Predicting Governor Kobach, Governor Kelly and President Pence

When Mike Pence speaks with Kris Kobach on Thursday in Topeka and Wichita, they will both extol the virtues of President Donald Trump’s agenda of protectionism and immigration restriction. But if we go back to 2015, the two Republican leaders could not be more different.

The evolution of Pence on these issues, and the consistency of Kobach, raise a difficult issue for American voters: how can we predict what a politician will do if they are promoted to higher office? Will they be like Kobach, and stick with the positions that made their career? Or will they be like Pence, and shift to match the positions of the man who promoted them?

I would argue that the answer lies in their original motivation for seeking political office.

Mike Pence started his rise to power as part of the movement of Protestant Evangelicals into the core of the Republican Party. Raised a Democrat, Pence was a talk-radio host in Indianapolis and rode the backlash to Bill Clinton’s presidency into Congress in 2000.

Pence is what political scientists call a “delegate” kind of representative. He reflects the views of his core constituents, who are Protestant Evangelicals like him. His movement from backer of immigration reform in the 2000s to America-First Trumper mirrored his fellow believers, who locked into their support of Trump around the same time in the summer of 2016.

Kobach is what we call a “trustee” representative, taking strong positions and sticking to them, in his case waiting for his party to come to him. Kobach’s nativism wasn’t popular enough to get him elected to Congress when he lost to Democrat Dennis Moore in 2004. It was barely enough this August to get him nominated for governor, but a win on Nov. 6 will make him a formidable candidate post-Trump.

As Kansans and Americans, we need to be able to predict what kind of governor or president a Mike Pence or Kris Kobach could become, so that we can decide how to they might serve our own personal values and interests.

If you want to figure out what Mike Pence would be like if he elected to follow President Trump in 2024 (or if he succeeds Trump due to impeachment or resignation before then), the best place to look is the views of conservative Protestant Evangelicals.

To predict the behavior in office of a potential Gov. Kobach in his first term, a look at any public communication from him will do the trick. Whether you call them nativist or American First, his positions have remained consistent since he was a law professor and congressional candidate in the 2000s.

For the other viable candidate for Kansas governor, Democrat Laura Kelly, you can predict her future as governor by looking at the views of moderate Republicans. The only way a Democrat can accomplish anything in the Kansas Statehouse is with substantial help from Republicans.

Predicting what Laura Kelly would do if she had Democratic majorities in the State House and State Senate is too unlikely to be worth the time of engaged citizens. The last decade, with the fluctuation of Gov. Sam Brownback as a figure of national importance, has demonstrated that Kansas can surprise us. But it is still Kansas.

This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 5:14 AM.