Billionaires launch racist AI attack on Kansas gov. candidate Vicki Schmidt | Opinion
In the classic 1972 film “Jeremiah Johnson,” a character tells the mountain man (Robert Redford) “A tribe’s greatness is figured on how mighty its enemies be.”
The same is true in politics.
And Vicki Schmidt has some mighty enemies as she runs for governor of Kansas.
A Washington-area dark money super PAC calling itself the “School Freedom Fund” has dedicated $2 million to airing artificial intelligence-generated attack ads on Schmidt, the Kansas insurance commissioner, as she seeks the Republican nomination for governor in the Aug. 4 primary.
If you haven’t heard of the School Freedom Fund, it’s an offshoot of the Club for Growth, a nationwide billionaire boys’ club that wants to privatize public education for profit. They simply can’t stomach the idea that money’s being spent somewhere in America, and they’re not getting a piece of the cake.
A lot of Kansans probably won’t remember, but we’ve been down this road before.
Starting in 1995, Wichita turned over four schools to the for-profit Edison Schools project. The experiment ended seven years later, amid high costs, declining enrollment, disappointing test scores and massive teacher turnover.
Try it again? No thanks.
If we all could vote, Schmidt would win
If Republicans do nominate Schmidt, it would practically guarantee the GOP would take back the governor’s office after eight years of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
Schmidt’s well-liked across the political spectrum, one of the last practitioners of the kind of moderate Republicanism that used to be the rule in Kansas politics.
In both her elections for insurance commissioner, Schmidt has been the top vote-getter among all statewide officeholders.
She got 63% of the vote the last time she ran in 2022, and just shy of 63% in 2018. During that period, no other statewide candidate, Republican or Democrat, even broke 60%.
Schmidt has maintained her popularity by focusing on her job, which is protecting consumers and small businesses from the worst ravages of the insurance marketplace.
A misguided missile
Club for Growth had to go back 18 years to find anything to attack her on — a vote to maintain in-state tuition at state universities for unauthorized immigrant students who were brought here as children and graduated from Kansas high schools.
The billionaires’ AI attack ads are embellished with disgusting racist imagery of tatted-up Latino gangsters, and a crowd of impoverished Black people carrying a mattress and their belongings on their heads.
My sons are graduates of KU, K-State and Wichita State. I can tell you with certainty that the persons depicted in the ad never saw the inside of a Kansas college classroom.
In-state tuition is hardly an unpopular view in Kansas — a bill to reverse it barely passed the Senate by 22-18 this year (meaning 10 Republicans voted to keep it), and it was one of Kelly’s few successful vetoes.
Outside of a small minority of anti-immigrant fanatics, I’m pretty sure most Kansans realize that in-state tuition isn’t costing us anything, and kicking the students out of college would by reducing enrollment and revenue.
Outside the environs of the Kansas Statehouse, we take care of our own.
Farm Bureau weighs in
Schmidt recently picked up a major endorsement from the Kansas Farm Bureau.
That in itself is probably not a huge surprise, since former Kansas state Rep. Joe Newland, of Neodesha, stepped down as president of the Farm Bureau to join Schmidt’s ticket as lieutenant governor candidate.
It’s significant, though, because it unlocks ag-related campaign money, of which there is a lot.
It also enhances Schmidt’s rural credibility, and brings volunteer support in sparsely populated but important areas of western and southeast Kansas.
The bureau has a history of backing a lot more winners than losers.
The Trump factor
Senate President Ty Masterson is the primary beneficiary of the Club for Growth attack.
Masterson got the coveted endorsement of President Donald Trump. Former Gov. Jeff Colyer, also riding the Trump train, dropped out of the race at the filing deadline.
Team Masterson has been waving the endorsement around like he’s taken the checkered flag in a race that hasn’t been run yet.
While most of us celebrated America’s 250th birthday last week, Masterson celebrated Trump.
His choice of apparel was a jersey-style shirt with stars on one side, stripes on the other, and down the middle, a wide white stripe with the word TRUMP in bold print.
It reminded me of the many times that Kansas Statehouse wags have suggested that if legislators were honest, they’d wear NASCAR-style jackets emblazoned with their sponsors’ logos.
Is it cringey? Absolutely.
Is it effective? I guess we’ll see.
While Trump’s approval rating has cratered in many states, about 49% of Kansans are still with him, compared to 45% who disapprove.
That’s still a good number, especially in a Republicans-only primary.
But it does show Trump has slipped since posting an astronomically high 69% approval in his first term and a 57% vote share in the 2024 election.
Why are they here?
A lot of the dropoff in Trump’s approval seems to be coming from Kansas farm country, where Masterson has to do well if he expects to move into the governor’s mansion.
But federal policy for the first year and a half of Trump 2.0 has not been the boon that Kansas farmers may have expected.
On-again, off-again tariff wars and steep cuts in U.S. foreign aid for food have destabilized key markets for Kansas farm products, and increased the cost of ag equipment.
The Iran war increased fuel and fertilizer prices at the worst possible time.
Maybe Kansas farmers will listen to their Farm Bureau and side with Schmidt. Time will tell.
But one thing is certain: Even though $2 million is pocket change to the forces behind Club for Growth, they have a long list of races they’re trying to influence across the country.
They wouldn’t be spending their resources attacking a candidate in Kansas if they thought their chosen one has it locked up.
They’re here because they’re scared.
