Our state’s turn in the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog series on state politics came Wednesday under the headline, “The End of a Kansas Tradition: Moderation.” It put the “near-fatal wound” that centrist Republicans were dealt in last month’s GOP primary in the context of a “two-decade drift to the political right” in the state, highlighting how once-Democratic Sedgwick County “has transformed into a good political bellwether, coming within 1 percentage point of the statewide vote in the last three elections.” The blog gave Mitt Romney a “100 percent chance of carrying the state” while noting a “a moderate Republican or Democratic comeback on the state level is possible” should the controlling conservatives overreach. It closed with a prediction from David Kensinger, formerly Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief of staff: “You’re going to see durable conservative majority governing Kansas for the foreseeable future.”
The Kansas Department of Revenue projected that Kansas would have added about 150,000 new jobs between now and 2020 without any state tax cuts. The expected impact of the state tax cuts passed during the recent legislative session is an additional 20,000 jobs. Similarly, the department estimated that Kansas could have expected 200,000 new residents without the tax cuts, and it expects that to increase by about 40,000 as a result of the tax cuts. “Despite the administration’s claims that tax reform will light a fire under the economy, the Department of Revenue’s own projections show less than amazing results,” a Hutchinson News editorial noted. And those tax cuts are projected to result in large budget shortfalls.
Many state insurance commissioners find themselves between a rock and a hard place: The federal government requires them to show progress by Nov. 16 toward setting up health insurance exchanges, but state-level conservatives insist they do nothing in the hope that the GOP will retake the White House and U.S. Senate on Nov. 6 and repeal “Obamacare” next year. According to Reuters, only 13 mostly Democratic states have made the commitment to establish their own insurance exchanges; under the law, those that don’t will see the federal government step in to do the job. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger is among the insurance commissioners in this delicate position. “Even the conservatives, given the option from having some control to no control, they’d prefer to have some control,” she told Reuters. “But until this election is behind us, they’re not willing to do anything that would show they’re supporting Obamacare. And that’s the same situation a lot of states are in.”
Our state’s turn in the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog series on state politics came Wednesday under the headline, “The End of a Kansas Tradition: Moderation.” It put the “near-fatal wound” that centrist Republicans were dealt in last month’s GOP primary in the context of a “two-decade drift to the political right” in the state, highlighting how once-Democratic Sedgwick County “has transformed into a good political bellwether, coming within 1 percentage point of the statewide vote in the last three elections.” The blog gave Mitt Romney a “100 percent chance of carrying the state” while noting a “a moderate Republican or Democratic comeback on the state level is possible” should the controlling conservatives overreach. It closed with a prediction from David Kensinger, formerly Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief of staff: “You’re going to see durable conservative majority governing Kansas for the foreseeable future.”
