Election night: Republicans party at a mortuary while Democrats lament in a gay bar | Opinion
Election night 2024 took me to the happiest mortuary and the glummest gay bar I’ve ever been to.
Republicans won just about everything they could win in Tuesday’s election.
As I’m writing this, Kamala Harris is trailing in all three of the “blue wall” states she would need to win the presidency. In Kansas and Sedgwick County, the picture is even dimmer for Democrats.
Republicans gathered at the Cozine Life Events Center, a part of the Cozine Memorial Group “conveniently located adjacent to beautiful Kensington Gardens cemetery in thriving northeast Wichita.”
On Tuesday, you’d have never known the primary purpose of the center is to host large funerals and receptions.
It was filled with giddy Republicans on cellphones and tablets counting up win after win, cementing GOP control across the state.
Make no mistake, this was a red wave election in the Sunflower State. It was basically an across-the-board thrashing of Democrats at all levels.
Not only did the Republicans thwart the Democrats’ efforts to break a supermajority in the state Legislature that can override Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes — it appears they’ve actually enlarged it to the point where overrides will be easier than ever.
Republicans held off challengers in Johnson County and, as things stand, appear to have defeated two Democratic incumbents there and another in Manhattan.
The biggest surprise of the night for me was that Jason Probst, a Democratic state representative in Hutchinson since 2017, lost his seat to Republican Kyler Sweely, who moved to the district a few months ago to challenge for the House seat. This, even after video surfaced of Sweely taking a flying leap onto a seemingly unconscious woman during an after-date party in his apartment, and then pretending to smother her with a pillow in her sleep.
The result that is the most worrisome is at the Kansas Board of Education, where the right wing appears to have picked up a 6-4 majority.
Our public schools are now in the hands of people who are fundamentally dedicated to dismantling the system from the inside out, and we’re about to follow Oklahoma (No. 49 in education) in a race to the bottom.
We can look forward to two years (at least) of culture war nonsense and expanded efforts to starve public education and divert the funding to private schools.
So while Sedgwick County Republicans partied their socks off at the funeral home, it was a somber night at XY, the Old Town gay bar where the Democrats held their watch party.
As one Democrat volunteer put it to me, “I’ve definitely learned over the years not to get my hopes up.”
That is wise.
The Democrats called it a night early.
There was nothing else left to do.
This story was originally published November 6, 2024 at 12:27 AM.