Kevin Yoder — most famous for drunkenly exposing himself and streaking in the holy land, began his campaign yesterday not by offering ideas, but by blowing a bullhorn sized dog whistle against Sharice Davids, asserting she doesn’t have “our values”.
The tweet, which is already being ratio’d, attacks Davids for not knowing Kansas values, going so far as to say: “because she doesn’t even know what they are..”
Why, Kevin? As a graduate of Johnson County Community College, which is here, and a graduate of Leavenworth High School, which is also in the state, as one of the early members of the LGBT rights chapter in Johnson County, and as the daughter of a military mother who lives here, how is it that she has all this Kansas experience and somehow, in all that time, she doesn’t know what Kansas values are? I wasn’t the only one to wonder.
The Kansas City Star was also puzzled:
They do have extremely different ideas, however, and plenty to debate. So we’re going to dare to hope not to hear any more of Yoder’s dog-whistling that she’s not from around here. In what sense?
As a Native American, oh yes, Davids is very much from here.
As a graduate of Leavenworth High, where she lived until her single mom retired from the Army there, and of Johnson County Community College, yes, she is from around here.
As someone who graduated from Cornell Law, was in private practice, worked on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and then was a White House fellow, she could have gone anywhere but chose to come back to Kansas. So yes, she is from around here.
We hope he wasn’t talking about the fact that she’d be the first Native American woman elected to Congress and the first openly LGBT person to represent Kansas.
Hope all you want, KC Star, but in fact, that is basically where Yoder and his allies are at in this race. “Our Values” has nothing to do with Kansas values, it has everything to do with the fact that Sharice isn’t white, grew up in a working household, and had to fight her way through to get to where she is today. She had to work through community college, her law degree, and she had struggles that Yoder doesn’t see as part of his values because, frankly, it is easy to dismiss them.
Yoder’s values shift day by day; on immigration issues, he’s switched sides multiple times to placate his base. On Trump, he went from hiding out to welcoming rides with the president and an endorsement.
The Kansas values I grew up with valued a strong work ethic, people who worked hard and succeeded. We embrace academic excellence and we cheer when graduates of Johnson County Community College go on to prestigious universities.
How, Representative, can someone grow up here, graduate here, live here, work here, and not "even know what Kansas values are"? It was Kevin Yoder who didn’t come back to do an open town hall. Instead, he just ducked his constituents. It was Yoder who continues to take payday lending money, which rips people off for their hard work. It was Yoder who backed an additional $5B in a border wall more than Trump even asked for, deficit spending from a former deficit hawk.
Rep. Kevin Yoder traded in his Kansas values for Donald Trump’s twisted New York sensibilities (that don’t even match NY) and hanging out with lobbyists.
