Of course, Chris Reeves has probably forgotten far more about past and present Kansas politics than I will ever know, and if there’s anything that he can add to this upcoming post, I would love to hear from him.
But the weeping and gnashing of teeth over James Thompson’s loss in the special election Kansas 4th congressional district Tuesday evening is working my last nerve.
I wanted to see things in more of a historical perspective. So I looked.
1) The presidential level.
The last Democratic candidate to win the state of Kansas in a presidential election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Prior to that: That progressive of all progressives, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won Kansas...in 1936.
FDR lost the state of Kansas by double digits in 1940 and 1944. Historically, a Democratic candidate for president struggles to pull even 40% of the vote in Kansas.
2) Kansas’ Fourth Congressional District (listed as a normally R+15 district by the Cook Political Report)
Barack Obama (2008) is the only Democratic candidate to get 40% of the presidential vote in an election in KS-4 in all of the years that Wikipedia listed.
Dan Glickman is the only Democratic congressman that the Fourth District has elected in the last 80 years. And KS-4 has only sent three Democrats to Congress in its entire history.
Let’s look at the history of Kansas’ three other congressional districts.
3) Kansas’ 1st Congressional District (R+24 district)
Only one Democrat has ever won this district (for only one term) and Democrats struggle to break 30% at the presidential level here, historically (only Barack Obama has done it since 2000...barely).
4) Kansas 2nd Congressional District (R+10 district)
Democrats win seats in this district from time to time but they never stay there very long. And the 2nd district doesn’t vote for Democratic nominee presidential candidates, either.
5) Kansas 3rd Congressional District (R+4 district)
This district actually did vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections. And if anyone was frightened by the results from Tuesday night’s special election, it might be the current officeholder in the 3rd, Republican Kevin Yoder...but still, Democrats have not won many Congressional seats in this district, historically.
In short, for a Democrat to win any Congressional District in Kansas is a heavy lift and, frankly, the 4th Congressional District was a heavier lift than others even given the opportunity of winning a seat in a special election.
So for the weepers an the gnashers over Tuesday night’s loss by James Thompson in KS-04 who want to grace us with your infinite fountains of wisdom about federal level electoral politics as they could pertain to Kansas: based on a simple look at the history of federal level electoral politics in the state of Kansas…
...To be blunt about it, y’all need to go sit y’all behinds down somewhere and stop worryin’ me and the rest of us, m’kay?
Thursday, Apr 13, 2017 · 2:33:44 PM +00:00
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Chitown Kev
And sure enough…
...Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already listed Yoder’s seat in the 3rd Congressional District as one of its top targets for 2018.
“There’s no doubt that Kansas is on the map for Democrats in 2018, and vulnerable Republicans like Kevin Yoder should take notice,” said Rachel Irwin, a spokeswoman for the DCCC, in an email.
“James Thompson’s performance is an exciting sign for Democrats and we know that there will also be top-notch candidates in both the Second and Third Congressional Districts. These special election results make clear that voters in Kansas — including Republicans — are ready for a change in leadership,” she continued.