Election 2016: Kansas Legislature Results
If we hope to turn this country around then we have to start out there in those deep red states. The Republicans have been winning a long time because they have a long term strategy that built a red state rural and exurban firewall against the demographics that all the pundits have said spell their defeat.
It’s not readily apparent to some, but each of these deep red states has urban counties that would gladly turn their district’s electoral vote to the Democrat candidate if they could do that. It’s also important to un gerrymander some of those districts because urban areas across middle America are being disenfranchised by diluting their urban vote into multiple rural zones with the population advantage leaned towards the rural area. *
The Democrats have to adopt a long term strategy that includes getting as many rural states as possible to switch their electoral vote allocation to district by district, senate seat by senate seat. To get there we have to have an inch at a time strategy in our red states. The Kansas Dems are working to get there.
Republicans will retain majorities in the Kansas House and Senate, but Gov. Sam Brownback may face a less cooperative Legislature next session.
Democrats, who ran on a platform of tax fairness and a promise to increase school funding, picked up seats in both chambers after seeing their numbers dwindle in the past six years. That comes on top of victories by moderate Republicans in the August primaries, which saw the ouster of 14 conservative incumbents.
“There’s very likely to be an anti-Brownback majority in the Legislature,” said Bob Beatty, a political scientist as Washburn University.
More: Election 2016: Kansas Legislature results
* We need a democratic equivalent to ALEC - an organization dedicated to spinning up model legislation and test cases to protect urban voting rights. e.g. Laws that make it impermissible to split a city below a population level of X between congressional districts etc. etc.