Now, nearly everyone cares, or at least wants to know, whom their governor is, but state treasurer and insurance commissioner?
It’s largely because there is a handful of state senators who are in those races, and if they get elected, there’s going to be back-filling to do, to replace those senators with new senators who will get two years on the job before they stand for election.
Those fill-in senators will be selected by Republican and Democrat party officials—precinct committeemen and committeewomen—and if the right candidates win the governorship or state treasurer or insurance commissioner, they give up their Senate seats for better-paying fulltime jobs.
And relatively quietly, there are already some Republicans and Democrats who are chatting with those precinct committee officials to see whether they can take those Senate seats abandoned by the statewide office winners.
Take the governor’s race.
If Democrat Sens. Laura Kelly, of Topeka, and Lynn Rogers, of Wichita, are elected as governor and lieutenant governor, they will leave two Senate seats to be filled by their districts’ Kansas Democrat Party officials. The seats stay within the party, so Democrats will continue to have nine senators, just two new faces.
If Secretary of State Kris Kobach and his runningmate Wink Hartman are elected, well, they just get new jobs. Kobach abandoned his secretary of state office for the governor’s race.
If independent Greg Orman is elected governor, his lieutenant governor runningmate John Doll, who used to be a Republican, will leave his Senate seat for a replacement, presumably as Republicans which was what Doll was before dropping the party membership.
If Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, is elected treasurer, there’s going to be a new face in the Senate for the next two years.
If Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, is elected insurance commissioner, the remaining two years of her four-year Senate term will be filled by those party officials.
Those replacements? For Democrats it probably isn’t going to shift votes on the Senate floor. Oh, and Democrat representatives are being quiet about their aspiration to the Senate. They need to be reelected first, and they all appear to have the common sense not to talk out loud about giving up the House seats they are campaigning for now. That wouldn’t sound good on the doorstep, would it?
It’s the insurance commissioner race where there is likely to be more political consequence. Republicans now have 30 Senate seats and depending on whether Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, R-Galena, who was appointed to the seat after now-State Treasurer Jake LaTurner left the chamber, wins over Democrat Bryan Hoffman, of Mulberry, the number will not change.
But…already there are some House members and political groupies quietly looking at the seat Schmidt will give up if elected. Nobody’s talking yet, but there are very conservative Republicans looking at taking Schmidt’s chair, and there are moderate Republicans looking, too.
Why the interest in the Schmidt seat? It’s because she is a moderate Republican who often votes with Democrats on tax, school finance and social issues.
That means, for Senate leadership purposes, she might just as well be a Democrat, and if she is gone and replaced with a conservative, well, it means that vetoes can be overridden, and that there is a solid conservative majority in the chamber. For the Senate’s conservative leadership, it doesn’t get much better than that. A majority to pass bills and a super-majority to knock down vetoes.
Nov. 6? The election will be important, but depending on the winners, it may get even more interesting…
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