Well, not quite. But things are moving in the right direction.
Kansas is a thoroughly Republican state, as it has been since it entered the union nearly 150 years ago. It has been more than 70 years since the state elected a Democratic Senator, something it has only done four times in its history. Yet today, the state appears on track to reelect its Democratic Governor as well as throw out its ultra-conservative Republican Attorney General; polling released Monday by SurveyUSA shows Gov. Kathleen Sebelius holding a 13-point lead over her Republican challenger and Democrat Paul Morrison maintaining a nearly identical lead over the incument Attorney General Phill Kline. Peter Slevin takes a look at the environment in the state and pens the following article for the front page of tomorrow's issue of The Washington Post.
Nor is Morrison alone [as a longtime Republican politician now running as a Democrat]. In a state that voted nearly 2 to 1 for President Bush in 2004, nine former Republicans will be on the November ballot as Democrats. Among them is Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, who changed parties to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.[...]
The Kansas developments coincide with efforts by Democrats across the country to capture moderate Republican and independent voters dismayed with partisan bickering from both parties, particularly from the Republican right. The spirit of the attempted Democratic comeback in Kansas, set by Sebelius, is a search for the workable political center.
Though yet untested in the election booth, the Democratic developments in Kansas reflect polls in many parts of the country. As elsewhere, Democrats and moderate Republicans say they are frustrated with policies and practices they trace to Republican leadership, including the Iraq war, ballooning government spending, ethics violations and the influence of social conservatives.
A long-standing split among Kansas Republicans has deepened in recent years. One fresh sign came from the Johnson County Sun, which said it would endorse virtually the entire Democratic ticket, including Morrison and Parkinson, after endorsing fewer than a dozen Democrats in the past half-century.
It won't be easy to change the culture in Kansas. It won't be easy to overcome the state's political history. But these types of shifts can come quickly, building momentum that is not easily slowed. Oregon and Vermont, for instance, were long Republican bastions, virtual one-party states, yet today they are among the bluest states in the nation. States in the deep South have seen similar shifts, though in the opposite direction.
For this reason it is so important that the DNC under Howard Dean has invested in Kansas, as it has in other states. I do not mean to overstate the extent to which the DNC's actions have fostered this potentially changing environment; the hubris and extremeness of Republican politicians in Kansas, as well as the political deftness of Governor Sebelius, have been at the root of these movements. Nonetheless, by putting boots in the field, the DNC is enabling Democrats in Kansas to capitalize on the situation in the state and help woo voters who had not previously even considered voting the Democratic ticket. And, who knows? The investment made today in Kansas by the DNC could make Kansas slightly more purple and enable Democrats to compete in more elections in the state in the future and, more importantly, force the Republicans to play defense in what has historically been a safe state for their party.
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