The miscalculation behind midterm governor elections

Gubernatorial races in Kansas track a classic midterm rule: the president’s party nearly always pays a price.    

As we approach Labor Day, the unofficial start of the general election season, it’s worth looking back at a strategic decision Kansas Republicans made decades ago. 

In the early 1970s, as part of efforts to modernize the executive branch, Republicans advanced a constitutional amendment that replaced the old gubernatorial two-year term system, and no term limits, with four-year terms and a two-term limit. 

The amendment reworked the electoral calendar as well, moving gubernatorial elections entirely to the midterm cycle, following the directive that executive officers would be chosen “in the year 1974 and every four years thereafter.” 

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