The 4th Congressional District race is not as close as it may appear from the TV ad war. In the latest SurveyUSA poll, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, Republican Mike Pompeo has 53 percent support to Democrat Raj Goyle’s 40 percent, meaning Pompeo’s lead has widened from 7 points in August to 10 points last month to 13 points now. Unless Goyle has an October surprise, it looks like Pompeo will succeed Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard.
UPDATE: Kiel Brunner, Goyle’s campaign manager, responded with this statement: “The same poll that had us losing the primary should not be the basis for judging this electorate. We have been open with our polling, and we have not seen anything from the Pompeo camp. Raj continues to enjoy the support of moderate voters who will decide this election.”
An internal Kansas House Republican memo about a school finance reform proposal by Speaker Pro Tem Arlen Siegfreid, R-Olathe, urged GOP candidates to “lie low” and “hope this blows over in the press,” the Lawrence Journal-World reported. Siegfreid proposed a school funding plan that would increase reliance on local property taxes and eliminate pupil weightings. Though the plan has some similarities to a budget proposal last session by GOP leadership and statements made by GOP gubernatorial candidate Sam Brownback, the memo by Peter Freund, the chief of staff to House Majority Leader Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, urged GOP candidates to “distance themselves as far as possible” from Siegfreid’s plan. The memo noted that Brownback already had disavowed the plan. It added that, “with any luck,” come voting time “the public will only remember a vague headline about Brownback.”
A weekend New York Times article expressed sympathy for Topeka for being the home of Westboro Baptist Church and the anti-gay Phelps family and its protests. The story likened Topeka to neighborhoods in other cities that have been forced to allow marches by neo-Nazi groups — only that rather than just pass through town, the Phelpses “moved in, signs, speech and all.” The article noted how Phelps protesters “remain a fixture at public parks, government buildings, other churches and graveyards” in Topeka. “So goes the fate of Topeka, a city where free speech is less an idea than a lived experience.”
