseat anybody. They didn't flip anybody, and they lost three seats. So instead of breaking the super majority in the House, they they lost ground, and in the Senate, they they lost at least one, possibly two.
So Anna,
I think ultimately, things went pretty smoothly. There were hitches and polling places, you know, elsewhere in the country, but particularly in Kansas, we had a pretty clear idea of what the results were going to be fairly early on, especially compared to the last time President Elect Donald Trump ran, things were pretty mild this year, especially with with promises of questioning the the results of the election on Tuesday afternoon, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab had told reporters that we'd probably have a clear idea of results by midnight, and that that ended up being very true, both locally, regionally, statewide and nationally.
So So I would just say throwing my own two cents in there. The thing that surprised me, I think, was we had abortion referendums on the ballot across the United States, much as we had an anti abortion constitutional amendment on the ballot in Kansas two years ago, and those referenda did pass in many states. I know one passed in Missouri, just to our east, they didn't pass everywhere. In Florida, there was a, there's a 60% requirement for such, for such referenda to be adopted, and they didn't quite make that. I think they ran into some problems in the Dakotas as well.
In Nebraska, they actually adopted a restriction, right?
So, but I think you're seeing there that while what we've been saying about abortion, you know, referenda over the last couple of years remains true, which is that people are broadly supportive of a right to a woman to have an abortion and to reproductive health care. You know, there are limits to how far that tactic goes. It doesn't. They're not necessarily going to pass in the reddest of states, and it certainly didn't translate into an overwhelming democratic advantage on Election Day, which I think a number of people expected. But I think also, if you looked at the history in Kansas, we could have told you that that was the case, because just you know, two months after an election that was overwhelmingly in favor of reproductive rights, here in 2022 we still elected a bunch of Republicans in the fall. This goes
back to Tim's point, right? I mean, we know that Kansans are at odds with the legislature on abortion, on Medicaid expansion, on legalizing marijuana, but that's not driving their votes in the end.
So let's turn now just to dig into the races a little bit more. So Tim, you on election night you were, you were tracking, you know, a number of different stories, but also kind of the Kansas legislature. Of makeup Sherman had had was just touching on this. But what, what kind of legislature are we going to be seeing next year in Topeka?
So as Sherman said, There was a long run up to this 2024, election cycle in terms of contests for the Kansas legislature, the Democrat Governor Kelly was really battling the Republican leadership and all those allied special interest groups. Pretty expensive races occurred. I think both sides identified about 15 to 20 legislative seats that were in play, and on election night, the Republicans won almost all of those. And that's you're talking about incumbents and newcomers as well. So here's the math. The key element here is that Republicans can really control the legislative agenda already because they have two thirds majorities. They have just numbers to direct legislation in committee and on the House and Senate floor. But what became an issue for the GOP was that Governor Kelly could veto some bills, and the conservatives didn't have enough votes that two thirds majority to override her in some cases. So Governor Kelly was trying to undermine the Republicans ability to override her vetoes. So in the Senate, the two thirds margin is 27 and right now, as we speak, there's 29 Republicans, 11 Democrats, and that's going to probably move to maybe 31 to nine. So the margin is going to improve a little bit for Republicans in the House. You need 84 that's the two thirds majority, to override a governor's veto. And I think we're at 85 to 40 Republicans and Democrats. That's probably going to go to 88 to 37 so it'll just be easier for the GOP to address its agenda and to override the governor wherever she feels compelled to veto a bill.
Um, okay, so Anna, you were, you were covering one of the more obscure yet important, I think, set of races across the state, which was those for the State Board of Education. And I think this really only emerged, kind of after the primary, as a potential point of interest for a bunch of people. So, what happened there?
Which there? There was a lot of interest in the Board of Education. The State Board of Education raised this year. We had a lot of candidates across the state for five open positions on the board that resulted in 12 candidates in total. And you know, early results, which this was also true across across the country, was the early results favored Democrats that didn't end up turning out like that. We had kind of expected, ahead of time to see this conservative takeover, in a sense, on the board, and that is what ended up happening. Democrats were able to help hold their ratio on the board, there was seven Republicans and three Democrats before this election. It'll remain that way. But now, with two candidates in particular being able to pick up seats, there is a conservative majority, and when I say conservative, we're talking about issues like school vouchers, rolling back dei policies, potential book bans or censorship in schools, and then also, you know, really and potentially removing funding for public schools. I
and important to note as well that the State Board of Education selects the State Superintendent of school, what's, what's the name of the office, again, commissioner, Commissioner, right. So if they want to hand select, you know, a more conservative person to kind of oversee the state schools. They can do that there
had already been this kind of vocal minority on the board. For conservatives were there already, but there are moderate Republicans who could, you know, team up with the moderate Democrats, really, to kind of carry a majority vote, I think, and now, with a couple of the moderate Republicans being replaced by candidates to the right, it it sets, sets up a potentially interesting couple of years.
We could go back to an era on the state board of education where there was a there was a time in which they had a big conservative majority, and somebody got the bright idea of requiring that a sticker be placed on all science books used by K 12 public schools in Kansas that said evolution is just a theory, and that was pretty controversial, but because it's you're really placing religious thought into the classroom that one. Yeah,
well, and it's an example of how sometimes folks don't pay attention to these down ballot kind of races, and yet then become very alarmed when they realize kind of what that neglect of the issues has produced. You know that it made Kansas kind of a national laughing stock for a time, and then led to essentially, ultimately, a reversal of the State Board of Education's makeup. But Sherman, we're turning now to you for everything else. So how did everything else go?
Well, first off, we'll talk about the presidential race, because this is something that is just sort of perfunctory in Kansas, that you assume they'll they'll be an overwhelming margin in favor of the Republican candidate for president. I don't think there's been much national attention on Kansas in this regard since Bob Dole was the nominee in 1996 but a week before the election, the Forte State University was at docking Institute Kansas speaks survey comes out and says that Harris has narrowed the lead to five points. This got a lot of attention because the same survey four years ago was very accurate, predicting within two tenths of a percent what Trump's victory would be. So on election night, you know, polls close at seven for almost all of the state. There are a few precincts along the Colorado border. Results start rolling in primarily the advance votes were being reported, and for the first two hours, Harris was actually leading in Kansas much as eight points, with hundreds of 1000s of votes counted. But then shortly before nine o'clock, Trump flipped the switch and then surged ahead and continued to surge, ending up with a 16 point win. It looks like in the preliminary results, far from what the Ford Hey state poll showed, more significant than his 14.6 win in 2020 so that was a bit of a surprise in congressional races, things went pretty much as expected. The three incumbents won. Charisse Davids, the representative from the Kansas City area, into a rural area to the south. Now that that's been gerrymandered, she held on for another term as the only Democrat in Congress from Kansas. Tracy Mann, out in the big red one, Ron Estes, down in Wichita, all won re election and in the second district, former Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who lost the race to Governor Laura Kelly, the governor's race two years ago, he defeated pretty easily, Nancy Boyd, a former Democratic Rep to go to Congress fill the open seat that was vacated by Jake laturner.
I will note that while in you know, when it comes to the presidential results in Kansas, that while you did have Trump, I believe improve his margin slightly from 2020 you know, the Democratic candidate share of the vote actually only ended up going down by about a percentage point. So Joe Biden got 42% of the vote in 2020 it looks like Kamala Harris will receive around 41% in Kansas. So, you know, there's still a a fairly large size chunk of Kansans who want that alternative. But you know, even in that Fort Hays poll that we were talking about, there were 9% of people who were, you know, essentially uncommitted when they were doing that polling. So, you know, I think at the time, even though I thought it would be closer than it was, there's definitely that suggestion that 9% could have ultimately gone to Trump.
I should say too that a little over 1% went to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who appears to have a spot picked out in the new administration.
Indeed. So, so now that we, you know, we've kind of taken a look at these races, Tim, we'll start with you. Why is it that we thought, why is it that we think that they ended up kind of the way that they did? What were contributing factors to these results? So, Tim, I guess the state legislature first.
There's a couple of issues here. One, I think the Republican side of that equation vastly over spent more than the Democrats. So you have more money for TV, radio, you have more money for mailers, you have more money to get people to walk districts. And I think that has an effect. I think walking districts is a great way to win votes, and mailers can contain all kinds of falsehoods, and they're effective, you know, people will look at them. So I think, I think in terms of that, that was a that was a big factor, there's another part of this is about gerrymandering, and that is the Republicans in the Kansas legislature could redraw all the House and Senate boundaries. Countries, and they set it up to a couple years ago, in a manner in which 60 of the 165 legislative seats were decided in the primary. That is, there was only a Republican or or Democratic primary, and the Rival party didn't even field a candidate. So 1/3 of the seats were settled in August. Then you had, on Tuesday, election night, another 50 plus seats that were total wipeouts. That is the victor, one with two thirds majority of the vote. So these are, these are intensely gerrymandered districts to help, in some sense, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats are guaranteed a victory, even if somebody of the other party runs. So you really had 50 potentially competitive districts in the Kansas legislature. And I think the outcome of this is fueled by gerrymandering and money, both influences that I think are we, a lot of people would would concur, are, lethal to the political process
well and also, of course, they work hand hand in glove, as it were, because you gerrymander, which reduces the number of seats that you have to spend money in. So it allows for that concentration of resources.
This is also the first election cycle for the newly drawn Senate seats, State Senate seats.
I do remember I should make a note of a a childhood friend, friend of my family. Hello, Sherry. She noted on on Facebook in response to one of one of my comments that you know, she would have liked to have voted for more Democrats, but there were only two running in, like on that were on her entire, you know, in on all of her ballot. So, you know, there's a restraint, there's there's an issue there.
The other side of that is in Lawrence. Four House districts were decided in the primary Democrats had no opponent in four those House races for people representing Lawrence, I think that's pathetic and terrible, and I think the voters deserve choices. And it's sad that gerrymandering is legal. It's sad that dark money is legal, and both of these influences harm the electorate by tipping, tipping the scales in these races in the state house well, and
it's one of the things that I know from the mail, that the email that we all receive. You know, there was a lot of public interest, I would say, in who was funding some of this, this mail, and how kind of the money came into these races. But it's, it's a tricky thing to cover, because, of course, it's all legal. Now, this has all been cleared by the US Supreme Court. You know, people are usually, usually follow the letter of the law and how this is done. And frankly, the ONE campaign that kind of admitted that it had had overstepped the bounds on this was the campaign of a Democrat, Sherman,
oh yeah, Nancy boyda just refuse to put the or neglected to put the campaign disclosure on a lot of her materials, over and over again. Yeah.
So, so Anna, what about those, those Board of Education races? Any any particular reason that those shook out the way that they did? Yeah. I
mean, I think this is a reflection of a trend we've been seeing across the country for a while where there's increasing and building interest in both State Board of Education races in addition to local school board races. And those are all built that interest is built on this premise of hot button issues, you know, some, some may refer to them as, like, quote, unquote, culture war issues. I mean, on the side of the Democrats, we have, we had, this year, this huge focus on public school funding and adequately funding public schools. On the Republican and conservative candidate side, we had parents rights, like I mentioned earlier. We had school vouchers. We had, you know, social issues, and I'll get into that a little bit. So we had two Democratic incumbents hold their seats, and then a new Democrat come in as well, and those were all in predominantly blue areas. We had Melanie Haas in Johnson County, an incumbent. We had Betty Arnold in Wichita, also an incumbent. And then we had Beryl new in the Topeka area. And then in these other districts, we had Connie O'Brien take the fourth district, which is in the Douglas, Wyandotte, Leavenworth counties area. In addition to others, O'Brien is a former state representative, and she in particular, has been pretty open and outspoken about pushing for parental involvement, pushing for removing any books or school materials that contain sexual content mentions of gender identity. And she's also been an advocate for rolling back dei or diversity. Equity, inclusion practices, social emotional learning and removing what she calls transgender nonsense. Debbie Potter, who won the south central Kansas district pretty, pretty overwhelmingly, she had 60% of votes in a three way race for a seat that was held by a moderate Republican, Jim McNeese. She has been similar. She home schooled a lot of her children and her grandchildren, and she has been kind of she told me on election night that she's been preparing for this for several years. She's been watching the school board really closely, or excuse me, the State Education Board really closely, and has some similar ideals to O'Brien parental involvement, in particular, along with restrictions on school to content. And
I gotta ask, you know, when you look at some of this book stuff and parental control, I think a lot of conservatives want parental control, if those parents agree with their conservative philosophy, but people that have a more moderate or liberal ideology different from the conservatives on these issues, they're wrong. They're just wrong. So we need parental involvement, as long as it lines up conveniently with the conservative ideals, is, is there an irony there?
I think you may have answered your own question, but it is intensely like subjective. And I think people fall in a lot of different places, particularly on parents rights. And it's kind of this weird, like Enigma parents rates, because what does that actually mean, and what does parental involvement mean in schools? I mean, I think to some conservatives, and particularly the ones that won this race, that that means a greater control, like you mentioned, from that conservative perspective on how teachers interact with their children.
But also, I think a lot of it, frankly, is is is driven by misinformation about what's actually happening in schools.
Yeah, and I think religion plays a big part of it too, and a desire for religious influence in public schools in particular, which I'll ask you, Tim, if you see the irony, but it's, yeah, it's a difficult thing to wade through, but it's definitely present, and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out on the ground in the coming years.
So Sherman, looking at the the congressional and presidential races, any, any reasons that particular I mean, as you said, those, those were a little more straightforward. In many ways
they were, but I think it's, it also is clear the impact that a presidential election has on legislative races. You know, there were a half dozen seats in the Johnson County area where, two years ago, they were decided by 60 to 250 votes. But in those those races two years ago, there maybe were 6000 total votes cast in the district. This year, there were 10,000 votes cast in those districts, and the margins were much bigger. And you know, just the other point I would like to make here in terms of legislative races. I don't think this will surprise anybody, but it's clear that, you know, the truth doesn't matter a whole lot. When it comes to politics, we had people lying about whether they had a college degree, about their stance on abortion, about whether they actually live in Hutchinson, and it didn't matter. They all won.
So a quick round here to kind of get us towards the end. What do you think this is going to mean for the next year or so in these various areas? So, Tim legislature, any kind of predictions? What's it looking like? Yeah,
so the Republicans add are adding a couple of more bodies to their super majority, and I think they'll be more aggressive in Bill writing, you'll see more aggressive K 12 voucher bills, abortion regulation, deregulation of business, transgender rights, health care, no to Medicaid expansion and taxation, all those bills will be more aggressively written to the conservative cause. Another element could be that the legislature gets more aggressive in terms of constitutional amendments, proposing constitutional amendments for the ballot. And Attorney General Kris Kobach suggested one of those first steps should be in changing the constitution so that instead of Kansas Supreme Court, a justice being selected through a merit based process in which the governor selects and their anointed to a system in which the governor would nominate in the Kansas Senate, which is run by conservative Republicans, would then accept or reject those nominees. And so Kris Kobach, the Attorney General, wants that federal process to be applied to the Supreme Court in Kansas, and you could look for something like that
well, and of course, that that is that's kind. Of the whole game when it comes to abortion rights in Kansas. Because the reason Kansas has the abort, you know, kind of the expansive access to reproductive health care it does, is because the state Supreme Court found that right in the state constitution, not that's not legally, I mean, that's not in statute. Different
Supreme Court in Kansas could just jettison that opinion that found that women had a right to bodily autonomy in the Bill of Rights, and could therefore decide whether or not to have an abortion. That could be completely reversed with a snap of the fingers some litigation and a different Supreme Court.
But of course, if you do have but the process to change the Supreme Court would again, it would involve a public vote. It would be House and Senate.
Yeah, House and Senate has to approve the measure. Then it goes on the ballot. It has to be approved in the House and Senate by two thirds majority. It goes on the ballot, and that's a mere majority vote, 50% plus one person, and we change the constitution.
So a lot of potential stuff there. Anna, what do you see?
I think the potential ramifications of this could be quite serious for public schools in the fourth district, which was was flipped. It was It is currently held by a Democrat, and MA went in favor of Republican, Connie O'Brien. And Ma, like I talked to her before the results came in, and she was concerned that this shift to the to the far right could mean a continued rejection of federal funds. It's been something that's pretty consistent over the past few years on the board that solid conservative at first, minority now majority had had voted against federal funding pretty consistently in that same district, Connie O'Brien's opponent, Chris Meyer, they were embroiled in like a pretty close race, and O'Brien only Beat Meyer by two percentage points. Meyer had told me that the results of this election don't particularly look good for the future of Kansas public education. She fears an eradication of public schools point blank, but we will just have to wait and see. Okay.
And Sherman, I would
just say that the, you know, the margins for the super majority overriding a governor's veto in the past couple of years have been so, so razor thin that, you know, some of the the issues that I think have long been on the wish list for conservatives or republican leadership were just non starters, and that's not true anymore. They could have three or four people defect in both chambers and still override the veto. So I think you know it would I would be surprised if we don't see at least an attempt at a full blown private school voucher program. I think we've seen already talk about driving the corporate income tax to zero again, and I think we'll see not just continued laws that restrict abortion access, but it wouldn't surprise me if, as they've talked about in the past, we saw another constitutional amendment that tried to take another crack at This
well and but, but that being said too, it's, it's very difficult to know until the bodies are actually in the seats at the legislature to know exactly how everything breaks down. You know, I don't think most people would have expected a few years ago that she would have a Democrat who would eventually join with the Republicans to vote on nearly everything, or that you would have a certain couple of Republicans who would vote for the Democrats on everything. There's always the potential that you get a kind of a new swing group somewhere in the middle, probably less likely, but, but again, you don't know until you start getting the votes.
There are always surprises. But you know, the reality is, Democrats will need to find six Republicans in the House who are willing to sacrifice their political careers and vote with them.
And, you know, and but again, it comes down to the the fact that, you know, when you have these kinds of tight votes, especially when you come to overrides, you know, if you only need two, then there are a couple of Republicans who kind of step up to do that. Then that means there are many other Republicans who don't have to do that, even though there may be more who want to. So it, again, becomes a question of just just tracking that. But you know, obviously, overall, yes, it's, it's going to be quite a quite a session that's next well. Tim Anna Sherman, thank you all so much for coming and sorting through this pile of results. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thank you, Clay. You.
