He lowered taxes promising the lost revenues would be made up in growth, and the growth never came creating a fiscal mess…. Voters lambasted Republicans for the mess.
The across-the-board budget cuts for a time have allowed for endless hectoring about ‘cutting funding for schools’ - which is pretty difficult to understand given the palatial nature of so many schools in Kansas.
Every dollar and grant for CAPITAL expenditures, and pennies for staffing.
Current challenger has been bearing the albatross of Brownback-sins with incredibly annoying and repetitive commercial blitz since back in (literally) January/February.
Given the overspend, and the complete lack of any official discussion of Covid response - I’m pretty sure the dumb-clucks will end up putting the Dem back in.
Laura Kelly and the Democrats are trying to make this election into a third Sam Brownback term. He is unpopular in the state. His social conservatism caused the Democrats to hate him. The economic Republicans could tolerate his social conservatism if his economic plans worked. They didn't and that combined with his social conservatism made them hate Brownback, too. The association of Kris Kobach to Sam Brownback sunk Kobach's gubernatorial campaign in 2018.
I haven't seen a poll for almost a month. The polls to date have shown a close race with both having the lead in some but none that I recall had either beyond the MOE. Same with Kobach-Mann race for AD. I'm not confident about either of these races given how many Economic Republicans hate social conservatives (like Schmidt and Kobach) more than they hate the Democrats and have a history of stabbing social conservatives in the back come election time. It also hurts Schmidt to have Dennis Pyle running as an independent. He could draw off some hard-core social conservative support that Schmidt probably needs in order to win.
He didn't do this without the Congress. I don't see how he got the full blame.