SurveyUSA. 10/13-15. Likely voters. MoE 4.3% (9/11-13 results)
Governor
Sebelius (D) 55 (58)
Barnett (R) 42 (38)
Attorney General
Klein (R) 43 (51)
Morrison (D) 56 (48)
We'll hold the governor's mansion easily, so it's the attorney general's race that is particularly exciting. Kline is a reactionary right-wing AG, perhaps the most right-wing in the country. That Kansas is considering ditching him for a Democrat is another sign that Kansas Dems are on the rise and threatening to reverse their state's solid-GOP bent.
So what's going on in Kansas? As McJoan posted last Friday, the Johnson County (KS) Sun previews their endorsements with a note about why Republicans are abandoning their party:
As we prepare ourselves to make political endorsements in subsequent issues, I can tell you unequivocally that this newspaper has never endorsed so many Democrats. Not even close.
In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper. In the old days, before the Republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional Republicans. That is, we happily endorsed Jan Meyers for Congress, Bob Dole for U.S. Senate, Nancy Kassebaum for U.S. Senate; virtually every Republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative Democrats George and Bob Docking and John Carlin.
The point is, I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office.
This year, we will do something different. You will read why we are endorsing Kathleen Sebelius for governor and Mark Parkinson for lieutenant governor; Dennis Moore to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress; Paul Morrison for Kansas attorney general; and a slew of local Democratic state legislative candidates.
That editorial is particularly fun given its punchline:
To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.
What does to-the-right mean?
It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.
It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.
It means anti-stem cell research.
It means ridiculing global warming.
It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.
It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.
It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.
It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.
It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education....
But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.