OK, we’ll agree, no matter how you think President Donald Trump is at running the country, or making it great again, or defending the borders or choosing justices for the Supreme Court, he is probably the No. 1 crowd-raiser in the country.
Like him or not, he can raise the crowd, and during Saturday’s “Make America Great Again” rally in Topeka, that crowd is going to be the real news of the event which will close roads, with such tight Secret Service security some attendees will be afraid to scratch at the Kansas Expocentre without first catching the eye and getting a nod from a guard.
Now, we’ve all heard the speech about how well Trump believes he has done in nearly two years of being president, but another key for Kansans is going to be who attends the rally.
Count on Republican gubernatorial nominee Secretary of State Kris Kobach to put on a clean shirt for the event, at which he will be cited for being the first big-league Kansas elected official to endorse Trump. Trump returned the favor, endorsing Kobach over Gov. Jeff Colyer for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Look for the president to again tout Kobach over Democratic challenger Sen. Laura Kelly for the governor’s office.
Oh, and 2nd District congressional candidate Steve Watkins? He’s also one of the prime reasons that Trump will be holding his MAGA rally in the Second District. Watkins gets endorsed for his effort to keep the 2nd District congressional seat in the hands of a Republican so that Trump’s party can maintain a majority in Congress.
Of note, both Kobach and Watkins are in races that pollsters put within the margin of error in a heavily Republican state. What? A close Republican/Democratic race in Kansas? Yes, it can happen. At this point, conservative Republicans are of course wrapped up for Kobach and Watkins, but those moderate Republicans? The ones who elected Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Gov. Bill Graves and more than a dozen legislative leaders of past years who have endorsed Kelly? Not sure.
That’s where it becomes interesting to see just who shows up for the Trump rally and get chairs to sit in up front at the rally where they can be photographed in apparent support of the president, who by the way carried Kansas with 56 percent of the vote in 2016.
In the past two years, those 671,018 Kansans for Trump have seen just what he’s done with his power. It’s not quite certain whether some of those voters have decided that they made the wrong choice and figure that anyone who Trump endorses probably ought to stay at home, or if those who think Trump has done well will wonder why their legislators apparently don’t think so…or maybe had dinner reservations for Saturday evening…
So, do Kansas Republicans want to be seen at the Trump rally? Some will, some won’t, and it becomes a political decision on just where you care to be seen. Or, whether it will matter as much as, say, being seen at a strip club 20 years ago?
Interesting decisions coming up. Nobody doesn’t wasn’t to see the president at some point in their lives. This might be a bucket-list decision for some statewide and legislative candidates, but for some, well, they may lose years of service in their pension calculations if they are spotted at the rally in apparent support for Trump.
Do Republicans or Democrats get the best campaign handcards out of being seen at this rally?
Guess we’ll see in November…
Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com