By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Emporia State political science professor Michael Smith notes that the Republican primary winners for U.S. Senate and in the Second District Congressional race in Kansas used a similar strategy to get the job done.
"Roger Marshall and also Jake LaTurner in the Second District ran great campaigns," Smith said. "What they did was, they reframed the issue away from who's the most conservative to who is the most competent. Marshall and LaTurner both put a lot of emphasis on saying, I'm a conservative. They are. They're both quite conservative. That wasn't a big leap."
In the state house and senate races, Kansas Republicans seemed to go farther to the right.
"When a person is tacking conservative and they don't have baggage like Kobach or Watkins, they can still do very well in the Kansas Republican primary," Smith said.
This fits what has been the conventional wisdom that conservatives tend to be the ones that vote in Republican primaries in Kansas, but Smith cautions not to take that thought too far.
"The winners in the Republican side were definitely conservatives," Smith said. "There's no question about that, maybe not firebrand. We have to be so careful making a leap from primary results to general election results, because the turnout is so much higher in the general, especially in a Presidential election year."
It will also be interesting to see how Medicaid expansion proposals move or don't now that Missouri has voted to expand by ballot initiative. That isn't an option in Kansas. The legislature must pass expansion if it is to happen.