EL DORADO, Kansas — The culture war issues that are polarizing national politics are also front and center in Kansas’ U.S. Senate contest: race, guns, abortion, climate change.
Supporters of Republican candidate Roger Marshall fear a wave of Democratic victories will trigger radical changes in the nation’s economy and culture; that capitalism will give way to socialism, undocumented immigrants will stream across the U.S.-Mexico border and individual liberties will be threatened.
Voters who favor Democratic candidate Barbara Bollier talk with similar alarm about what might happen if President Donald Trump wins a second term and Republicans keep their Senate majority — further erosion of democratic institutions and dire consequences for failing to act on climate change and long-neglected racial issues.
“No other Western democracy is remotely as polarized as America,” said Mugambi Jouet, an assistant law professor at Canada’s McGill University and author of the book, “Exceptional America: What Divides Americans From the World and From Each Other.”
A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in Kansas since the Great Depression, but several recent polls suggest this year’s contest could be close.
Marshall, a two-term congressman from western Kansas, is urging voters to close ranks behind him.
At an early October event in El Dorado, he rallied his base by ticking through a list of “radical” changes that he believes Democrats would make if given the opportunity.
“They want to take away our freedoms of speech, our freedoms of religion,” Marshall said.
He said they also want to “take away our Second Amendment” and lift all restrictions on late-term abortions.
Bollier, a state senator from the Kansas City suburbs who switched parties in 2018, is instead hoping to capitalize on voter frustration with Washington, D.C., and promising to bridge the partisan divide.
“I’m not interested in the big political fights that get us nowhere,” Bollier said in a speech after winning the Democratic nomination in August. “I’m going to roll up my sleeves, find partners across the aisle … and simply find ways to get things done.”
That’s easier said than done given that much of what she supports — expanding the Affordable Care Act and making changes to immigration policy and police departments — will likely encounter stiff opposition from Republicans.
