Kansas Special Election Followed Recent National Trend of Rural vs Urban

Last year as President Trump was winning the White House, a trend that had been building over the past two decades came into sharp relief. The best indicator of how one voted in the last election was simply whether one lived in a rural setting, or an urban setting. 

As one can see, the rural areas of the nation went to Donald Trump and they did so by extreme margins. In some counties, Trump received 80% of the vote. While Hillary Clinton did win urban areas handily, she did not win by enough in those areas to offset the shellacking she took in more rural areas. 

That is exactly what happened again last night in Kansas' 4th Congressional District. James Thompson put up a good fight, more so than expected in that he only lost by 7% as opposed to 31% that the Democratic candidate had lost by in the last election. Thompson did win Sedgwick County by 1800 votes, a staggering turnaround from the 44,000 vote win that Mike Pompeo earned in the county merely five months ago. 

However, coming up with a win in Kansas' most populous city was not nearly enough to make up for the dismal results that Thompson received in the other 16 counties that make up this district. In these more rural counties, Estes received 10,000 more votes than Thompson did, far more than enough to make up for losing Wichita. Estes' share of the vote averaged over 70% in these other counties and two of them went more than 80% his way. Granted, these are only a few hundred to a couple of thousand voters in each of these counties, but winning by those margins adds up. 

Still though, there is the matter of this race ending up 24 points closer than it did five months ago. There is much that could be read into this, but I'm going to focus on three main reasons why it was so close:

Poor Turnout

The first reason is the most obvious one. Last November, over 275,000 votes were cast in the 4th Congressional District race. Yesterday, the unofficial totals show that only 120,000 votes were cast in the special election, a drop of 56%. For the individual parties, there was a drop of 62% in Republican votes, a drop of 32% among Democrat votes, and a staggering 73% drop in Libertarian votes. 

While the drop in the Republican share is significant compared to the drop in Democrat votes, it was not enough to offset the two to one margin that Republicans enjoy over Democrats in the district. It shows that Republicans can survive poor turnout and low motivation in this district just based on the margins they enjoy in voter registration. That will not bode well in elections that have more regular turnout, such as state elections in 2018. 

James Thompson Ran a More Active Campaign

Thompson ran a far more active campaign than Estes did. Estes noticeably missed out on numerous forums and debates while Thompson was bringing in people to run phone banks for him in a get out the vote campaign. Estes did raise more money than Thompson, but only by $59,000. In the latter stages of the race, more money was thrown in on both sides as it became obvious the race was tightening. 

Estes only belatedly reacted to Thompson's surge in the last week of the campaign by bringing in national heavyweights to boost his campaign. Texas Senator Ted Cruz came to Wichita to campaign on Estes' behalf and President Trump both tweeted and recorded a robocall for Estes. It is unlikely that these had any effect on the trajectory of the race, other than give off a sense of panic on the part of the Republicans. 

The campaign styles of Estes and Thompson in some ways reflect the Presidential election from last year. The Republicans chose a "safe" candidate that did little to get in their own way, but also did not give a compelling reason to get people out to vote for them. Thompson refused to go down without a fight and ran a more active campaign along similar lines to Donald Trump. However, Thompson had to overcome a 30 point disadvantage in order to win; Trump certainly did not have to work from that far behind. 

It is probable that a more moderate candidate than Thompson that ran the same campaign he did might have been able to stage the upset. As I wrote before, Kansans seem to prefer more moderate leadership than either extreme. That trend, however, does lead into my final point:

There are Reasons for Both Parties to Worry in 2018

Most of the closeness of this race I think can be attributed to the first two points I laid out. However, there is a trend that Thompson tried to use to his advantage that may have contributed in part to the 24 point swing the district saw. 

Ron Estes was the State Treasurer for the Brownback administration for the past six years. As noted before, Brownback is currently the most unpopular governor in the United States right now. Much like Barack Obama took advantage of George Bush's unpopularity in 2008, Democrats are hoping to do the take advantage of Brownback's unpopularity next year.  

A 24 point swing would seemingly be a step in the right direction. However, Democrats had an opportunity to hand a loss to someone at the heart of the Brownback administration...and failed to do so. They could not win even though Estes received less than half of the votes that Pompeo did last year and despite the fact their candidate arguably ran a better campaign. The disadvantage that Democrats have in Kansas, especially in the rural counties, may turn out to be too great to overcome in most cases. 

Then there is the matter of the Democratic party suffering from infighting, again. In the Progressive vs Elite dichotomy of the party right now, Thompson fell more into the Progressive vein. This may have had a hand in why the Kansas Democrats and the DNC refused to donate money to Thompson's campaign. It may have also been that they did not believe he had a chance of winning, but that does not mesh with the way the campaign ended. It may be the leadership of the Democratic Party still does not trust its more progressive wing. 

Republicans naturally have to worry too. This was supposed to be a safe race and they belatedly had to pour money into it from the RNC to help Estes out and send heavyweights in to help as well. That does not bode well if another "safe" candidate ends up being nominated in state and Congressional elections for next year. 

At the end of the day though, the factors that led into this election turning out the way it did may have little or nothing to do with the state elections that will occur 19 months from now. It is even less likely this race will give any indication as to which way the House and Senate elections will turn out either. But if the parties are planning to use this race as a bellwether for next year, there are many mistakes they need to learn from and advantages they need to capitalize on. 

The United States Risks a Larger Conflict in Attacking Syria

On the hundredth anniversary of the United States declaring war on Germany, the United States tonight declared a de facto war on Syria. In retaliation to reports that the Assad regime had, again, launched a chemical attack on its own people, the United States launched cruise missiles at the military base that the chemical attacks had allegedly been launched from. The target was reportedly the facility itself, not at people in particular. Still though, in launching this attack, the United States by default declared itself at war with the Assad regime, even if President Trump did not go to Congress for a declaration of war as stipulated by the Constitution.

I am not going to waste words grousing about the lack of a declaration of war from Congress. The United States has not officially declared war on anyone since 1941. What I am concerned about are the international ramifications that such an act could wrought.

The United States has been in and out of the Middle East for decades now. The region has been a hotbed of unrest since the end of World War II, with many nations in the region at times either openly hostile to the United States, mainly for supporting Israel, or at best enjoyed a cool relationship as Western nations lined the pockets of Arabs sitting on vast reserves of oil. There is a stark difference between past actions in the area and now, however.

In 1991 when the United States sent its military into Kuwait to liberate the nation from an Iraqi invasion, it did so with broad international support and the knowledge that Saddam Hussein did not have any friends. In 2003, when the United States overthrew Hussein for good, it did so again safe in the knowledge that there would be no broad international retaliation. In the nearly fifteen years since, though, things have changed in the Middle East. Assad is not like Saddam Hussein. Assad has friends in Tehran and even more worrisome, in Moscow.

When revolts exploded across the Arab world in 2011, they did so without much more than tacit help from Washington. The Obama administration was content to let events occur as they would after having promised to pull out of the region following the second Iraq conflict. With war rampaging across the region and without American influence to steer the conflicts one way or the other, the region, Syria in particular, fragmented.

The Syrian Civil War has been going since 2011 and involves four main groups in Syria and Iraq. There is the Assad regime, the rebels, the Kurds, and the Islamic State. In the power vacuum left in the region by the pullout of American troops from Iraq in that same year, other nations saw an opportunity to advance their own national interests by getting involved in the conflict.

Towards the end of the Obama administration, Russia and Iran began to take an active hand propping up the Assad regime. As a result, Assad has grown more emboldened and has turned the tide against the rebels, even using chemical weapons against them. Assad committed these atrocities despite a warning from President Obama in 2012 that such barbarism would bring certain retaliation from the United States in his "red line" speech. When the United States did nothing even after the Assad regime went ahead and used chemical weapons on the rebels repeatedly during President Obama's second term, it is not hard to imagine that Assad thought he could act with impunity. Being backed by Moscow would have certainly helped.

In a way, President Trump is just fulfilling a threat that President Obama made but never carried out. It would have been much easier to accomplish this in 2013 when the chemical attacks first started though. Since then, Russia has gotten entangled in the region and allied itself to the Assad regime. In attacking the military base, the United States directly attacked a Russian ally.

It is hard to know exactly what happens next. But if history is a lesson, then there could be grim consequences for this attack.

The situation is similar to the Balkan crisis in 1914. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was assassinated, Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and gave them an ultimatum. When Serbia did not comply, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Serbia, however, was an ally of Russia, who felt the need to protect its Slavic brothers and sisters from the Germanic nations. Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary in retaliation. Germany declared war on Russia for declaring war on Austria-Hungary. For good measure, Germany also declared war on France preemptively and drew the United Kingdom into the fray by invading Belgium.

All it takes is one diplomatic crisis in a volatile region to plunge the world into the depths of war. Syria might not be a Slavic cousin of Russia, but Vladimir Putin is not a person who would let an attack on one of his allies go unnoticed. In the past three years, Russia has grown emboldened too, annexing parts of the Ukraine, threatening the Baltic states, and asserting its power in the Middle East. Putin has spent the last seventeen years finding ways to expand Russian influence in ways not seen since the Soviet Union collapsed. It is unlikely that he would be willing to give up on that so easily just because the United States is more belligerent now under President Trump than it had been under President Obama.

Drawing the United States into a larger conflict with Russia is a risk that this administration ran when it attacked the Assad regime. It needs to be prepared for the consequences if Vladimir Putin decides he has too much at stake in growing Russia's prestige globally to allow him to back down against the United States.

Remarks on the Centennial of American Entry into World War I

On April 6th, 1917, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly to declare war on the German Empire. This vote came four days after President Woodrow Wilson had gone to Capitol Hill to ask for the declaration of war. Wilson had idealized the war, stating it was an opportunity to "make the world safe for democracy" and that it was the moral obligation of the United States to fight in the war.

It should be noted that it had been nearly three years since the war had started at this point. At the beginning, Americans were strictly neutral, although American businesses and banks began to profit from loans of money and materials to the belligerent nations. Most of these materials ended up in Allied hands because of Britain's blockade of Germany.

Even as America's economic output was starting to turn to the Allies, public opinion generally did not. That began to change in May 1915 when a German submarine torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, an act that killed 128 Americans. Germany promised to stop using unrestricted submarine warfare after the incident and a full blown diplomatic crisis was averted, but Americans were beginning to turn on Germany. It did not help that reports were leaking out of occupied Belgium of German atrocities in that country.

President Wilson was reelected in 1916 running on a campaign slogan of "He kept us out of war." However, as the calendar turned and 1917 started, events began that forced Wilson's hand. Germany decided early in 1917 that they would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, which included attacking neutral merchant vessels. Several American ships were sunk in March, outraging Americans and turning public opinion heavily against Germany.

Germany knew that they would provoke the United States into war when they resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. They sought another ally with which they could distract the United States long enough to win the war in Europe. Mexico was the easy choice, as American troops had entered Mexico twice during the Wilson Presidency. Germany sent a message to Mexico, promising to aid them in the recapture of lands lost in the Mexican Cession for Mexico's help against the United States.

There were two problems with that plan. One was that Mexico was in no shape to conduct a war against the United States while the Mexican Revolution was going on. In essence, Mexico had been dealing with a multi-sided civil war since 1910 that the United States at times had gotten directly involved in. Second, the message was intercepted by Great Britain and sent to the United States. Wilson let media outlets publish the Zimmerman Telegram at the end of February 1917, furthering outrage against Germany.

The majority of World War I happened before the United States got involved. The American Expeditionary Force took some time to develop and only saw a few months of fighting, just long enough to blunt the last German offensive of the war and turn the tide. The United States was not even a true part of the Allies, acting independently of French and British troops on the Western Front. But it was enough to beat Germany and force an armistice.

The United States' involvement can be viewed as another step along the road to being the world's only superpower. That road started when the United States routed Spain in 1898 and would be fully realized in 1945 with the end of World War II. But American involvement in the First World War is important for the simple reason that it was the first time the United States had been drawn into a European conflict, something Americans had avoided since the advent of the nation.

The United States did not fully commit to the world stage following World War I, however. The most glaring example of this was the rejection of the League of Nations, a precursor of sorts to the United Nations. The United States still meddled in European affairs in the 1920s though, most notably with a series of disarmament treaties. With the advent of the Great Depression, the United States left Europe to its own devices, which was decisive in the rise of totalitarian states in the 1930s.

It's tough to say what would be the right choice to make in the post war world. Clearly the United States had to go to war; American merchants were being attacked repeatedly by Germany and the United States has the right to protect their national interests. But the same question that can be asked today should be applied to the 1920s world must be asked: To what extent should, if at all, the United States get involved in international affairs?

If the United States had maintained the same level of involvement in the 30s as they had in the 20s, it is probably that Adolf Hitler would not have been as belligerent as he ended up being. Knowing an immediate retaliation by the United States would have probably dissuaded the German Chancellor from reoccupying the Rhineland, annexing Austria, annexing the Sudetenland, the rest of Czechoslovakia, and then finally just invading Poland.

At what point do the interests of the world at large circumvent the interests of the United States? Do they at all? This is a question not only for the past, but for the present, and the future as well, as long as the United States is the preeminent global power.

2017 Special Elections: Kansas' Fourth Congressional District

Three days after Donald Trump was sworn into the Presidency, Representative Mike Pompeo resigned from his Congressional seat after he had been selected and confirmed as the Director of the CIA. Within a few days, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback called for a special election to select a representative for the now vacant seat. This election was set for Tuesday, April 11th.

The Fourth District of Kansas comprises the counties of Barber, Butler, Chautauqua, Comanche, Cowley, Edwards, Elk, Greenwood, Harper, Harvey, Kingman, Kiowa, Pratt, Sedgwick, Stafford, Sumner, and part of Pawnee County. Most of the people in this district live in or around Wichita, the most populous city in Kansas.

There were not any primaries for this election. The three major parties in Kansas (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian) each had a convention to select a candidate to participate in the general election. These conventions were held in February, with the Republicans having theirs on February 9th and the Democrats and Libertarians both had theirs on the 11th.

For the Republicans, the primary candidates were State Treasurer Ron Estes, former Congressman Todd Tiahrt, attorney George Bruce, talk show host Joseph Ashby, and Trump campaign staffer Alan Cobb. Ashby and Bruce were eliminated on the first ballot and Estes won the second ballot with 52% of the vote.

For the Democrats, the primary candidates were attorney James Thompson, businesswoman Laura Lombard, former Kansas House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney, police officer Charlie Walker, and former House candidate Robert Tillman. Lombard, Walker, and Tillman were eliminated on the first ballot and Thompson won the second ballot with 54% of the vote.

For the Libertarians, the primary candidates were educator Chris Rockhold, former House candidate Gordon Bakken, and farmer John Kostner. Rockhold won the nomination on the first ballot with 85% of the vote.

There are no independent candidates for this seat. If there was to be any independent candidates in the race, they would have needed to obtain 3,000 signatures from registered voters by February 18th to successfully petition to be on the ballot. No candidate obtained enough signatures by the deadline.

It would be easy just to say that this is a safe Republican seat and call it a day. In the last four elections, when Pompeo was first elected in 2010, the Republican candidate has won by an average of 29 points. I want to dig around a little bit and see if there is any under current that may be missed.

Kansas will have elections for all of its executive offices next year, with some candidates having already declared that they are running for governor. I've been looking at this race as a preview of sorts for the elections that will be occurring next year. For my purposes, we will look at the Republican vs Democratic dichotomy as the Libertarian party is not yet big enough to have a serious effect on the two party system.

Ron Estes is the State Treasurer and has been since the Brownback administration started in 2011. While Sam Brownback is currently one of the most unpopular governors in the nation, Estes seems to have kept out of the unpopularity plaguing the government in Topeka. To be fair to him, he is the treasurer, a relatively innocuous position. In 2014, while Brownback won a close election to keep the governor's seat by 3.5%, Estes routed his opponent by 35%.

Given that it was 2014 when that happened and the Brownback administration has since seen its popularity collapse, it would be interesting to see how far being part of the administration could hurt Estes. It is feasible this trend could show up in the votes next week; after all voters starting punishing Brownback last year by electing a more moderate legislature. In addition, tying Estes to the Brownback administration has been something that Democrat James Thompson has been trying to do as well as a means to undercut his chances as well.

How far that effort would go remains to be seen. Any effort by Thompson to drag down Estes with Brownback may be limited by Thompson himself. In the current "establishment vs. progressive" fight within the Democratic party nationally, Thompson falls in the progressive category to the point that Bernie Sanders came to Kansas to stump for him. That may work well for the Democratic party in Kansas; after all Bernie Sanders did win the Kansas caucus over Hillary Clinton last year. However, in a congressional district where Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters nearly two to one, that might not get Thompson far.

In the 2016 state legislature elections (and one United States House district), Kansans sent a more politically diverse group of politicians to Topeka for the next two years. What they did not do, however, was send a great number of Democrats to the legislature. In the State House, the Democrats gained 12 seats, but still only have 40 of 125 seats. In the Senate, they only gained one seat to hold 9 out of 40 seats. Kansans do want change from Brownback's policies based off of this, but are not willing to go all the way over to the other side of the aisle to do that, instead preferring a more moderate tone.

If Thompson had fallen into the more moderate, establishment wing of the Democratic party, he would have had at least a sporting chance to flip the seat. As it is, there is not much to suggest there will be an upset next Tuesday. There's only been one poll conducted and it corroborates this by show ing Estes with a solid 24 point lead over Thompson. It's hard to imagine that this house seat would flip parties, but depending on how close the results end up could be a very telling sign in elections to come.