In the classic 1972 film “Jeremiah Johnson,” a character tells the mountain man (Robert Redford) “A tribe’s greatness is figured on how mighty its enemies be.”
The same is true in politics.
And Vicki Schmidt has some mighty enemies as she runs for governor of Kansas.
A Washington-area dark money super PAC calling itself the “School Freedom Fund” has dedicated $2 million to airing artificial intelligence-generated attack ads on Schmidt, the Kansas insurance commissioner, as she seeks the Republican nomination for governor in the Aug. 4 primary.
If you haven’t heard of the School Freedom Fund, it’s an offshoot of the Club for Growth, a nationwide billionaire boys’ club that wants to privatize public education for profit. They simply can’t stomach the idea that money’s being spent somewhere in America, and they’re not getting a piece of the cake.
A lot of Kansans probably won’t remember, but we’ve been down this road before.
Starting in 1995, Wichita turned over four schools to the for-profit Edison Schools project. The experiment ended seven years later, amid high costs, declining enrollment, disappointing test scores and massive teacher turnover.
Try it again? No thanks.
If we all could vote, Schmidt would win
If Republicans do nominate Schmidt, it would practically guarantee the GOP would take back the governor’s office after eight years of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
Schmidt’s well-liked across the political spectrum, one of the last practitioners of the kind of moderate Republicanism that used to be the rule in Kansas politics.
