Noting the fierce three-way battle already going on for the state’s 2nd Congressional District seat, the CQPolitics.com blog asked a trivia question last week that would stump many a Kansan: Prior to 2006, when did the state’s voters last give Democrats as many as half of the U.S. House seats? The choices were 1932, 1958, 1974 and 1992. And the winner is . . . 1992 (Democrats Dan Glickman and Jim Slattery and Republicans Pat Roberts and Jan Meyers). But choosing 1958 earns an honorable mention — the state’s six seats were evenly divided then, too.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Phantom on Open thread 11/23
- American_Way on Open thread 11/23
- Phantom on Open thread 11/23
- American_Way on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- American_Way on Open thread 11/23
- dtrabert on Too many exemptions
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/23
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
19 Comments
6 seats in 1958; 4 seats today. Georgia had 5 seats back in the late 50s, I think it is about 10 or so today. Shows how Kansas is lagging in population.
Yeah Ben, and we are on track to lose another seat in the next reapportionment.
How’s all those Kansas values working for us?
Pretty soon, we will be just like Wyoming with only one rep for the whole state if we keep bleeding population compared to the other states.
Then we’d probably elect someone with multiple personality disorder just to make sure our “seat” remains divided and ineffective.
“6 seats in 1958; 4 seats today. Georgia had 5 seats back in the late 50s, I think it is about 10 or so today. Shows how Kansas is lagging in population.”
Back in the 1950’s both Atlanta and Birmingham were sleepy small southern cities with no economy and not much else. Today Atlanta is second only to Las Vegas in population increase. For the past many years, we have added almost 1000 new residents every day! This is like adding a city the size of Wichita every year! People have moved here because of the great weather and the booming economy which is still short of workers. But with that has come horrible air pollution- sometimes so bad in the summer you cannot even see the tops of buildings. Traffic here is virtually gridlocked from 7AM until about 8PM everyday- commutes that used to take 30 minutes now take 2 hours. Here in Cobb County where I live, we open a new high school almost every year and it is always over capacity from the day it opens. All the schools here have no playgrounds anymore because they are full of classroom trailers. We are so short of water that we are allowed only one day a week to water outdoors or wash your car and the sewage system is so backed up that during rainstorms, raw sewage has came out of the streets! My point is that explosive growth is not all a good thing. It is not what you really want. If Wichita grows, you should want a slow steady pace- maybe 4% a year at best.
And Kansas needs to go back to the BLUE state column once again. Republican values are NOT Kansas values!
I’m still kinda laughing at this idea that our seats are “split”. Maybe by party, but certainly not by ideology.
Check out Nancy Boyda’s voting record. In only six months, she is proving herself to be a FINE conservative republican.
And Kev, while I agree that unmanaged and unsustainable growth is not good, I hardly think Kansas will have that problem anytime soon.
Unchecked and unmanaged population shrinkage is just as bad. And if I had to chose? Well, speeding toward growth doesnt sound as bad as speeding toward death.
I dont usually make predictions this early, but I’m willing to bet Boyda is gonna be a one term, one hit wonder.
She is already alienating the democratic base that elected her. She’s pandering to the conservative repukes, thinking she has a free pass to screw her democratic base. She thinks democrats are so desperate to hold that seat, they will forgive ANY betrayal by her as being “better than ryun”.
I bet that thinking gets Lynn Jenkins elected by a landslide. Would we suffer anynore under her than boyda?
boyda would do well to remember what Tom Sawyer says. Given the choice between a fake republican and a real republcian, kansas voters will chose the real republican every time.
I guess we will see if boydas election was the result of folks approving of her or of folks disapproving of ryun.
I know how I’d bet MY money…
kev – I remember when I-285 was out in toe country …
Ben,
I don’t have data on how many Congressmen Georgia had in 1958, but based on population apportionment from the 1950 census, it should have had 9 or 10 Congressmen due to a 3.44M population= 2.28% of the total U.S. population of 151M. Multiply 2.28 by 435. Kansas had 1.91M people in the 1950 census. Thus we had 1.26% of the U.S. population and this multiplied by 435 = 5.48. Perhaps Kansas got 6 Congressmen because the apportionment was based on the U.S. adult-citizen population, which, given the large influx of post-WWII refugees and their children, would have taken Kansas beyond a 5.5 value.
But this numerical quibble aside, Georgia has certainly grown faster than the U.S. growth rate, while Kansas has lagged well-behind the U.S. growth rate, as you have pointed out, so we have lost Congressional representation.
Oops. I failed to specify that Georgia now has 12 Congressmen today.
The Population of Kansas doesn’t grow all the much at all through-out the years it has more to do with large population and continuous loss of rural population, while the NE and Wichita area continue to grow.
For instance, just take one County as an example: Pratt County had over 11,000 people in 1910, it peaked to 13,000 in 1930, and barely has 9,000 today.
This isn’t the most drastic example, but the population of the USA in 1910 was 90 million, it’s 300 million now.
So a county like Pratt in Kansas, if followed the population increase average of the USA, should be around 35,000 today, but it’s only 9,000. So in relative terms to the state of Kansas, it’s a huge population loss.
There are only a dozen counties in Kansas that grows in population, the rest loose population every decade.
And the reference to Atlanta, the metro Atlanta area had a million people back in the 1950’s, so it wasn’t as sleepy as you say. Although now it’s in the 6 million range. Their population has increased 6 folds, well beyond the national average.
Basically Kansas looses congressional seats because of relative population lose, although here in the Wichita area and NE Kansas still continues to grow at a good rate (although back in the 70’s and 80’s, the Wichita area stalled to a crawl because of the huge aviation layoffs.)
you are correct on that Joe, Atlanta was hardly a sleepy town when I grew up there. It was a cosmopolitan city.
On thing I noticed when I moved ‘up north’ for college was that my accent was not very strong and that my upbringing was more ‘complete’ in many ways than people I met from small-town Michigan.
The shrinkage of small-town Kansas will likely be a factor in whatever recovery Greensburg and now SE Kansas have after these natural and man-made disasters. How many people will rebuild in place; how many will see an opportunity to move elsewhere?
The only question one can ask is what YOU can do for Kansas and not what Kansas can do for you. And the answer to that is to vote Democratic for starters.
I think I’ll wait, Kev, to see who the republicans run against boyda before supporting ALL democrats.
I don’t look at party so much as I look for the candidate. Sometimes a Republican candidate is much better than the Democrats, because there are plenty of really bad Democrats in office.
“I don’t look at party so much as I look for the candidate. Sometimes a Republican candidate is much better than the Democrats, because there are plenty of really bad Democrats in office.”
In the past you could do that. I have done it myself. As I said, I voted for Bush I over Dukakis who is the worst candidate the Democrats ever ran. But this is a different time. The era of the “moderate Republican” has ended. If you vote Republican, you are in effect voting for extreme right wing candidates. That party has slowly but surely been taken over by the religious nutcases, neo facist, conspriacy screwballs, tax protesters and fans of Timothy McVeigh.
…not to mention the fans of ann coulter…
If you vote Republican, you are in effect voting for extreme right wing candidates. That party has slowly but surely been taken over by the religious nutcases, neo facist, conspriacy screwballs, tax protesters and fans of Timothy McVeigh.
A new day is dawning. The Republican party is returning toits roots. and its roots are not what you describe.
I guess i could say that the the Democrat party has been taken over by atheist nutcases, neo communist, conspiracy screwballs, tax lovers, and fans of Mao, but what would be the point?The extremists on both sides are going to be learning that the people aren;t going to take it any more, and are going to take their parties, and the government back from the nutcases, fascist communist, screwball, protesters