A few days ago, I wrote a diary noting that the Kansas Democratic Party had driven itself to near extinction. This diary ended up getting quite a bit of attention around Kansas - leading numerous county chairs, vice chairs, caucus leaders, PACs, and elected officials to reach out to me. The vast majority, frankly, asked why I didn't go further. There were a few, however, who took the approach that this was not business to be published openly and doing so was bad for the party.
Let me refute that argument immediately: I posted my responses here for the obvious reason. I had asked members of DailyKos for monetary support and they came through. Over $120,000 for Jean Schodorf. We came through in the Hundreds of Thousands for multiple races.
Money talks, BS walks and if I fail on investors, I owe it to the investors to get a full reporting of what went on with their investment.
The new line of KDP attack, however, is nothing more than Academic sophistry, and the acceptance of it as an argument is laughable.
Burdett Loomis, Political Science Professor at University of Kansas, as well as others within the party have begun flinging this at the wall in order to tell investors that losing is "OK"
The interesting thing I found was that Paul Davis ran 8.1% ahead of Obama's 2012 performance - that's better than any Democrat in any state, and 11% better than the average Democrat nationally. The next closest Dem in a targeted race was Mark Begich, in Alaska, who outperformed Obama by 4%. And he was an incumbent.
That's right! Kansas had a greater uptick! This argument, however, is laughable. Let me explain why:
Georgia, 30% African American.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
North Carolina 23% African American.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Kansas had a greater uptick in an off year!
Kansas: 5.9% African American
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
So, do you think that other states - even though Red, had an easier time motivating people to the polls for an African American candidate, and that might be part of the reason why we improved more than they did? Of course, the KDP also points to Alaska as another success story last night, the next closest. I'm not going to even get into minority population turnout models in Alaska.
Putting that aside, let's talk about how we can compare the effort of 2012 to 2014. This would be an interesting argument, except for the fact that it basically contends the state went from feckless - a presidential election where we stayed stagnant at the state level - to miserable, a state wide race where we lost another six seats. We have to also remember that in 2010, the State Party lost 16 seats. In 2012, we lost none and declared VICTORY! In 2014, with a supposed "higher turnout" at the top of the ticket, we lost another 6 legislative seats.
We often think of Lonely Landslides as a president who wins but carries no one into office. In Kansas, Davis not only didn't win, but despite his supposed "uptick" from 2012, we lost house seats. What a resounding success.
In order to better understand this, I began calling County Chairs to discuss this comparison. Johnny Dunlap, First District Chair made the issue clear:
It's a false comparison. In 2012, there was no get out the vote effort. We had no lists to call, we had no money or support. We actually spent money in 2014. I suppose if we didn't gain anything, that would be a story.
Another County chair, who asked to not be named told me:
Davis outperformed, but everyone else got squashed at about the same as 2012. But if outperforming means we lost local races, it's hard to call that a victory of any sort.
Davis offered no coattails because, again, there was no canvass that provided persuasion and no effort to really inform the voters about any other candidates. I want to point this out again: Patty Sloop, popular democratic representative in a Democratic district lost by
FORTY EIGHT VOTES. She was told to get her check back paying for Canvassing services, and that the state would cover for her. The state then took her canvass from her with weeks left in the election to try and save Paul Davis.
SHE LOST BY FORTY EIGHT VOTES over a petty battle that was absolutely contract interference (and which I believe should be contested in court) because the state knew what they were doing. As a result, Patty Sloop is no longer in office. I'm attaching
HERE the signed agreement, which the KDP demanded be voided after a check and contract was issued, effectively ending a canvass for a candidate. A candidate that, again, lost by FORTY EIGHT VOTES. They put petty fights above trying to win, and a district that is Democratic lost a representative.
FULL DISCLOSURE - I am not, at this moment, a paid employee of Smoky Hills Consulting. I have worked with them, and list myself as a 'strategist' for them, think of it as an outside counsel appropriated for one task - in the same way I contract my IT work to companies. I have always listed everywhere that I have done contract work, but it doesn't make me their employee. And in this case, our common cause was exactly one race, a personal friend who asked my help. Thomas Witt is a good friend, and I am considering buying into the enterprise. While we work together on the Sherow campaign, I was not a member or negotiated any efforts with Patty Sloop, and I was not present or involved, nor would I financially benefit in any way at all from the signing of that agreement.
The party also failed, in all cases, to build an internal base to draw from for the future, leaving the cupboard bare. Looking at end results and saying "SEE! SEE!" doesn't answer the key problem: who are the next generation Democratic leaders in Kansas, when we are doing nothing at all to elect them in local races?
The response to my complaint about the outreach into Minority Communities is the most outrageous.
http://www2.ljworld.com/...
In an attempt to squash arguments I have started here, the KDP responded.
Wagnon openly rejected Reeves' criticism that Democrats didn't do enough to reach out to Latino voters, or to western Kansas in general.
"I had staff on the ground hired to do Hispanic outreach," she said. "We had Carlos (Lugo, Hispanic outreach and field director) make I don’t know how many trips. I was in Liberal and Dodge City (numerous times). But there are more Hispanic voters in Sedgwick and Wyandotte Counties than in all of western Kansas."
Exit polling from the election showed Kansas Democrats did not attract large numbers of Hispanic voters.
While Hispanics make up about 11 percent of the state population, exit polling showed they made up only 6 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the election, and those were almost evenly split between Davis and Brownback.
Notice, there is no notation of Carlos Lugo making multiple trips to the Southwest. Wagnon also clearly misses the point - the Southwest Corner of the state is nearly 70% Hispanic in population. If they turn out, you elect state
HOUSE members. Turning out a few thousand hispanic voters (more than 6%) would have elected democrats to the state house. This statement clarifies the point: winning in the state house didn't matter. All of the deck chairs were arranged for Paul Davis and nothing else.
The state, however, can't help but shove their foot in their mouth with their closing statement:
And the party chose not to produce and distribute Spanish-language material in targeted Hispanic areas because, Wagnon said, most voters in those areas speak English.
That's right. We hired a hispanic outreach director, but we decided not to print literature in Spanish because, you know, they all speak English.
You print material in the language of someone's heart to show that you respect their culture and values. It is no wonder with this attitude that we split the Hispanic vote in Kansas. I'm sure Jill Docking, who stood in front of a room only to find herself asked why they didn't have Spanish printed literature understood that the cost of a few hundred dollars in leaflets in Spanish was simply a bridge too far, and it was money that they didn't need to spend.
The question I was posed today by someone went like this: "This shouldn't be public. Fight privately."
No. Absolutely no. I am an investor. A significant investor. The members at DailyKos were serious investors. I knew the moment my full name came out and I began to openly confront this issue I would face some difficulties. Outside of fighting the state, being 'outed' managed to pull about $20,000 out of my work product for next year, in businesses that have cancelled services due to their Republican outlook on the world.
If I'm willing to risk some of my livelihood, and invest the time and money in raising funds for candidates, then I have the absolute right to demand a reckoning.
Word to the wise shopping the sophistry of "we performed better than a year we didn't try" - there is no trophy for second place.
