Will Kansas remain deep red state?

Twenty-five years ago, my colleague Al Cigler and I wrote a paper titled “Two-Party Politics in a One-Party State.” The thesis was simple: Although Democrats at that time (1991) controlled the governorship, commanded a slender majority in the Kansas House and held two (of five) U.S. House seats, Kansas remained essentially a Republican state, albeit one where Democrats could compete for many offices.

Party registration numbers, the GOP’s dominance of U.S. Senate elections (since 1932), and Republican majorities in presidential contests (since 1964) led us to conclude that the state remained strongly, if not overwhelmingly, Republican. Still, the Democratic Party of the 1970s through 1994 proved highly competitive. Most importantly, it regularly captured the governorship.

So what happened?

One partial answer is that guns and abortion crowded out economic issues for some voters, and the moderate wing of the GOP began to lose traction. But more important has been the nationalization of state politics in Kansas.

Two major national GOP “wave” elections changed the composition of the Legislature. In 1994, after the first two years of the Clinton administration and a failed attempt to pass national health care reform, Republicans won sweeping victories across the country.

The second red “wave” of 2010, after President Obama’s successful national health care reform, swept Gov. Sam Brownback into office, along with an overwhelming GOP majority. In 2012, Brownback and his allies linked moderate Republicans to Obama and, using national funding, eliminated most centrists from the Senate.

In 2014, national politics again intervened. After almost losing his primary election, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was widely seen as vulnerable, and retaining his seat was crucial for Republicans to capture the U.S. Senate. In the three months before the general election, millions upon millions of dollars in outside funding were spent to defend Roberts’ seat; he won handily, and the far-more-vulnerable Brownback narrowly won re-election, pulled across the finish line by Roberts’ anti-Obama campaign ads, mailers and robocalls.

So what of 2016? Republicans will nominate a presidential candidate in Donald Trump who did poorly in our caucuses and, according to one Kansas survey, may actually trail Hillary Clinton. Moreover, his bombastic campaign style and questionable statements likely weaken his appeal at the top of the ticket.

At the same time, Brownback, while not on the ballot, dominates the politics of Kansas, largely in a negative way. Democratic (and moderate Republican) candidates will explicitly link their incumbent opponents to the governor.

Within a few months we’ll know whether Kansas will remain its deep-red self of the past six years or will return, perhaps, to two-party competition in a one-party state.

This story was originally published June 18, 2016 at 12:05 AM with the headline "Will Kansas remain deep red state?."