Print edition: 
Kansas has no seashores, but it will be hit — with 100 percent certainty — by a green tsunami in the summer of 2012, when the state will experience a wave of campaign spending unlike anything we've ever seen.
Others have noted that we are primed to experience several hotly contested Kansas Senate primaries next August, as conservative Republicans mount a broad campaign against moderate incumbents, including Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton.
That's true, and given more weight by the fact that Senate districts have not even been drawn yet, so challengers don't know where they'll be running.
Still, the real news here is that these Senate campaigns are likely to be the most expensive ever. What's most frustrating is that we won't ever know how costly they are given the current status of campaign-finance laws, which are — for all practical purposes — nonexistent.
To be sure, there are campaign laws on the books, and those generally are followed. But whole waves of dollars can and do come into campaigns with no accountability at all.
In a recent New Yorker article, reporter Jane Mayer introduced readers to Art Pope, whose funding essentially bought the North Carolina state legislature for Republicans in the 2010 election. Operating through various groups, Pope contributed an estimated $2.2 million to 22 state legislative races — about $100,000 each. This paid for distorting ads across various media, and resulted in 18 wins for his favored candidates.
In Kansas, we've already seen this phenomenon at work, as Iowa's American Future Fund spent heavily and anonymously on behalf of Derek Schmidt in his race against incumbent Attorney General Steve Six. Six received outside money as well, but from the Democratic Attorneys General Association political action committee, whose funds are traceable. Schmidt himself raised a bit more than $700,000, while Six received more than $1.2 million.
Six's grassroots fundraising advantage was consistently offset by the unreported, unaccountable spending by outside groups, which can raise funds with no limits. How much was spent? It's impossible to figure out.
In the 2008 state Senate elections, a total of $5.9 million was spent by all the candidates in the 40 races. This averages about $71,000 per candidate, including both primary and general elections. If an outside group targeted seven Republican primaries with $2 million, those funds alone would more than triple the average funding in the 2008 races. And for anonymous donors with deep pockets, such a relatively modest amount could easily eliminate the last bastion of moderation in Kansas government.
For their $2 million investment, donors would get a Kansas Legislature that would be on the way to reducing or eliminating the income tax, providing more business incentives, and sharply shifting the tax burden to consumers. Those pesky environmental laws would be more at risk, and cuts to government services would likely continue as the order of the day.
All for a paltry, unaccounted-for couple million bucks.
To be sure, there will be opposing forces, as anyone can take advantage of "super PACs" and other 501(c)4 groups that have sprung up in the past two years. But the North Carolina experience demonstrates how much a single wealthy individual can do to skew election results.
Kansas is a perfect target for this coming tsunami. Campaigns here have never been costly, nor do the best-funded candidates always win. But when a flood of money pours in, well-targeted and far above past levels, politics becomes a numbers game.
And in this high-stakes contest, who wants to bet against the green tsunami?
