We should be decades beyond commenting on what women politicians wear. We don’t, usually, notice what kind of suits the dudes in office are sporting. Men, especially, should steer clear of this topic.
Notice anyway that Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly wore purple pants and purple boots at a chilly inauguration on Monday. Maybe she just liked the outfit. Maybe the pants and boots were particularly toasty. But because the color’s handy, let’s draw some symbolism from it.
She’s a blue governor in a red state. Is Kansas becoming more purple? Maybe. It replaced one Republican congressman with a Democratic congresswoman. Kelly’s win over Kris Kobach, a Democrat over a Republican, might also suggest the state’s hue is trending magenta. And a few moderate Republican lawmakers recently declared themselves Democrats.
But is the state really becoming a blend of red and blue? Or is it becoming more distinctly red and blue?
Remember that Kobach barely beat then-Gov. Jeff Colyer in the Republican primary. They differed little on policy. Lower taxes. Smaller government. Less regulation. No abortion. Their differences were more in style. Had Colyer won the primary — again, he lost by this much — it’s entirely plausible that he’d be governor today. Kelly was propelled to office every bit as much by antipathy for confrontation-happy Kobach as she was by support for the mild messages she used in her campaign.
What’s more, Democratic governors aren’t that novel here. Of the last 10 governors, half have been Democrats.
Those party switchers? They were already occasionally voting with Democrats. Their switches came with some tactical benefits.
Yes, more Democrats got elected to the Kansas House this year. But so did more deeply conservative Republicans. It was the moderate, purple middle that faded a tad.
Or there’s another way to look at our color theme. In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, it was a reference to a bruise. Kelly certainly looks at state government as wounded by tax cuts that begat revenue drops that begat budget cuts.
As she looks to restore spending — for better foster care, smoother highways, safer prisons, more robust schools — she’ll struggle against a Republican leadership in the Legislature that’s even more conservative than it was a year ago. Some of those folks will run for the U.S. Senate and have every reason to appeal to the right-wing base of the GOP. And they’ve already signaled that they’ll fight back against Democratic tax-and-spend tendencies.
She ended her State of the State speech declaring it was time to get to work. She needs to brace for a fight.
Scott Canon is the managing editor of Kansas News Service.