By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The Ellis County Democratic Party headquarters officially opened Monday night in Hays at 1502 Vine.

Party chairman Henry Schwaller IV, who is also the Hays vice-mayor and a business professor at Fort Hays State University, welcomed supporters, which included local Democrats, three Democratic candidates and, perhaps surprisingly, a sprinkling of Republicans.

“This is the year that we have to take control,” Schwaller told the crowd in his opening remarks. “There can be no more tinkering and experimenting with the Kansas economy. We’ve seen the results of it. Trickle-down economics really doesn’t help anyone at all. It destroys our economy, it destroys education, transportation and everything we take for granted as Kansans.”

Democratic candidates attending the opening were incumbent 111th District State Rep. Eber Phelps of Hays, Secretary of State candidate Brian McClendon from Lawrence, and Ellis resident Chris Rorabaugh, who is running for Ellis County Commission District 1.

Phelps characterized his last two terms as “a lot of communication, a lot of cooperation, and a lot of collaboration … Obviously, we turned the Brownback experiment around and got our state back on solid footing.”

Phelps will face another Hays resident in the November general election — Republican Barbara Wasinger, who currently serves as an Ellis County commissioner. Rorabaugh, a city of Hays employee, will take on Republican Butch Schyler, retired Ellis County health administrator, and independent candidate John Walz, Ellis, who works for the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office.

The enthusiasm of young Kansans and their voter participation is important, Phelps reminded the group, as he singled out Connor Montford, president of the Fort Hays State University Young Democrats.

“We’ve been trying to do a big push on helping students realize it’s their future that’s at stake and that they do have a say in what goes on in the state,” Montford said.

Montford is a political science major from Colby. When he was a freshman at FHSU, there were just four students involved in the meetings of the Young Democrats group on campus. Now in his senior year, Montford says the group has grown considerably.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of phone banks, a lot of canvassing. We have some great volunteers that’ve been helping out,” added an enthusiastic Montford. “We’re going to be very busy up to the election trying to get good Democrats elected.”

For many years, Ellis County was a Democratic stronghold in a traditional Republican state. Voter registration and winning candidates have gradually shifted to the Republican Party.

Brooklynne Mosely, Kansas Democratic Party Deputy executive director, lives in Lawrence, a longtime Democratic stronghold.

“I’m super excited to see the turnout for this event,” Mosely told the crowd. “I think people in Lawrence think they have the monopoly on what Democrats look like in Kansas. We actually have great Democrats across the state,” she said with a big smile.

Earlier in the day, McClendon spoke to the local bar association and to FHSU students on campus.

McClendon likes to point out he made his childhood home in Lawrence, Kansas — the center of Google Earth. A former Google vice-president of engineering, he later returned from Silicon Valley to work as a research professor at his alma mater, the University of Kansas.

He said his tech experience made him want to run for secretary of state. He’s built the online voter registration program “KS Votes” to make the process easier.

“KS Votes has registered over 8,000 Kansans in nine months so far,” he said.

The recently updated version is in Spanish and also sends requests to county clerks for mail-in ballots.

“And this is something that’s really important to me because I believe if we could vote by mail, if we could sit at home, read about all the candidates, study them carefully and make good decisions, then the candidates we pick would not be so much about party and could be much more about person,” McClendon said.

He also talked about the importance of ensuring election reporting systems can’t be hacked, which he said mostly involves training the people who run them.

“We have very good candidates, but it does require getting all your friends, not just your Democrat friends, to vote,” urged McClendon. “We need unaffiliated voters and Republicans to change their opinions about party and look at all the candidates on the ballot.”

“This is the strongest Democratic ticket we’ve had since maybe back in (Joan) Finney’s day,” agreed John T. Bird, a lifelong Hays Democrat. “If you don’t have candidates, you’re defaulting.”