Reliably red Kansas will look for the conservatives

Kansas is red, with every statewide office in Republican hands.

Every U.S. senator and representative here is Republican. Three-fourths of both houses in the state legislature, Republican. The last statehouse Democrat in the western two-thirds of the state switched parties and joined the Republicans in 2014.

Mirroring its politics, Kansas is a land shaped by extremes, starting with the weather, the topic that dominates local newscasts – from high-humidity, 100-plus-degree days of summer to iced-over streets in winter, punctuated with not-infrequent tornadoes.

The dominant industry in most of the state is agriculture and the plains are dotted with declining rural towns.

There are islands of technological excellence: Wichita is home to aircraft manufacturers Cessna, Learjet and Beechcraft, and the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University is considered cutting edge in composite materials. At Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., the federal government is developing a mammoth national laboratory to fight agricultural diseases and bioterrorism.

About 2.9 million people call Kansas home, from undocumented Mexican immigrants cutting meat in Dodge City to financial services professionals in the wealthy suburbs west of Kansas City.

Median income trails slightly the national average, $51,332 to $53,046, but the poverty rate is slightly better, 13.7 percent to 15.4 percent.

In recent years, Kansas has adopted some of the nation’s most stringent laws restricting access to abortion. Last year, the Legislature decided that anyone who can legally own a gun can carry it loaded and concealed in public without a permit or training.

Under a tax plan shepherded by Gov. Sam Brownback, there’s no state income tax on owners of limited liability companies and corporations organized under Subchapter S of the federal tax code – those whom the governor calls the job creators. Tax rates for wage-earning workers have been reduced, though not eliminated.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been shifted from the highway fund to cover shortfalls that followed the tax cuts. School districts are fighting the state in court over its constitutional duty to provide suitable funding for public education.

Analysts and activists aren’t expecting much change with the 2016 election cycle. Dwight Eisenhower was the only Kansan ever elected president, in 1952. Barry Goldwater was the last Republican to lose Kansas in a presidential election, in 1964.

Kansas political parties will organize presidential caucuses March 5 to select delegates to their national conventions.

A poll in late February by the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University showed a large number of undecided Kansas voters – 44 percent among Democrats and 39 percent among Republicans.

Republican Donald Trump had support among 26 percent of Republican respondents, while Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were deadlocked for second place, at 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

If the state GOP follows form, success in Kansas would go with the most evangelically conservative candidate still standing after the early primary season narrows the field, said Chapman Rackaway, professor of political science at Fort Hays State University. He said Ted Cruz is the most likely to get that role.

On the Democratic side as well, Hillary Clinton lost Kansas to Barack Obama in 2008 by a three-to-one margin. But some political experts say they don’t think history’s going to repeat itself for Sanders, because Obama was a much more compelling candidate with the personal charisma to motivate voters who don’t ordinarily attend caucuses.

Clinton led Sanders 33 percent to 23 percent in the recent survey by the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University.

The congressional level looks like another GOP lockdown.

Incumbent U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran is the most approved-of major elected official in Kansas, according to Kansas Speaks, a phone survey run out of Fort Hays State University.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, the Republican who represents western Kansas’ sparsely populated “Big First” district, is the only congressional representative who appears even potentially vulnerable.

The most prominent living icon of Kansas politics, former GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, has criticized Huelskamp, who occupies Dole’s former congressional seat, as an “obstructionist” and “naysayer” who’s making it difficult for a Republican Congress to get anything done.

Rackaway, who lives in the district, said Huelskamp’s combative political style resonates with some and turns off others.

In 2014, political unknown Alan LaPolice, a former California school administrator, drew 45 percent of voters in losing to Huelskamp in the Republican primary. But after the dissident Republicans checked the not-Huelskamp box in the primary, they returned to the fold and gave Huelskamp a victory with 68 percent of the vote over the Democrat, Kansas State University professor Jim Sherow.

LaPolice is back for another run and a third candidate has entered the primary race, obstetrician Roger Marshall. Marshall has the backing of the influential Kansas Livestock Association, which La Police got last time.

If they both stay in, they’ll split the anti-Huelskamp vote and essentially guarantee Huelskamp’s re-election, Rackaway said.

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 12:13 PM with the headline "Reliably red Kansas will look for the conservatives."