What's the Matter with Kansas?
Pundits and Partisans are misreading the defeat of a pro-life constitutional amendment in Kansas. The problem isn't with Kansas.
It didn’t take long for pro-abortion advocates and Democrats to crow about the defeat of an oddly-written “Value Them Both” amendment to Kansas’ state constitution on Tuesday. “It is time to reevaluate the conventional wisdom about the midterms after this vote in Kansas,” wrote Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) on Twitter. “People are mad as hell at having their rights taken away.”
“The extraordinary turnout in Kansas today is a bellwether for what’s to come this November in the midterm elections and it’s crucial that we keep this momentum,” said Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood, in a statement.
As usual, there’s more to the story, and it undercuts claims that, somehow, abortion rights are the new nexus of the 2022 elections. Telling are the names of the official campaign committees for and against the abortion amendment: “Pro-life” amendment supporters were the “Value Them Both” (women and unborn children) campaign; the pro-abortion campaign was called “Kansans for Constitutional Freedom.” Just on the names along, score one for the latter; very conservative sounding if Orwellian in Republican-leaning Kansas (more about that later).
Then there’s the amendment’s actual wording, courtesy of ballotpedia.com. It was a proposed amendment, a new Section 22 under the Kansas Bill of Rights in the state’s constitution.
Ballotpedia assigns a two-part “readability score” for ballot initiatives, the Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level and Flesh Reading Ease formulas. The latter scored the amendment at an 11th grade level with a -46 reading ease. That’s very poor. A study of ballot initiatives between 1997 and 2007 demonstrated that low readability scores result in voters skipping over ballot questions. I would argue that voters tend to vote against ballot initiatives they don’t understand. And this was confusing.
Pro-abortion forces, thanks in large part to out-of-state funding, outraised the “Value Them Both” campaign by more than $1.3 million. About $13 million was raised and spent by both sides. Interestingly, the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City provided nearly $3 million of funding to “Value Them Both.” A left-wing national “dark money” group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, was the largest contributor to “Kansans for Constitutional Freedom with nearly $1.4 million. Two Planned Parenthood groups contributed another $1.4 million combined.
And then there were the campaign ads. Both sides tried to paint the other as extreme while holding a more “reasonable” or “common sense” position. The following may have been the most effective broadcast advertisement of the two campaigns by the pro-abortion campaign. It asserted that abortions are “already highly regulated” in Kansas, including no public funding, parental consent required, and an abortion banned “after viability” (20 weeks of gestation).
Whether Kansas abortions are really “highly regulated” is an open question. In 2019, the state Supreme Court declared that a right to abortion was included in the state constitution’s bill of rights. From Ballotpedia.com:
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt that Section 1 of the Kansas Bill of Rights "affords protection of the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control one's own body, to assert bodily integrity, and to exercise self-determination. This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life— decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy." Section 1 was part of the original Kansas Constitution of 1861, reading, "All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Court also argued that laws that limit this right are subject to strict scrutiny, where the government must show it has a compelling interest in the object of the law and that the law is narrowly tailored to such ends.
In 2021, due to this Supreme Court decision, a state ban on the horrific practice of “dismemberment” abortions was declared unconstitutional. Voters may find out the hard way that abortions are completely unregulated in Kansas until birth, contrary to what they were led to believe.
The pro-life television commercials were more defensive and not as effective. The following was the “Value Them Both” campaign’s most effective commercial, equating Kansas abortion law with California’s, serving as an “abortion haven.”
Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, and former White House advisor, opines that the vote may have occurred too soon after the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that found no constitutional right to an abortion, remanding decisions over policy to the states and the people.
Yes, Kansas has been a traditionally GOP state for many years, but more akin to “Main Street” Republicans (think President and Abilene native Dwight Eisenhower, former US Senators like Bob Dole, Pat Roberts, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, and the current senior Senator, Jerry Moran) versus the “Tea Party” variety, such as former US Representative, Senator, and Governor Sam Brownback.
Brownback emerged in 1996 when he successfully challenged appointed GOP Senator Sheila Frahm, who had been appointed to replace Dole. The Senate Majority Leader and GOP presidential nominee had resigned to focus on his campaign. Fourteen years later, the affable and mild-mannered Brownback was elected Governor after an unsuccessful campaign for President in 2008. He immediately drove “the boldest agenda of any governor in the nation,” including eliminating the state’s income tax, privatizing Medicaid, and large cuts in education and social spending. Problems ensued, and voters recoiled.
And pro-life organizers thought “trust the politicians” to regulate abortion was a winning message? They opened the door to scary and inaccurate claims that GOP legislators would completely ban abortions. Their counter-messages were weak and ineffective.
Four years ago, they elected a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly. Brownback left office in 2018 with a 30 percent approval rating. GOP Attorney General Derek Schmidt is challenging Kelly this fall and may win.
Kansas’ colorful history is known to Civil War buffs. In 1854, US Senator and future Democratic presidential candidate Stephen Douglas won enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act to admit both states to the Union. Both states and others would be allowed to choose whether to admit or ban slavery under Douglas's “popular sovereignty” policy. It resulted in “bleeding Kansas” as pro- and anti-slavery forces flooded the state.
Kansas was eventually admitted to the Union in 1861 as a “free” state. But not after abolitionist and insurrectionist John Brown, who had moved to Kansas, tried to capture a federal armory in what is now Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Army Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart were dispatched to successfully quell the insurrection. As actor John Wilkes Booth and others looked on, Brown was hanged for his crime. Lee and Stuart would also make history.
Kansas and other midwestern prairie states would become populist havens as railroad barons, and eastern banks forced homesteaders and farmers to sell their lands for cheap. Eugene V. Debs edited a newspaper in Girard, Kansas, amidst launching two of his five presidential campaigns as the Socialist Party nominee.
The Sunflower State has a stubborn, hairy-eyeballed independent streak that has spawned many leading Democratic politicians, including former Governor and later Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, along with 18-year US Representative and, later, Clinton Administration Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. Democrats have a foothold here. A vote against a confusing “pro-life” constitutional amendment should not surprise anyone who knows the state.
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” was the title of a 2005 book by Thomas Frank and a 2009 documentary by Joe Winston and Laura Cohen that condescendingly questioned why Kansans voted increasingly Republican against their economic interests. It encouraged them to turn back to their roots.
Pro-life Republicans are now asking much the same question. But there’s nothing the matter with Kansas. Ben Domenech: “Republicans needed to explain a lot of things. To get rid of something, as opposed to establishing a new amendment to the Kansas constitution, is a much more demanding and difficult task when dealing with referendums like this. The yes/no question in this case was not a clear binary, and if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
The problem is that pro-abortion forces featured stronger messaging that capitalized on the pro-life community’s ineffectual amendment amidst the state’s unique political environment.
They’ll learn since this is the playing field they cheered for when Roe was overturned. Pro-life Republicans will return to the drawing board and find a better way amidst their unique situation. And look for Democrats to overplay their hand by rushing to push pro-abortion ballot initiatives in other “red” states, falsely hoping support will spill over to their favored candidates. That’s why Democrats in Congress will continue to push for national legislation, but they’re already facing problems with their extreme base in places like Virginia.
This is just the first skirmish. It is now a 50-state battleground, and none can be taken for granted.
Hello, friend. You call those you oppose "pro-abortion". They prefer "pro-choice". Why because it's possible to intensely dislike abortions and support the right of women to choose what to do with their own bodies. To many that's a fundamental human right. "Hands off my body" has resonance.