Congressman Estes, James Thompson hold big leads; rematch appears certain

Updated 9:20 p.m.: Rep. Ron Estes and James Thompson continued to cruise to easy victories over their opponents, setting up a rematch of their 2017 special election.

With roughly a third of the votes counted, Rep. Estes had expanded his lead to 80 percent to 20 percent over challenger Ron M. Estes in the Republican primary.

Rep. Estes came out and addressed the crowd about 9 p.m. with remarks aimed squarely at the general election match-up. He never mentioned his primary opponent by name.

Thompson held a 66 percent to 34 percent lead over Laura Lombard on the Democratic side.

His campaign watch party was as festive as Rep. Estes.’

A crowd of around 250 people spilled onto the patio outside Aero Plains Brewery. Thompson supporters played cornhole, and motorcycles revved outside the raucous bar.

Without the campaign’s banners and red, white and blue balloons, the bar would have seemed more like a Super Bowl party than a political event.

Updated: 7:55 p.m.: Rep. Ron Estes and James Thompson pull out to early leads in the 4th District congressional race.

In very early returns, Thompson took about a 2-1 lead over Laura Lombard on the Democratic side; Rep. Ron Estes led challenger Ron M. Estes by 3-1.

Updated 7:10 p.m.: Did south-central Kansas voters set up the rematch of Ron Estes and James Thompson in the 4th District?

Or will it be an upset for the other Ron Estes and/or Laura Lombard?

The polls are closed, the die is cast, and all that’s left is to count up the score.

In what could be Kansas’ strangest election this year, it was Ron Estes versus Ron Estes on the Republican side. The candidates were differentiated by a title, Rep. Ron Estes, and an initial, Ron M. Estes.

On the Democratic side was Thompson, who’s spent the past year positioning for a rematch of last year’s special election race where he lost a close race to Estes to replace fomer Rep. and now-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Standing in his way was Lombard, an educational and business consultant.

Thompson scored the biggest coup of the campaign when he brought Vermont senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to Wichita last month to campaign for him.

Along with rising Democratic Party star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders drew a crowd of 4,000.

It was the largest rally for any candidate in Wichita in recent years.

Sanders, a Vermont senator and former presidential candidate, and Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated the House Democratic caucus chair in a New York primary, call themselves democratic socialists — and that’s created a line of attack for Republicans.

True enough, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are clearly associated with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Now that the primaries are over, Thompson may decide to roll the dice on a full-throated progressive campaign — Medicare for all, tuition-free college, $15 minimum wage, sympathy for immigrants, etc. He’s talked about all those as ideas that would be good for the country.

That kind of campaign would clearly energize his base voters, and it does have the virtue that it hasn’t been tried.

Recent Democratic candidates in the 4th have generally tempered their advocacy to try to attract more centrist Republicans but have lost by wide margins anyway.

Lombard mostly agreed with Thompson on major issues except for one — gun control.

Thompson, a former soldier, is kind of a gun guy. He supports better vetting and training for gun owners — pretty much the minimum position a Democratic candidate can hold and still win a party primary.

Lombard supported a ban on the manufacture of assault weapons for civilian use.

Apart from the novelty of having two candidates with the same name, not much happened on the Republican side of the campaign.

Rep. Estes ran a rose garden primary campaign focused on making sure his voters touched the right line on the voting machine.

The battle cry was that the M in Ron M. Estes stood for “misleading.”

And it worked for at least some Rep. Estes voters.

The congressman’s public appearances involved mainly parades and pancakes, with the occasional visit to the friendly confines of Republican clubs like the Wichita Pachyderm, where Estes is known to all and liked by nearly all.

He spent far more of his time raising money for a possible rematch against Thompson than he did worrying about Ron M.

Much of Rep. Estes’ social media effort went into criticizing Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders for their democratic socialist views.

Typical Facebook posting: “Last week, James Thompson hosted socialist extremists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Wichita where they continued to embarrass themselves. Kansans know better than to fall for the deceitful, shameless rhetoric coming from the radical left.”

Ron M. didn’t do a lot of primary campaigning either. He didn’t have a campaign sign for himself in his yard but rather a sign reminding people to get out and vote.

The funding differential was striking.

Rep. Estes has raised more than $1.4 million for this election cycle. Ron M. barely cracked $2,000, according to www.opensecrets.org, a national website that tracks campaign finance.

This story was originally published August 7, 2018 at 7:20 PM.