November 13, 2008 09:30 am
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By Greg Grisolano
ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com
PITTSBURG, Kan. — Politicians in both parties in Crawford County say they are still in shock after last week’s election saw Republicans win one key race, and possibly another, in the normally reliable Democratic stronghold.
“Absolutely,” said Beth Bradrick, chairwoman of the Crawford County Democratic Party. “We thought we were looking good late on Monday (Nov. 3).”
While the county was one of only three in Kansas to throw its support behind Barack Obama for president, Republicans made political inroads on Nov. 4 by seizing the state Senate seat for the first time in 24 years.
The GOP also hopes to capture a countywide office, but the results are still pending in the race for county attorney. After a recount Tuesday, the contest between Republican Michael Gayoso Jr. and incumbent Democrat John Gutierrez remains undecided.
Republican Sen.-elect Bob Marshall, of Fort Scott, defeated Democrat Patty Horgan, of Pittsburg, by about 300 votes in Crawford County. Marshall’s victory is the first time since 1984 that Democrats have not controlled the 13th District Senate seat. The district takes in Crawford and Bourbon counties, and part of Cherokee County.
If Gayoso prevails in the race for county attorney, it would mark the first time since at least 1996 that a Republican has newly captured a significant county office. County Commissioner Bob Kmiec of the 1st District is the only Republican holding an elected office in Crawford County. He has been a commissioner since 1999.
Democratic and Republican party organizers and candidates have differing opinions about the outcomes, but most agreed on three factors making the difference: Statewide organizers for the Democratic Party clashed with the local machine; Crawford County Republicans mobilized more effectively than Democrats; and there was a fallout effect from the retirement of state Sen. Jim Barone, of Frontenac, a controversial Democrat.
‘Wrong formula’
Democrats thought they would get a boost when paid organizers from Topeka were sent to Crawford County to help get out the vote.
But Bradrick, the county Democratic chairwoman, said a lack of coordination between state and local campaigners caused friction between them and left Gutierrez out in the cold.
“The state party sent in three people who aren’t even local to run the coordinated campaign,” she said. “They made promises to us they did not keep.”
Bradrick said those promises included delivering literature for all candidates to homes in Crawford County, something she said did not happen for Gutierrez.
Gutierrez said that about three weeks before the election, he went to local party headquarters to see if he needed additional fliers, only to find a box of 1,000 pieces of his literature unopened and tucked behind a sofa.
“We were told they would pass out all candidates’ materials,” he said, adding that he has never received an explanation from the state party.
Gutierrez said he believes that move and others by state workers caused “irreparable harm” to his campaign.
“We’re local, we know our local constituents, and they really didn’t give us much time of day,” he said. “They had their formula they were going to follow, and obviously it was the wrong formula.”
Mike Gaughan, executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party, said his office did receive a report on the Gutierrez matter, but not until the Monday before the election. At that point, he said, it was too late to resolve the issue.
“In every campaign, there’s friction between individual campaigns, and county parties, and volunteers and organizers,” Gaughan said Monday in a telephone interview from Topeka. “I don’t think that anything extraordinary occurred in Crawford County to my knowledge.”
State Rep. Bob Grant, D-Cherokee, who was re-elected Nov. 4, said he agreed that the state and local workers were at odds.
“The way we were treated by the state party (organizers), I don’t care if those sons of b------ ever come back down here,” Grant said Friday in a phone interview. “They were supposed to work for every candidate, but they picked out the ones they wanted to, and that’s not right.”
Gaughan declined to comment on Grant’s statement, but he did say he planned to investigate the complaints.
“We’re a week out in the election, and we’ve got things to review,” he said. “I’m not going to point fingers in the newspaper.”
‘Ground game’
John Minton, incoming chairman of the Crawford County Republican Party, said his party felt good about its chances on the day of the election.
“We were feeling pretty confident in a couple of races,” he said. “We were feeling a lot better going into election night than we have in the last couple of elections.”
Minton said that in the weeks before the election, he and other Republicans noticed some problems with Democratic rivals.
“It seemed we did a better job of a coordinating effort,” Minton said. “They (the Democrats) had to rely a lot on Topeka, and Topeka seemed to do whatever it wanted.”
Republican committeeman Steve Bitner said the difference came down to having a motivated and coordinated effort by local party members.
“For the first time in a lot of years, the Republican Party had a ground game,” he said. “The candidate is only as good as the people on the ground, and the Democrats didn’t have a good ground game.”
Bitner pointed to the campaign strategy of Marshall, the senator-elect, which focused on Crawford County as the key.
Marshall said he was surprised by his margin of victory in Crawford County on election night. He had been predicting a big win in his home of Bourbon County and a split in Cherokee County, and he hoped to keep within 1,000 votes in Crawford County.
Marshall beat Horgan by about 300 votes in Crawford County, according to unofficial results. He also won in Bourbon and Cherokee counties.
He downplayed the notion that his campaign offered Republicans a blueprint for making inroads in Crawford County for other offices.
“That would be a great honor to say that, but I don’t think so,” he said. “I didn’t win this on my own. I had a great committee, and they worked hard.”
The Barone effect
Barone, the Frontenac Democrat, had held the 13th District Senate seat for 12 years but was coming off a tumultuous third term, in which clashes with party leadership in Topeka resulted in his removal from influential committee assignments.
Democratic leaders in the Senate removed Barone from the Ways and Means Committee in advance of the most recent legislative session. He also was removed in 2006 from his post as ranking member of the budget committee, and was appointed to the Elections and Local Government Committee.
Some members of his legislative caucus tried to have Barone stripped of his role as caucus chairman in January, as punishment for what was dubbed “Trousergate.” Barone allegedly was caught trying to leave a strategic meeting in December 2007 with sensitive polling data shoved down his pants. The motion to remove Barone ultimately failed.
Barone said he did not endorse a candidate to replace him. He said he spoke frequently with Marshall during the election campaign. He said he has known Marshall for years, dating back to the senator-elect’s involvement with the Fort Scott Chamber of Commerce.
“I look forward to helping Senator-elect Marshall in any way I can,” Barone said last week. “I’ll do everything I can to make him successful, because when he’s successful, Southeast Kansas is successful.”
Local and state Democrats said they thought Barone’s decision to wait until two days before the filing deadline to announce whether he would seek a fourth term hampered Horgan’s campaign.
Horgan, who was seeking her first political office, said she was feeling confident in her campaign for the Senate when the polls opened on Nov. 4, but she acknowledged, “I didn’t get in it fast enough.”
“Patty Horgan ran a competitive race in a tough environment, where the incumbent retired two days before the filing deadline,” said Gaughan, the state Democratic director. “As a candidate, time is always one of the resources you can’t get back in a campaign.”
Barone acknowledged meeting with Marshall frequently during the campaign, but he denied allegations that he was secretly campaigning for the Republican after falling out of favor with his own party’s leadership in Topeka.
Others said Barone’s actions speak for themselves.
“I don’t know whether he was helping Marshall or not,” said Grant, the state House member. “But I know he wasn’t helping Patty (Horgan), and he wasn’t supporting her.”
Minton, the county GOP leader, said that regardless of what role Barone played in the election, Republicans were licking their chops to face him come Election Day, given his past troubles in Topeka.
“Quite honestly, we wanted to run our guy against Barone,” he said. “We thought we’d have a better chance.”
Anthony Hensley, the Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, said that because of the perceived enthusiasm from Republicans hungry for the seat, Democrats ramped up efforts to retain the seat, including spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising and staff people on that race alone.
Hensley’s chief of staff, Tim Graham, said the 13th District Senate seat “definitely was a target of Senate Democrats.” He said any candidate the party offered may have felt a backlash from Barone.
“Much like George Bush was a lag on John McCain, Jim Barone was a lag on any Democrat who would have stepped up and run for his seat,” he said.
Barone said he believes the election results provide some vindication for his career, in that voters did not cast ballots along party lines. Barone has often said his conflicts with Hensley resulted from Barone’s efforts to represent “the voters in my district, not Topeka.”
“Topeka tried to buy this race,” Barone said. “This is where they misunderstand Southeast Kansas. I think the people that I represented are clearly out of step with a lot of the liberal leadership and philosophies of the current leadership in Topeka.”
As for the allegation that Barone wasn’t helping Horgan, Barone said they met only once during the campaign.
“Patty Horgan, after one meeting, never called me again,” Barone said. “She never sent me a fund-raising letter. She never asked for my input.”
Horgan said she came away from that meeting believing that Barone’s mind was made up.
“When I left there after an hour and a half, I asked him, ‘Can I count on your support?’” she said. “His words to me — and I will never forget them — are, ‘It’s too early to tell.’”
Horgan said she didn’t make a conscious effort to ignore Barone during her campaign.
“People did tell me I was probably better off if he didn’t back me,” she said.
Hensley said he was of the mind that associating with Barone would do more harm than good.
“She (Horgan) never asked for my advice, (but) had she asked, I certainly would have told her he is a liability,” Hensley said. “I do believe that. I think Patty had the liability of Jim Barone being her predecessor.”
While he believes the party would be better served by having a Democrat in the seat, Hensley made no bones about his personal relief that Barone’s time in Topeka is over.
“The bottom line is we’re better off without Jim Barone,” he said. “Even with Bob Marshall in.”
Up next
For her part, Horgan said she agreed that clashes between local and state election workers affected her race.
“We need to have better organization, and we need to be able to work together a little bit better,” she said. “I think Democrats took it for granted that Democrats would vote Democratic.”
Gaughan said he was encouraged by Tuesday’s results — citing Democrats winning the presidency and some key state races. Nancy Boyda also carried Crawford County, although she lost her re-election bid to Republican Lynn Jenkins in the 2nd Congressional District.
“Democrats are strong in Crawford County, and the results bear that out,” Gaughan said.
Bradrick and Grant both said they believe the party will regroup and come back strong in 2010 and 2012.
“(Voters) are going to want to know what did we do wrong,” Grant said. “We’ve got races coming up in four years, and we better figure out what we did wrong and correct it.”
Governor change?
Kansas state Sen. Dennis Pyle plans to introduce legislation requiring Senate confirmation if the lieutenant governor is appointed by the governor.
The Hiawatha Republican’s proposal comes amid speculation that Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will resign to take a job in the Obama administration.
That would make Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson the new governor. He then would appoint his replacement, likely a Democrat. Parkinson is a former GOP state chairman who switched parties to run with Sebelius in 2006.
Source: The Associated Press
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