US House-Kansas District 4
Todd Tiahrt vs. Donald Betts
Oh my, oh my- this race between incumbent Congressman Todd Tiahrt and KS Senator Donald Betts might be interesting. First and foremost, the only way this race could be close is how much money Betts is able to raise. The reporting deadline will be upon us shortly and that will be when we can diagnose the Bett's campaign. Albeit Wichita is a cheap market for ads, it still requires several hundred thousand dollars to even begin to campaign (more than a million would be ideal.) As per the FEC's latest numbers (9/30/07) Tiahrt is sitting on nearly $1 million. That is a lot of money sitting in the bank. That fundraising could be easily raised if Betts provides a challenge. Senator Betts is extremely popular in his district and is well known around the Wichita-Metro area (which his district is in). His name ID is rather short once you get to the general electorate outside the Wichita-Metro and Sedgwick County area. Its not Tiahrt's falt that he has had pud Democratic challengers and won election easily, Democrats just threw up speed bumps as opponents (we tend to do that when no big hitters step up). This is the time I wish I had money to waste, money where I could just throw out a poll to guage positive and negatives of candidates. Tiahrt isn't a wow-politician by any mean. He just seems to run through the motions (kiss baby, handshake, vote for something that doesn't do much). I'm sure he is a very nice guy and I do not attack politicians personal lives or families but what they do in official acts that do nothing or harm citizens is certainly fair game. Some of the issues that a Bett's campaign could exploit against Tiahrt is his vote against the expansion of SCHIP and that whole gun spat that broke out between Tiahrt and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York. South-central Kansas in some areas has children qualifying for free-and-reduced lunches at huge percentages of children (my town is over 40%), these numbers also extrapolate out to poverty in some pockets of the region. SCHIP would've expanded insurance coverage to some of these children. This post is long enough but I will be back to update and provide further opinion on this race. I rate it as a back-burner that could heat up.