KS-SEN 2020 Megathread: Marshall overperforms and wins

[MT Treasurer]

Godd riddance. Roberts retiring probably makes the seat more likely to stay R, but it could certainly flip in a perfect storm for Democrats. Lean R for now.

[MT Treasurer]

"Bold" prediction: This race will be closer than IA-SEN.

[MT Treasurer]

Blue wave? Kansas Democrats think they have a ‘real chance’ for U.S. Senate in 2020

“I think we have a real chance in 2020 to pick up a Senate seat here,” Gibson said. “I think Democrats are certainly going to be the underdog but I think we’ll have a punching chance in that contest.”

And the midterms show Gibson could be right. In 2016, Republicans in Kansas won all four Congressional districts by double-digit margins. But that stronghold fell in 2018 when only two districts won by double-digits. In District 3, Davids beat Yoder by a margin of 10 points. In District 2, Democratic Paul Davis barely lost to Republican Rep. Steve Watkins.

In addition to a strong showing in the midterms, Democrats gained ground in the state legislature this session when three Republican lawmakers switched party affiliations, including Sen. Barbara Bollier, Sen. Dinah Sykes and Rep. Stephanie Clayton.

Gibson said it’s a sign that Kansans’ long-held affection for the Republican party is waning.

“There’s a lot of people who I’ve met going around the state who are still registered with the other side, and have a deep cultural affinity for Republicans, but they feel that Democrats are more aligned with their interests and their values,” Gibson said.

[MT Treasurer]

I mean, if Republicans want to take races like this or AL/MT/AK for granted and think they’re safe no matter what because of "polarization" and "Trump coattails", they absolutely deserve to lose the Senate.

[MT Treasurer]

Nope, Likely to Safe R. The only reason Kobach lost the gubernatorial election is because it was a state race, not a national race.

It’s not exactly impossible for Democrats to win Senate races in red states, especially if the Republican candidate is incredibly flawed.

[MT Treasurer]

But it's still much more difficult, then state races.

That’s obviously the case in blue (Democratic) states, but I don’t think the answer is as obvious when it comes to red (Republican) states. There are more Democratic Senators from red states than Democratic governors (if we count MT and OH as red states, which is debatable: Kelly/JBE/Bullock vs. Tester/Brown/Jones/Manchin).

[MT Treasurer]

Not sure why people think this is anything other than Safe R. Even if Kobach is the nominee, Senate races are not Gubernatorial races.

Red state Democrats have done fairly well (and certainly a lot better than Republicans in blue states) in Senate races recently given that polarization is supposedly at an "all-time high." They won AL, MT, WV, OH, etc. and outperformed their state's lean/the fundamentals of the race significantly in states like MO, TN, ND, TX, OH, etc. in 2018 (or 2012/2014/2016, in many cases).

I mean, KS-SEN was already competitive in 2014 of all years, lol.

[MT Treasurer]

It's quite apparent he's either trolling or just really, really politically out of touch with everything.

I mean, you (and several other posters here) could easily put him on ignore and stop engaging with him, but the fact is you don’t...

[MT Treasurer]

Not exactly a surprise, but Republicans are worried about this seat:

In interviews, multiple Republican political operatives from Washington to Wichita say they fear a rerun of last year, when Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State and state party chairman, narrowly won a crowded primary and then lost the governor's race to then-Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly, who secured the endorsements of high-profile moderate Republicans.

The state's elections in 2018 weren't just an indictment of Kobach. They were also seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump and the legacy of former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, whose unprecedented tax cuts led to a budget shortfall worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Democrats didn't just flip the governor's residence, they also broke the state's entirely Republican congressional delegation, winning one of four Kansas House seats and coming close in another conservative district.

In August, the retiring Roberts told CNN he didn't know if Kansas was "deep red anymore" and wondered if it's now "maybe purple."

Pompeo still being courted:

Since Republicans took back the Senate in the 2014 election, majority leader Mitch McConnell has aggressively recruited who he believes are the most electable candidates. In the case of Kansas, he has sought an extraordinary salvation: a run by former Kansas congressman and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

On September 3, McConnell reiterated on conservative host Hugh Hewitt's radio show that Pompeo is his "first choice." A few days later, Pompeo told the Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star that he wants to serve the president as long as Trump wants him to be Secretary of State, adding to take his response "however you'd like." [...]

"In a multi-candidate field without Mike Pompeo, Kobach is likely to win" the primary, said David Kensinger, a Republican strategist who managed successful statewide campaigns for Roberts and Brownback. Any other Republican candidate would be a "strong favorite" to win the general election, he added, while "Kobach would be, at best, a severe risk."

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/15/politics/pompeo-senate-kansas-republican-fear-kobach/index.html

[MT Treasurer]

Former Republican, now Democrat, State Senator Barbara Bollier of Johnson County to run for Senate.

I can't imagine this strategy doing better in Kansas than Florida...

https://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/gov-rick-scott-leads-charlie-crist-in-early-returns/2205127/

Eh, these races aren’t even remotely comparable.

[MT Treasurer]

Not good! Barbara Bollier is exactly the kind of shrill neoliberal establishment corporatist Kansans love to elect (Kelly, Kassebaum, Sebelius), especially when Republicans nominate a radical male. Might be time to move this to Tossup, especially considering that Trump's approval rating has plummeted in the state.

[MT Treasurer]

Deeply troubling insights into the voting behavior of misandrist Kansans revealed:

Here’s what Susan Wagle, president of the Kansas Senate, is telling Republicans who wonder why they should pick her over former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall or even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in next year’s U.S. Senate primary: “The only person who can beat their liberal female is a conservative female.”

Actually, two Democratic women, state Sen. Barbara Bollier and Manhattan Mayor Pro Tem Usha Reddi, are running to replace retiring Sen. Pat Roberts. But the further Wagle walks down the road of reasoning that only a woman can win, the iffier her whole fire-with-fire proposition sounds.

Because the reason only a woman can succeed, she told about 20 members of the Wyandotte County Republican Party the other night, is that “we have women who just tend to vote for women.” Their thinking, according to Wagle, goes like this: “I can relate to her. She’s been a mom and drops her kids off.”

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article237845969.html

Depressing stuff, folks! Kansas is truly the antithesis of everything my beautiful state stands for.

[MT Treasurer]

She has a better chance than Greenfield

This, but unironically.

[MT Treasurer]

Kansans love their radical centrists and middle-aged neoliberal ladies. Barbara Bollier is going to do them proud in the Senate.

D+1.

[MT Treasurer]

Is it sarcastic or not?

Only somewhat. I really don’t buy that Republicans can take this race for granted and that it’s safe R no matter what, even with Kobach as the R nominee.

[MT Treasurer]

Marshall wins by 7-12% if he runs a competent campaign (big if), Kobach either loses narrowly or wins by the skin of his teeth (something like a 1% win, at best a MO-SEN 2016 "redux").

Kobach will make this competitive, no doubt whatsoever.

E: Also, I’m getting Heitkamp vibes from Bollier tbh

[MT Treasurer]

The pause with regard to Marshall also puzzles me. On paper, Marshall is the exact type of Republican McConnell wants in the Senate. Hell, he's the only Republican I can think of in recent memory who defeated an incumbent from the center in a primary.

It also puzzles me, and the only two reasons I can think of which don’t have anything to do with Marshall himself are the late filing deadline (June 1) + primary (August 4) (which means that there’s still plenty of time for other candidates to run/be persuaded to enter the race, including Pompeo) and the fact that the last time McConnell and Trump meddled in a Republican primary in a deep red state they lost the Senate seat in said state, which is far more Republican than KS.

[MT Treasurer]

MT Treasurer seems very pessimistic about Kansas, don’t know why though

I think Marshall would win (not by a landslide though), but I certainly don’t buy the "Titanium R KS" narrative.

1. Kobach is a serious contender for the nomination and probably even a slight favorite. He’s as close to a Kansan version of Roy Moore as you could realistically get.
2. This state elected a Democratic governor in 2018 and it wasn’t even close. Yes, KS has elected Democratic governors before, but defying the partisan lean of your state in 2018 matters a lot more than it did in 2002, especially when your victory is fueled by the same larger suburban trends we observed all over the country.
3. This particular seat was already competitive with an uncontroversial Republican incumbent in a Republican wave year, and KS has only gotten less Republican since then. 
4. The state is pretty clearly trending Democratic, and Trump doing significantly worse in 2020 than in 2016 will only help Bollier. It’s much easier to overcome a 10-point deficit at the top of the ticket than it is to overcome a 20-point deficit.
5. Bollier is basically the embodiment of the Democrat who has exactly the right profile to win statewide. She fits her state like a glove and has run a pretty good campaign so far.
6. Red states are generally more open to sending candidates from the other party to the Senate than blue states.
7. Even if Marshall wins the nomination, he’ll probably have to move to the right to beat Kobach in the primary, which will hurt him in a general election.

TL;DR: This is not the kind of race Republicans can take for granted.

[MT Treasurer]

2. So by your own standard Cassidy will lose in LA ?
3. Roberts is unpopular because he has spent his life in DC and doesn't live in KS anymore  
4. Trump won KS by 20 points in 2016, which is not far worse than Romney. Why do you think he will win it by only 10 points this year ? Kansas  is not Johnson County and you should stop acting like if that was the case.
5. A liberal suburban women will attract conservative working class voters in Wichita ? Or rural pro guns voters. LOL. She is basically a McCaskill clone.
6. That's unfortunately true, but Kansas is less prone to do so than WV or MT
7. Because KS is not a conservative state anymore ?

2. No. He’s an uncontroversial Republican incumbent in the Deep South in a state where the Democratic bench has been decimated. Hardly comparable to Kansas.
3. Cool, do you think any of this would have mattered if Pat Roberts had been a Democratic incumbent up for reelection in a Clinton +20 state in 2018?
4. The state is more suburban than you would expect. Johnson County (where Bollier happens to be from) contains more than 20% of the state's population, and it’s only growing (for a more detailed forecast: https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2016/02/03/kansas-population-johnson-county-wichita-state.html). But you’re right, other counties in the state are trending Democratic as well, while the Republican counties are pretty much maxed out for the GOP and losing population. There’s no way Trump wins KS by 20% in 2020.
5. She’s not running as a liberal woman, she’s running as a Republican-turned-bipartisan. The former doesn’t sell well in KS, the latter sure does, especially given the alternative.
6. Probably true, but that’s not saying much, especially in the case of MT.
7. It is, but it’s rarely sent Republican fire-breathers or hardcore conservatives to the Senate (I guess Brownback counts, but he was far less controversial as Senator than governor). Sheila Frahm and Nancy Kassebaum hardly qualify as Republicans these days.

Either way, the idea that this race is "Safe" R if states like IA are rated Lean R at worst is nonsense. Nathan Gonzales just moved the race from Solid R to Lean R.

[MT Treasurer]

2. Well, the reason why I talked about LA is that you mentioned the 2018 KS-GOV results as the proof that republicans would lose Kansas : ''This state elected a Democratic governor in 2018 and it wasn’t even close. Yes, KS has elected Democratic governors before, but defying the partisan lean of your state in 2018 matters a lot more than it did in 2002, especially when your victory is fueled by the same larger suburban trends we observed all over the country. '' So yeah, by your standard the fact that a democrat won the LA-GOV race last year with the massive support of suburban voters would mean that the LA-Sen race is going to flip, see why it's stupid to compare Gov and Sen races ?

3. What's your point here ? Sure, democrats usually don't care about where their senator live and Roberts would have won easily, but that's not the question here.

4. Yeah, Johnson County is growing, but like you explained the county represents only 20% of the state population, so stop acting like if Johnson County was the equivalent of Cook County for Illinois

5. Yeah, the Charlie Crist playbook, ''the GOP was great Under W but now with Trump they're just nazis.''
Yeah, this kind of strategy will work among Bush/Obama or Romney/Clinton soccer moms, but once again these voters are not enough to win KS in a federal race.

6. The last time they sent a D Senator it was in 1932, so yeah this element should be noted

7. That has nothing to do with how we should rate this race, TN was also once know for electing moderate republicans to the Senate, that's not the case today but TN is still Safe R.

2. Yeah... no, you just ignored my previous points (LA Dems have no bench, the Deep South is more Republican and ‘inflexible’ than KS, there’s no uncontroversial R incumbent running for reelection in KS, etc.).

3. My point is that Republicans suck at winning Senate races in red states (KS-SEN 2014, MO-SEN 2016, WV-SEN 2018, etc.).

4. Johnson is hardly the only KS county trending Democratic...

5. She’s probably also going to do better than Biden in rural KS, even if it’s only by 4-6% or something like that (in a close race, that could be the difference).

6. These things are true until they aren’t.

7. Eh, Blackburn underperformed Trump/Lee by a lot, so saying that this doesn’t matter isn’t really accurate. Bredesen did 15 points better than Clinton; if Bollier does 15 points better than Biden, the race will be a Tossup at worst for Dems.

By the time election day rolls around Bollier is going to make you guys sweat like dogs

If Kobach wins primary its D+1 and if Marshall does it's a tossup, it would of been safe R only if Pompeo ran

This, minus the Pompeo part.

[MT Treasurer]

For those of you who think this is Safe R even with Kobach and that KS couldn’t possibly be more competitive than, say, IA or CO:

“National Republicans have outright said that the controversial Kobach can’t win a general election after losing the 2018 governor’s race by 5 points to Democrat Laura Kelly,” writes the Cook Report’s Jessica Taylor. “In private polling, Republicans have Kobach losing to likely Democratic nominee Barbara Bollier, and Kobach leading every other Republican in a head-to-head except Pompeo. Add in the fact that Democrats have a strong recruit in Bollier ⁠— a former Republican state senator who cited Trump as one of the reasons she switched parties in Dec. 2018.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/10/this-is-how-democrats-flip-senate/

[MT Treasurer]

Republicans aren't stupid enough to

...Yes. Yes, they are.

[MT Treasurer]

Marshall is the clear favorite. And if he wins the nomination, this contest is safe R.

I don’t buy this at all.

[MT Treasurer]

So the primaries are 1 month away (August 4).

If Kobach wins the primary, would this race be a tossup?

"Hot take" apparently, but it will be at least somewhat competitive even with Marshall IMO.

[MT Treasurer]

Republicans are blowing this race big time, and it’s not as if this wasn’t predictable when Roberts announced his retirement. Tossup would probably be too generous to Republicans if Kobach wins the primary, and it’s by no means Safe R even with Marshall or Hamilton (at best Lean R).