Candidates say recruitment helped with decision to run

By Sarah Kessinger
Harris News Service
06/13/2006; 02:32:50 AM

TOPEKA - Just prior to Monday's filing deadline, Abilene City Council member Judy Leyerzapf joined the trickle of Republicans going Democrat in Kansas.

Leyerzapf was among five legislative candidates who have switched to the state's minority party recently to run for a House seat.

The defections follow another last year by former Republican Steve Lukert of Sabetha, who became a Democrat and was selected by the local party to replace outgoing Rep. Bruce Larkin, D-Baileyville.

Democrats also have welcomed former Republicans as their candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Both long-time Democrats and former Republicans seeking state office for the first time said recent calls from the governor factored into their decision to run.

"She said, 'We need ya,' " recalled physician Merle Hodges Sr., a former Salina mayor and Democrat who has considered running for years. "She's a very convincing lady."

Hodges then told her, 'Give me 24 hours and I'll call you back.' "

He did.

"I'd hope this next year would show a swing toward the Democratic side," said Hodges, who is challenging GOP incumbent Rep. Deena Horst. "I've had a whole bunch of Republicans calling me and saying they'd support me."

The "whole bunch," he said, added up to about a dozen.

Nicole Corcoran, the governor's spokeswoman, said Sebelius had made phone calls and spoken to Democrats and Republicans on the road, encouraging involvement among Kansans "committed to moving our state forward."

"She's talked to a number of folks about running," Corcoran said, "and is pleased to see many of them have answered the call to serve."

House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney, D-Greensburg, credited a team effort with the upswing in the number of Democrats filing for office this year. Both state and local party leaders co-organized recruitment, he said.

This year, the Kansas Democratic Party has candidates running for 100 seats, including 58 seats currently held by Republicans.

The number of Democrats is about 10 higher than each of the last three election cycles, which are every two years for House seats.

McKinney views it as a sign of people searching for the middle of the road rather than political extremes.

"A farmer in Kingman County told me one time our country has a little trouble staying in between ditches. We don't want too much government, too much taxes but there are things that need to be done for the long-term good of our communities. That's probably what's spurred this."

He's enthused by the quality of candidates.

"We're doing a better job getting our fiscal conservative, moderate candidates recruited and filed," McKinney said. "I think they're common sense people who are connected with the Main Streets in their communities who want to do what's right for the good of their communities."

Party leaders also hope for a boost from Sebelius' coattails. She carried about 71 of the 125 House districts during her first election campaign in 2002 and is back up for re-election this year.

Currently Democrats hold just 42 seats, having lost three two years ago.

"I think people feel pretty positive about where things lie. We're going into what looks like a very good year with a popular governor," said McKinney's chief of staff, Phil Stevenson.

Meanwhile, at least one Republican seemed a bit unnerved by the party switches.

Chapman Republican Greg W. McLaughlin, who's also vying to fill the seat of Rep. Shari Weber, who is not running this time, said he's wary of those who have changed their affiliations from Republican to Democrat.

"I'm wondering what's going on in Kansas when you have people who have been Republicans for a long time switching to run for election," McLaughlin. "It makes me nervous."

Former Republicans seeking office as Democrats:

1) Mark Parkinson, former Kansas Republican Party Chairman and Republican legislator, who is running for lt. governor

2) Paul Morrison, current Johnson County district attorney, running for attorney general

3) Steve Lukert, seeking re-election in the 62nd House district

4) Cindy Neighbor, former Republican legislator running to again represent the 18th House district

5) Duane Mathes, current Edwards county commissioner, running in the 117th House district

6) Judy Leyerzapf, current Abilene city commissioner, running in the 68th House District

7)Kent Goyen, running in the 114th House District; and

8)Walt Chappell, running in the 91st House District.

9) Brenton Weeks, running in the 29th House District

In Kansas, a Troubling Fissure for GOP

By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer

June 13, 2006

TOPEKA, Kan. — Mark Parkinson got his start in Republican politics at age 19, as a precinct committeeman. He served six years as a Republican state legislator, eventually becoming state Republican chairman.

But two weeks ago, Parkinson announced he was running for lieutenant governor — as a Democrat. He said he no longer felt welcome in the increasingly conservative Kansas Republican Party.

Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. The other two are targeting GOP incumbents in the attorney general's office and in the state House of Representatives.

Political observers say the fracture within the Kansas GOP may foreshadow the future for the national party. The division between moderates and social conservatives is expected to define the contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.

Kansas has been at the forefront of the culture wars that helped the Republican Party gain national dominance this decade. Twice in the last seven years, its Board of Education voted to teach alternatives to evolution in public schools. Voters in 2005 overwhelmingly approved a ban on gay marriage. The state's attorney general last year subpoenaed medical records of abortion patients.

"A lot of people in Kansas are feeling lost right now," said Parkinson, 48, who was invited onto the ticket by popular Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. "I decided I'd rather spend time building great universities than wondering if Charles Darwin was right."

Moderates who emphasize economic development and religious conservatives concerned with limiting abortion and gay rights have battled for more than a decade for control of the Kansas Republican Party, which dominates the state with 48% of registered voters. The remaining voters are split evenly between Democratic and Independent registration.

In 1994, when the GOP won both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years, a group of religious conservatives in Kansas ousted the moderates who ran the party. The intramural squabbling grew so great that four years later, the then-chair of the party unsuccessfully ran against the moderate Republican governor.

Today, websites for some county branches of the party instruct on how to identify RINOs — Republicans In Name Only — and keep them from gaining influence. Social conservatives have solidified their power over the party and are especially influential in low-turnout primaries and local elections. Increasing numbers of moderates like Parkinson are saying they've had enough.

Alan Cigler, a political science professor at the University of Kansas, compares the intra-party turmoil to the national schism between business-friendly moderate Republicans and cultural conservatives over illegal immigration.

"The state is kind of dividing up," Cigler said. "It's the Christian right versus the business interests of the Republican party. That's what Kansas is all about now."

The Kansas Republican Party, Cigler said, "has been ahead of the curve."

Ron Freeman, executive director of the state GOP, says the recent defections are due to the personal ambitions of the politicians, not because of any ideological shift.

"To say it's gone way to the right, that's not a fair analysis," Freeman said, noting that two of the party's four statewide officeholders back abortion rights.

One of those officials, Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, is opposed in the GOP primary by a candidate opposed to abortion rights. Another moderate, Secretary of State Ron Thornburg, is facing a primary challenge from a female GOP state senator who was reported in 2001 as saying family values began to erode when women got the right to vote.

Some Kansas voters say they feel shut out. "I'm absolutely fed up with the conservative Republicans," said Richard Meidinger, a retired physician in Topeka. "All the abortion stuff, gay marriage stuff doesn't belong in the legislative debate."

Martin Hawver has a name for lifelong members of the GOP like Meidinger: "failed Republicans." The editor of a respected Kansas political newsletter, Hawver's Capitol Report, Hawver counts himself among their number, occasionally doing the unthinkable and voting Democratic.

"It used to be you could never go wrong with voting for who the Republicans nominated," Hawver said. "But that's changing now. People are a little uneasy."

Cindy Neighbor is one of them. A veteran member of her local school board and a moderate, Neighbor, 57, unsuccessfully ran against a conservative for an open seat in the statehouse in 2000. She narrowly lost, but won in 2002.

Neighbor wasn't long for Kansas Republican politics, however. She backed an education bill that could have raised taxes, and party conservatives told her there would be retaliation. She lost the next primary to the same representative she'd ousted two years earlier. Another moderate Republican who'd co-sponsored her bill — Bill Kassebaum, the son of former Kansas U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker — was ousted at the same time.

Now Neighbor's running for her old seat — as a Democrat.

"It was, 'If you don't like this — goodbye,' " she said of her struggles to stay in the Republican Party. As a Democrat, Neighbor added, "you can still have your ideas and you're accepted."

Paul Morrison, the 51-year-old district attorney of the state's largest county, also switched to the Democratic Party. The laconic Morrison, who served as Johnson County's top prosecutor for 17 years, said he'd never been particularly partisan but thought the Democratic Party was "a better fit" for challenging state Atty. Gen. Phill Kline.

An outspoken evangelical, Kline has gained national attention for subpoenaing records of patients who had abortions at two Kansas clinics, as well as for saying that state social workers and psychologists are required to report teenagers who admit they have sex so law enforcement can conduct child abuse investigations. Morrison criticized Kline for "forging a public policy that fits a narrow agenda that most people don't agree with."

Whitney Watson, a spokesman for Kline, dismissed Morrison's challenge and noted that all of Kansas' county sheriffs, including some Democrats, had endorsed Kline. "It's unfortunate that Mr. Morrison believes that protecting Kansas children … is a peripheral issue," Watson said.

When Morrison announced he was challenging Kline last fall, Parkinson, a longtime friend, endorsed him. Parkinson said he figured it was the end of his political career. So the former GOP chairman and legislator was surprised to get a call from the Sebelius campaign exploring whether he'd join the governor's ticket.

Sebelius, whose Cabinet includes a former Republican governor, said she contacted Parkinson because she knew him from his time in the Legislature, not because of his party. Democrats in Kansas, she said, have a natural inclination to reach across party lines.

"Even if 100% of Democrats vote for something," Sebelius said, "it won't happen unless you can draw out Republicans."

"Even if 100% of Democrats vote for something," Sebelius said, "it won't happen unless you can draw out Republicans."