Here is the reality of politics in Kansas:
Johnson County now comprises fully 20 percent of the states population.
Nearly 57 percent of the states people live in the six largest counties, Johnson, Wyandotte, Douglas and Leavenworth in the Kansas City area; Shawnee (Topeka); and Sedgwick (Wichita).
The implications of these figures are varied and diverse. Kansas may be mostly rural in character when you look across its vast land, but it is no longer a rural state when it comes to voting. Too many of us live in the city.
That rural Kansas continues to have some influence, particularly the west, rests mostly on the fact that we continue to send superior leaders to Topeka to represent us, men like former Sen. Bob Dole of Russell, former Gov. Mike Hayden of Atwood and today, Rep. Don Hineman of Dighton, who represents tiny Lane County, fourth-smallest in the state out of 105. and is majority leader of the Kansas House.
So if rural Kansas is to continue to be heard, to be able to make a case for its needs, it will have to be because we send a better class of representative to the Statehouse.
It sure wont be because we have the votes to dictate results.
Time was when rural interests pretty much controlled the Legislature, at least the House. From the early days of statehood, for more than a century, each Kansas county was allocated one member out of 125 seats in the House. The extra 20 seats were apportioned to the largest counties by population.
That was just the way things worked.
If they got along, a countys commissioners and other leaders worked with their representative to get things done in Topeka. The House was mostly rural, dominated by the many small counties, and so the system worked.
Then The Hutchinson News and its editor in the 1960s, John McCormally, stuck their noses into the situation, mounting a campaign for having the Legislature apportioned strictly by population, a principle known as one man, one vote.
A federal court eventually agreed, ordering the reapportionment of the Legislature. Editor McCormally and The News won a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service and rural influence in the Legislature began to wane.
That influence has continued to slip away ever since, as census after census since the 1965 decision showed fewer of us in the boondocks and more in the cities, particularly Johnson County.
So, if we want to continue to have some influence in Topeka, then we must continue to choose representatives who will be able to argue our positions and make enough friends to carry the day.
Its not that our needs oppose the citys so much as that they can be quite different. Most people in Johnson County cannot fathom what it means to live where the nearest grocery is a two-hour drive, where the number of people is vastly exceeded by the number of cattle, where you can see for 50 miles on a clear day.
Rural Kansas is like a mouse living in the same pen with a circus elephant: influencing the elephant is hard enough. You have to get his ear, but all the time, you have to watch out for being stepped on. Its strictly an accident, but it still hurts.
The Oberlin Herald
