It has now been a few weeks since I lost my bid for the Kansas Senate — in a primary at that. I’ve had a little time to collect my thoughts and share them with you in this post.
Mia Culpa
First, I have to take responsibility for my own actions during the campaign.
I never asked for a dime in campaign contributions. Part of this is because I have a not-so-pleasant history in regards to fundraising (raising $36 on an Indiegogo campaign asking for $1,000 for a web series I’m still working on — and all but $1 of that came from someone helping with the project).
Another is that I do believe that we need to get money out of politics. As I will talk about later, money absolutely corrupts our system — and you find out very quickly who your real friends and supporters are.
I never took the time to walk the neighborhoods and knock doors. Many factors came into this decision, from bad knees to a very busy non-political schedule to being a very shy person. I got the word out using social media, invited speaking opportunities, free press coverage (thank you to the Pitch and the KC Star for that), and word of mouth.
I did, however, have help from an outstanding volunteer from Bernie’s campaign. Without his help, I fear it would have been a lot worse.
I can, however, hang my head up high and say without hesitation that I have no regrets. I feel that I ran an honest and honorable campaign with very limited resources, and feel that I’ve earned the respect of most of the Democratic candidates running for other legislative seats.
Disrespectful Behavior
That said, the time has come for me to share with you how things played out in regard to my primary opponent, Logan Heley, and how it has affected how I will vote in November.
So, here is the text of my concession message, as given on my campaign Facebook page:
I'll start with the good news:
Greg Smith lost his primary.
Now for the bad news:
I only got 19% of the vote.
Thus ends my candidacy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. I know I didn't run a perfect campaign, but at least I tried.
Here’s Heley’s reply to this message:
Mike, thank you for a healthy Democratic primary and for your service to our party.
Some may think that the response was condescending, and that may very well be true. I tried to do my best to not go negative, but in the end, “healthy” would not be a good word choice here.
It all comes down to respect — or the general lack thereof from Camp Heley. Granted, I think Mr. Heley is a genuinely nice person with his heart in the right place. The rest of the campaign apparatus, however, leaves much to be desired.
I will now share with you two instances of this lack of respect that occurred during the campaign. I publicly kept quiet about these incidents during the campaign, but now that it’s over, I will speak my mind.
The first happened during the caucus in March. Candidates were given tables to set up their campaign materials and were supposed to be given some time to speak.
I had a minimalist setup of my campaign flyers as well as copies of the Pitch, as this was the week their story on the campaign had come out.
Contrast that with Heley’s setup: he wasn’t even officially on the ballot at this point, yet had volunteers in T-shirts soliciting signatures from caucus-goers. Something about this that cannot be either confirmed or denied but is noteworthy: my volunteer had told me that these volunteers had told caucus-goers to sign the petition or they wouldn’t be allowed to caucus. If true, that’s a serious problem.
More disturbing than that, however, was the speeches. As the venue was quite crowded, I stayed near my table until given a go-ahead to speak to caucus-goers. No such go-ahead was given. After some time had passed, I approached a couple of volunteers (who are friends of mine) and asked when they were allowing candidates to give speeches. I was told that the opportunity had already happened — and no one bothered trying to find me to give the speech.
At this time, all of the Bernie supporters (about 900 of the 1,500 caucus-goers) were being escorted outside to be counted. I did find one of the caucus co-chairs and explain the situation to her. She and the Bernie campaign allowed me to speak to the Bernie caucus-goers as they did the counting.
Over a less-than-high-quality megaphone.
In the field behind the elementary school turned church building we held the caucus.
In the middle of a windy day.
Three times.
Afterwards, I told said caucus co-chair that I was highly offended by what had just happened.
To make matters worse, the other co-chair had a very serious conflict of interest: it was Heley’s father.
Which brings me to a piece of reform I would like to see in the Johnson County Democratic Party starting with the 2020 caucuses: anyone who is running for office or is related to someone running for office should not be allowed to organize caucuses.
That’s moment of disrespect number one.
Moment of disrespect number two came about a month later, in April.
On this day, I and several other candidates (Mr. Heley was not one of them) had attended a training held by the Mainstream Coalition. One of the moderators of the training was former State Representative Carol Sader, who was my State Rep, whose son Neil had run for Overland Park Mayor in 2005, and who knew my late mother. We had a pleasant conversation following the training, which left me feeling re-assured that I was doing the right thing.
That afternoon, after a day of doing other things, I came home to find a piece of literature from Camp Heley. Apparently he had sent a volunteer to my house while I was away.
When I first got involved with local politics, one of the first things I was taught was that you do not canvass the home of an opponent. It’s a waste of time because that person isn’t going to vote for you. It’s also very disrespectful.
Note #1: This happened on the Republican side of our State Senate race as well, with volunteers from Greg Smith’s campaign knocking on the door of his primary opponent, Dinah Sykes. Unlike me, Sykes was home at the time and had an epic response for them.
Note #2: Days after this happened, I was talking with Skip Fannen, a Democratic Senate candidate in a neighboring district, and apparently Heley was caught canvassing in his district. This is bizarre to say the least, and equally disrespectful to Skip and his electoral efforts.
Whether intentional or not, this particular act of disrespect cost Mr. Heley any chance of earning my vote in the general election.
Philosophical Differences
I had spoken often about how this particular primary would tell us a lot about the Kansas Democratic Party, and the Johnson County party in particular. Are we a single-issue party that only cares about public education? Or are we a party that actually wants to get things done and reverse the damage done by this Governor and his hand-picked legislature?
If you go by the primary election results, it’s clearly the former.
But should it be?
I have already written about how Heley’s message boils down to “a noun, a verb, and education.”
What I failed to mention was how money corrupts politics, and simply boils down to this: Heley had bought the education lobby.
This explains why I failed to get a single endorsement from education groups. This goes counter to the fact that I am generally pro-public education. However, I had learned the hard lesson from 2014 that Democrats cannot campaign on that single issue.
It is also painfully clear that this lobby has way too much influence on the local Democratic Party, and I feel that it has hurt Democratic candidates in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
A good friend of mine, one who was very active in the local Young Democrats and holds very progressive views, would likely describe Heley as “Republican lite,” meaning that there is very little to distinguish his platform from that of a moderate Republican candidate.
The Democratic Party has had way too many of these “Republican lite” candidates running in Kansas, especially in Johnson County.
I earlier mentioned Mainstream Coalition. What I’m going to say now is my observation of the group and not aimed at any one individual: Mainstream is a good group and most of their views mesh with my own. However, they are notorious for getting voters to register as Republicans in the foolhardy attempt to elect more moderate candidates in Republican primaries — candidates who likely should be Democrats. It’s called “strategic voting” and does not have a good track record of getting the desired outcomes (although this primary season was a rare exception).
That most of these moderate Republicans probably should be running as Democrats yet only run as Republican because they had bought into the myth that Democrats can’t get elected in the Sunflower State is, in my opinion, part of the answer to that famous question, “What’s the matter with Kansas?”
Mainstream didn’t endorse me. Instead, they endorsed Heley. This seems to indicate that when it comes to Democrats, they prefer the more “Republican lite” candidate over the truly left-leaning candidate.
Endorsements I did get: Planned Parenthood, an A rating from the Women for Kansas group, and a mention from Bleeding Kansas (a group pushing for medicinal marijuana legalization in Kansas).
Lastly, I don’t know how much of an effort Heley made towards getting to know the Democratic candidates running for other offices — apart from one instance that I will not get into because it is not public knowledge (only to say that money was involved) — but I can honestly say that I made the effort to get to know and understand them. They are, for the most part, amazing individuals and I have no problem throwing my support to any of them.
Where I Go From Here, and Who I Support
Where do I go from here?
In terms of electoral office, who knows? This was my second attempt at running for an elected office, and the second time that I had failed. Maybe elected office isn’t for me.
However, this does give me an opportunity to talk about a phone call on the day of the primary with a potential voter: he asked why no Democrats were running for Sheriff. That may be something to think about, especially given my past life as a security officer and the fact I am often asked to do security-type work for others.
I do still have a video production business to try to run and grow, as well as a few projects I’d like to get done, so my time and attention will now shift towards that.
The reason for me to run for the State Senate in the first place — the ouster of Greg Smith — was taken care of that fateful evening by Dinah Sykes.
I will say this: during this whole process, Ms. Sykes was always respectful to me, and the feeling is mutual. It’s because of that mutual respect, and the fact that we actually agree on a lot of the issues facing Topeka, that I have no problem throwing my support to her, despite the fact that she’s a moderate Republican and I’m a progressive Democrat.
If the general had been Smith versus Heley, I would have gone with the third party candidate, Libertarian Mike Kerner. Kerner and I are friends who share a common interest that I refer to as an open secret: I won’t advertise it but will gladly talk about it if asked. We disagree on some issues, particularly gun reform and taxes, but agree on others, notably marijuana legalization (and even then there’s some difference: Mike’s for full legalization, while I favor a phased-in approach starting with medicinal use).
Kerner and I recently had a chance to talk about the election. He classes it as “a liberal Republican against a liberal Democrat.” While that may be true of Dinah, I told Mike that I disagreed with his assertion in regards to Heley, especially when compared with yours truly. Mike specifically pointed to the medical marijuana issue, an issue that neither Heley nor Sykes have said anything on. (This, by the way, was Mike’s biggest beef with Smith, who is very anti-legalization.)
Kerner had run for the State House the past two election cycles, and each time he had faced Larry Meeker as a Democratic candidate (although in 2012 Meeker ran as an independent due to some clerical error at the Secretary of State’s office). Meeker, you may recall, was later elected to run the Kansas Democratic Party and took significant heat for suggesting the state party shift to the right. This found its way to the Pitch in a 2015 article that also pointed out that there was only one Democrat who had the courage to file to run for office that early (me).
As a result of the extreme backlash from that article, Meeker was forced to resign.
There’s very little difference between Logan Heley and Larry Meeker: both are centrists who bought the education lobby and ran for office on that single issue.
It didn’t work out so well for Meeker, and I feel that Heley will suffer the same fate.
Closing Thoughts
In summary, the conduct of my opponent’s campaign trumps party loyalty.
Respect is important. If you respect me and the rules of the game, you should have no problem. If you don’t, please don’t expect me to help you out.
In the end, it’s not really my place to tell you how to vote in November. I’m simply sharing with you my thoughts.
And, much like my campaign, I have no regrets.
But, please, go out there in November and vote.