My name is Laura Lombard, and I am running as a Democrat to represent Kansas’ Fourth Congressional District in the United State House of Representatives.
The night of the 2016 presidential election my heart and the hearts of millions across the country were broken. During the following days, I felt the genuine sense of grief that many experienced. It was almost as if someone close to me had died, but it was a grief over the future I wanted us to have. It was a grief over the progress we’ve made in so many areas over the last several decades. From the economic policies of the New Deal that led us out of the Great Depression and into the most prosperous period in our history to the formation of the United Nations and other collaborative international organizations, from the civil rights and women’s movements to LGBT communities gaining the right to marry across the land, I believed, despite setbacks and struggles, we were headed in the right direction.
Over time that grief changed to fight and within a few weeks, I joined thousands of women who decided to run for office in the face of this threat to our vision of the future. I want my nieces and nephews and future children to have that bright future that I envisioned we would all have. As Republican Senator Jeff Flake has recently noted, we are facing a time in which our core American values are being questioned and “we have forgotten who we are supposed to be”. We are the country of liberty and justice for all. We are the country of educated, innovative, and talented citizens that has led us to the moon and scientific breakthroughs unimaginable a century ago. We are the country that has led the world economically, politically, and morally since World War II. We need to continue to be those people and not let fear turn us inward from the world and against each other.
It has never been easy to be a Kansas Democrat. I date my becoming a Democrat to the third grade, when my teacher facilitated a mock Presidential election. In a race between President George W.H. Bush and Bill Clinton, I was one of three in the entire class to vote for the future President Bill Clinton. I remember the conversations that I had with both my parents (mom a Democrat, dad a Republican at the time) and making my own assessment of who I thought was the better choice, and then standing by that choice in the face of a lot of peer pressure and criticism. In the decades following, the more extreme right Tea Party version of the Republican party took over Kansas politics. In my district, Congressman Dan Glickman, a Jewish Democrat who had held the 4th District seat for almost two decades, was ousted by Republican Todd Tiahrt -- a right-wing conservative. The far-right trend led to then Senator Sam Brownback to win the governorship in 2011, and his destructive “trickle-down” economics experiment began to wreak havoc over our state’s ability to provide even basic services to our citizens.
However, for the first time in my life, the tide is changing toward moderation and progressive thought in my state. Kansas is looking toward a brighter future and sensible policies after suffering through misguided and destructive far-right policies. This month, 393 out of some 600 local races were won by Democrats statewide – almost three-fourths of races. In Kansas’ 2nd District, Democrat Paul Davis is running largely unopposed, and in the 3rd District there are five Democrats in a primary to replace U.S. Representative Kevin Yoder. Here in the 4th District, our incumbent, Ron Estes, is a weak candidate and the gift that keeps on giving thanks to his already egregious, Trump yes-man voting record. We have the potential to have 3 out of 4 Kansas districts go blue. What a statement that would make nationwide if this happened! What a statement it would make to have a Millennial female be the one who wins in the reddest of these districts! I believe we can create the kind of big Democratic wins here that we saw recently in Virginia, New Jersey, and even Montana.
We can win the Kansas 4th together! Help me flip this district by getting involved with and supporting my campaign at http://lauraforkansas.com/!
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A fifth generation Kansan, Laura Lombard is the founding President and Executive Director of Middle East & North Africa Consultants Association (MENA Consultants) and, as of April, the Chief Executive Officer of ImEpik, LLC in Wichita. MENA Consultants is a professional trade association of experts doing business in the Middle East region, and ImEpik offers 21st century online workforce training solutions. Prior to her current professional roles, Lombard worked for former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet, at The Cohen Group. Lombard is a graduate of Wichita's Independent School, the University of Kansas, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.