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Jun. 14th, 2006 08:36 amGOP split in Kansas may hint at U.S. trend Our local paper picked up this article, which I guess was done for the LA Times. I thought it was quite interesting.
Some Kansas voters say they feel shut out. “I’m absolutely fed up with the conservative Republicans,” said Richard Meidinger, a retired physician in Topeka. “All the abortion stuff, gay marriage stuff doesn’t belong in the legislative debate.”
Martin Hawver has a name for lifelong members of the GOP like Meidinger: “failed Republicans.” The editor of a respected Kansas political newsletter, Hawver’s Capitol Report, Hawver counts himself among their number, occasionally doing the unthinkable and voting Democratic.
“It used to be you could never go wrong with voting for who the Republicans nominated,” Hawver said. “But that’s changing now. People are a little uneasy.”
Cindy Neighbor is one of them. A veteran member of her local school board and a moderate, Neighbor, 57, unsuccessfully ran against a conservative for an open seat in the statehouse in 2000. She narrowly lost, but won in 2002.
Neighbor wasn’t long for Kansas Republican politics, however. She backed an education bill that could have raised taxes, and party conservatives told her there would be retaliation. She lost the next primary to the same representative she’d ousted two years earlier. Another moderate Republican who’d co-sponsored her bill — Bill Kassebaum, the son of former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker — was ousted at the same time.
Now Neighbor’s running for her old seat — as a Democrat.
“It was, ‘If you don’t like this — goodbye,”’ she said of her struggles to stay in the Republican Party. As a Democrat, Neighbor added, “you can still have your ideas and you’re accepted.”
It'll be interesting to see if the tide is finally turning back, or if this is going to turn into a schism that winds up giving the religious right more influence. My sense has been that the level of disgust with the way things are has been steadily rising. But then I'm a democrat living in the one overwhelmingly Blue enclave in the state, so I might just be projecting. We'll see.
Some Kansas voters say they feel shut out. “I’m absolutely fed up with the conservative Republicans,” said Richard Meidinger, a retired physician in Topeka. “All the abortion stuff, gay marriage stuff doesn’t belong in the legislative debate.”
Martin Hawver has a name for lifelong members of the GOP like Meidinger: “failed Republicans.” The editor of a respected Kansas political newsletter, Hawver’s Capitol Report, Hawver counts himself among their number, occasionally doing the unthinkable and voting Democratic.
“It used to be you could never go wrong with voting for who the Republicans nominated,” Hawver said. “But that’s changing now. People are a little uneasy.”
Cindy Neighbor is one of them. A veteran member of her local school board and a moderate, Neighbor, 57, unsuccessfully ran against a conservative for an open seat in the statehouse in 2000. She narrowly lost, but won in 2002.
Neighbor wasn’t long for Kansas Republican politics, however. She backed an education bill that could have raised taxes, and party conservatives told her there would be retaliation. She lost the next primary to the same representative she’d ousted two years earlier. Another moderate Republican who’d co-sponsored her bill — Bill Kassebaum, the son of former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker — was ousted at the same time.
Now Neighbor’s running for her old seat — as a Democrat.
“It was, ‘If you don’t like this — goodbye,”’ she said of her struggles to stay in the Republican Party. As a Democrat, Neighbor added, “you can still have your ideas and you’re accepted.”
It'll be interesting to see if the tide is finally turning back, or if this is going to turn into a schism that winds up giving the religious right more influence. My sense has been that the level of disgust with the way things are has been steadily rising. But then I'm a democrat living in the one overwhelmingly Blue enclave in the state, so I might just be projecting. We'll see.