Democrat Laura Kelly fended off perhaps the most energizing and divisive figure in Kansas politics on Tuesday to become the next governor of Kansas.
Kelly beat out self-described full-throttled conservative GOP nominee Kris Kobach, the secretary of state whod forged a kinship with President Donald Trump while dabbling in anti-immigration and voter fraud crusades across the country.
He lost to a 68-year-old state senator from Topeka who ran as a moderate, banking on a reputation in the Legislature as someone willing to find compromise rather than as a charismatic force for change.
Instead, Kelly called for Kansas to roll back the clock a decade to when previous Democratic governors formed coalition governments by cobbling together support from party regulars and Republicans uncomfortable with its far-right factions. Kobach represented the most aggressive version of that conservative wing.
Kelly pledged to restore school spending and move past the tax-cutting, service-slicing ways of former Gov. Sam Brownbacks time in the office.
To win the overwhelmingly Republican state, she walked a delicate line of appealing to moderate GOP voters while trying to enthuse bleed-blue Democrats. She also championed the endorsements of several high-profile Republicans from an earlier era of Kansas politics.
Her campaign focused time and again on Brownback, arguing to voters that Kobach would return the state to the policies that carved away tax revenue and triggered cuts in a range of services.
The people of Kansas spoke, and they spoke so loudly. They put partisanship aside, she told supporters giddy over a Democratic win in the Republican-dominated state. Kansans voted for change. A change in tone in the state. That tone will come to Topeka now.
In her victory speech, she congratulated Kobach and independent Greg Orman on their campaigns. An otherwise raucous crowd went quiet.
No, she chided her supporters gently, were going to be civil.
She said the election wasnt so much a Democratic win as a wave of bipartisanship. … Partisanship was put above all else and it tore our state apart, Kelly said. That ended today.
Kobach spoke to supporters briefly, mostly thanking his family and campaign staff for weathering the grind of the campaign.
He said his loss resulted from political forces pushing against Republicans in the midterm election.
Headwinds all the way, Kobach said.
He said Kelly had too much money. Much of Kobachs campaign was financed by running mate Wink Hartman whereas Kelly relied more on smaller donors. Other spending in the campaign came from independent groups, notably the Republican Governors Association.
Still, Kobach insisted Tuesday night that he couldnt keep up in the money and advertising parts of the campaign.
I wish campaigns were all about debates and every single voter watched the debate and that would be different, he said. But spending money on campaigns matters.
