Democrat Alan Marston is running against 26-year incumbent John "the bad bacon" Bacon.
Kansas has a well-deserved reputation as a conservative state, but that is beginning to change, as the recent elections of Gov. Laura Kelly and Congresswoman Sharice Davids have shown. And nowhere is that change more apparent than in suburban Johnson County, the state's most populous.
The county seat of Johnson County, Olathe, has seen its population soar to over 140,000 residents from less than 18,000 residents in 1970. But our story begins a bit later than that, in the 1990s. It was then that an ambitious and toweringly stupid ultraconservative politician named John Bacon began his political career.
The 1990s saw the rise of hardcore conservatives throughout Kansas, but their seat of power in Johnson County was the booming exurban expanse of Olathe. The city produced a bumper crop of ultraconservative politicians and it was at this time that Bacon was first elected to the Olathe City Council. In time, Bacon would ascend to the Kansas Board of Education, winning a hotly contested GOP primary to give the ultraconservatives a majority on the once-sleepy Board.In 2005, with conservatives holding a 6-4 majority on the board, Bacon voted to gut science standards and impose an "Intelligent Design" standard on Kansas students. It was then that the Flying Spaghetti Monster revealed Itself through Its Prophet, Bobby Henderson, in a letter to the Kansas Board of Education.
In 2007, with newly-elected non-insane members holding sway, the Kansas Board of Education voted to undo the anti-evolution changes and return Kansas to a rational, fact-based method of science teaching.
John Bacon would not run for re-election to the Board, but he continued to run, and win, a seat on the Olathe City Council.
I don't know about anyone else, but I believe that if you make such poor public policy choices that an entire parody religion springs up in opposition to them, you should probably not be elected to anything, anywhere, ever again.
Fast forward nearly a decade and a half. Olathe has continued to boom, its growth now heavily fueled by tech-centric navigation giant Garmin. The city has attracted a significant number of well-educated immigrants, especially from India and China (one of Garmin's 2 cofounders is a Chinese-American immigrant). Highly-paid & adamantly pro-science engineers flocked to the city, for Garmin and for biotech companies in the Animal Health Sciences corridor stretching from Manhattan, Kansas to Columbia, Missouri. Apartment buildings that attract young professionals wanting to live close to work, sprouted like wildflowers along the city's highways and arterial roads. The Asian-American and Latinx populations boomed, and its white residents grew much more used to having neighbors who didn't look like them, but kept their yards looking just as nice as anyone else's.
But somehow, John Bacon has kept easily winning re-election. Until now.
In the 2019 primary, Democrat Alan Marston essentially tied Bacon in the August primary, each winning about 45% of the vote, with the remaining 10% going to a 3rd candidate who was thus eliminated from the general election contest. The once-sleepy municipal races in the area have been upended by 2 decisions--one by the Legislature to move municipal elections to November, rather than April. This change began in 2017 and resulted in significantly improved turnout--not, to be sure, the Legislature's intention when it changed the dates.
The other decision, of course, happened in November 2016. Suburban Johnson County voters have reacted to Trump similarly to suburban voters nationwide--with utter revulsion. Starting in 2016, Republicans throughout the county have begun losing elections--lots of them. After the 2014 elections, Democrats held just 2 of the county's 32 state legislative seats. After the 2016 elections, they held 6 of the 32 seats. After the 2018 elections, we held 10. Today, thanks to defections from the GOP, Democrats now hold 13 seats, and seemed poised to capture yet more in 2020.
The Johnson County Democrats have gone from raising about $60,000 in the 2015-2016 election cycle to raising over $300,000 in the 2017-2018 cycle. Volunteer numbers have mushroomed, with the party barely managing to knock hundreds of doors to knocking tens of thousands each cycle. This work has paid off handsomely.
State Sen. Laura Kelly from Topeka smashed Kris Kobach, who'd once served on the City Council of the county's largest city, by double digits in JoCo. An unknown young woman named Sharice Davids, derided as "radical socialist kickboxing lesbian Native American" kickboxed incumbent Congressman Kevin Yoder to the curb, in a stunning double-digit victory.
Both candidates also won in the former conservative stronghold of Olathe.
And now, FML enthusiasts, Pastafarians, scientists, pirates, and fans of evolution alike have the opportunity to take down John "the bad Bacon" Bacon, the Pontius Pilate of Pastafarianism.
Alan Marston is a civic-minded, progressive, family man and former cop who is our only hope to vanquish the worst Bacon of all.
Please, DailyKos audience, we need your help. Help us win in Olathe and beat the bad Bacon...
Support Alan Marston for Olathe City Council on ActBlue here.
