Can a Democratic Doctor Win in Deep Red Kansas?
Attribution: Barbara Bollier / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
By: Logan Phillips
Date: 9/30
The conventional wisdom was that the Kansas Senate race stopped being competitive, once the deeply unpopular Kris Kobach lost in the Republican Senate primary. However, even in August, Roger Marshall only had a slight lead in polling, and the unique dynamics of Kansas politics in 2020 give Democrats a shot at an upset.
Kansas Republicans are still suffering from the fallout of Governor Sam Brownback’s tenure. Brownback won the governorship on a platform promising massive tax cuts for Kansas - which he delivered in his first term. However, the cuts failed to spur growth, and Kansas was left with a severe revenue shortage that threatened to devastate school and health care funding. The crisis caused Brownback's disapproval to surge to 66%, and his own party ended up turning against him, voting to terminate his tax cuts over his veto.
Democrats took advantage of the Brownback blowback, and Laura Kelly beat Kris Kobach to become Governor by 5% in one of the most impressive wins of 2018. She ran a moderate campaign laser focused on expanding medicaid. Health care policy cuts across party lines, and Kansas voters are strongly in favor of expanding Medicaid
Democrat nominee Barbara Bollier cuts the right profile for Kansas in 2020. She’s a former doctor and health care expert - and even before the coronavirus epidemic exploded in America, she was making the case that her expertise will be invaluable, in a Congress that has certainly had its struggles with health care policy over the last four years.
Bollier clearly has taken a page out of Kelly's playbook, and is using the same strategy aimed at winning some of the moderate Republicans that from time to time vote for Democrats. Marshall has countered by saying Bollier is a radical supporting socialized medicine. On this issue, Bollier has the clear advantage.
Marshall also might be vulnerable on the issue of the Coronavirus - Bollier has pounded him for repeatedly flaunting health ordinances by hosting packed events inside without any mask. She’s also hit him for providing misleading information on the pandemic, and in one case Facebook took the extraordinary step of taking one of his post down for spreading misinformation.
Bollier Television Ad:
Nonetheless, Kansas is a very red state - and even under perfect conditions it will be very challenging for Bollier to finish ahead here. To win, Bollier will need to localize this race and make it about the individuals not the national party.
RacetotheWH, along with the Cook Political Report, was one of the only forecasters out of dozens to continue to have this race as competitive after the primary — on August 15th, we had her with a 41% shot of winning the race. Our case was strengthened by a poll in the last week by Data for Progress, which showed the race tied. Today, another poll by GBAO showed Bollier up by 2%.
However, this is hardly the first time we’ve disagreed with the conventional wisdom. Our Senate forecast found that Democrat Jamie Harrison posed a credible threat by the first week of June in South Carolina, and that Democrats were contenders in Alaska even in January. Both of these were positions far outside the norm, but are now fairly conventional takes. Likewise, there is a growing recognition that Kansas is seriously in play.
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