KS-Sen: On Monday, former U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom became the first notable Democrat to enter the race for Kansas’ open U.S. Senate seat. Team Blue hasn’t won a Senate race in the Sunflower State was 1932, but two other Democrats expressed interest in running this week. Former Rep. Nancy Boyda filed paperwork with the FEC last week, though she says she hasn’t decided to run yet. State Sen. Barbara Bollier, a former Republican who switched parties in December, met with the DSCC about running, and she confirmed that she’s also considering seeking the Democratic nod.
We’ll start with a look at Grissom, who also has sat down with the DSCC and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Grissom has not run for office before, but he served as Kansas’ top federal prosecutor from 2010 and 2016. During his tenure, Grissom oversaw the investigation into planned terrorist attacks against Wichita Mid-Continent Airport and the Army base at Fort Riley, and he successfully prosecuted the perpetrators in both cases. Grissom was also an outspoken opponent of then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s voter suppression tactics.
Grissom also faced some controversy during his time at the Justice Department. After he stepped down as U.S. attorney, a federal judge ruled that the for-profit prison operator CoreCivic had illegally recorded calls at one of their Kansas jails between prisoners and their attorneys. The Federal Public Defender’s Office has argued that from 2013 to 2016, Kansas’ U.S. attorney’s office regularly obtained these recordings from CoreCivic. Grissom, who was in charge during most of that period, said this week that he “was not aware of that alleged conduct,” and he added, “And if it’s true and I was made aware of it those individuals would have been terminated.”
Boyda, by contrast, won a conservative Topeka-area House seat in the 2006 Democratic wave but lost it two years later. Boyda hasn’t sought office since then, but she said earlier this year that she was considering running for Senate. Boyda told the Kansas City Star this week that, unlike her would-be primary rivals Grissom and Bollier, she has not met with national Democrats, and that she doesn’t plan to. The former congresswoman added, “I don’t need Chuck Schumer’s permission to do this. I’ll spend my time talking to the good people of Kansas, but I don’t need his permission.” She also doesn’t seem to have any illusions that the DSCC will support her: Boyda added that Schumer is “a good guy, but what do they expect when they call?”
As the paper notes, this is hardly the first time Boyda has rejected national Democrats’ help. Boyda knew she was going to be one of the House GOP’s top targets in 2008, but she still made it clear that she didn’t want the DCCC to spend on her behalf. She even convinced them to cancel their $1.2 million TV reservation, arguing, “Kansas voters should control Kansas campaigns” and that the state should be able to “run our election without Washington interference.” The NRCC didn’t agree, and they ran ads until the end of the contest.
Boyda lost re-election to Republican Lynn Jenkins 51-46 as John McCain was carrying the seat 55-43, making her one of just five Democratic House members to be defeated in this historically blue year. In April of the following year, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen told a press conference that Boyda had left him a regretful voicemail that she wanted him to play for any vulnerable members who were thinking about rejecting the committee’s help. However, it seems that Boyda, who went on to serve in the Obama administration’s Department of Defense, has decided that, at least in a primary, that she’d still be better off without help from D.C. Democrats.
While Boyda did file with the FEC this week, it may be a while before she decides whether or not to run. The former congresswoman told the Star that the law required her to file because she’d worn a shirt that promoted her possible campaign, explaining, “Once I put that shirt on and wore it outside I had a legal requirement.” An FEC spokesperson told the paper that potential candidates for federal office are required to file once they raise or spend $5,000, but they did not address these would-be senators and representatives’ wardrobe choices.
Bollier has considerably more experience running for office than either Grissom or Boyda, though not as a Democrat. Bollier was appointed to a state House seat in Johnson County in the Kansas City suburbs as a Republican back in 2010, and she was elected to a full term that year. In 2016, Bollier won an open state Senate seat 54-46 even as Hillary Clinton was winning her district 57-36, which was Team Red’s only victory in a Clinton Senate seat.
However, Bollier was hardly an ardent conservative during her near-decade in the GOPs legislative caucus. She was a prominent opponent of then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts, which ended up devastating schools in Johnson County, and she stood out as a rare Republican who backed abortion and LGBT rights. In 2018, Bollier also backed Democrat Sharice Davids over local GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder, and she also supported Democrat Laura Kelly in the race for governor against Kobach.
In December, a month after strong performances in Johnson County helped carry both Davids and Kelly to victory, Bollier announced that she was switching parties. Bollier declared, “When the party adopted an anti-transgender piece to their platform, that really, as a physician, set me over the edge, because we have more than XX and XY, and gender is a very complicated and important thing.” She also hit her old party for opposing Medicaid expansion and gun safety legislation and added, “My moral compass is saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ and you throw that in with Donald Trump, and just from a moral position, I can’t be complicit anymore.” Two more Republican Kansas legislators soon followed Bollier into the Democratic fold.
It won’t be easy for the eventual Democratic nominee to break the party’s long, long losing streak here next year, but that doesn’t mean that Republicans aren’t worried about this race. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies fear that Kobach could run and win the GOP nod, and they’ve made it clear that they’re willing to spend money in the primary to stop him.