It was a special election with low turnout. About 120,000 votes were cast yesterday. Last November it was closer to 280,000.
And why is Gov. Brownback (supposedly) so unpopular?
No supposedly to it; Brownback's approval is in the toilet. Six years ago he passed deep tax cuts with the usual promise that it would create thousands of jobs and generate higher revenues. Well it didn't. Kansas has had large deficits ever since and the cuts have gotten deeper and deeper into popular programs like education, transportation, and the like.
“No supposedly to it; Brownback’s approval is in the toilet. Six years ago he passed deep tax cuts with the usual promise that it would create thousands of jobs and generate higher revenues. Well it didn’t. Kansas has had large deficits ever since and the cuts have gotten deeper and deeper into popular programs like education, transportation, and the like. “
I just don’t understand this drumbeat about how unpopular Brownback. The MSM was pronouncing his high level of unpopularity in 2014 :
“Brownback purged his moderate enemies and built a nice little conservative empire for himself. However, failing in the polls and seeing members of his own party backing his Democratic opponent; it is clear Brownback’s Conservative utopia is on the brink of collapse.”
http://mcimaps.com/sam-brownbacks-conservative-utopia-collapses-a-study-of-kansas-politics/
“The results (disastrous) have reduced the governor to making appearances at grim strip malls like this one in a desperate attempt to salvage his re-election bid.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-kansas-tea-party-disaster-20141023
“And now, a governor is in trouble — “
http://www.businessinsider.com/kansas-governor-race-sam-brownback-paul-davis-2014-10
And then after all that talk of Brownback being unpopular he wins by 4%.
http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/governor/kansas/
From my experience, this state has seemed to have low turnout in off year elections. That’s why I hate leftist ballot measures in off year elections because they know there will be low turnouts. Then they can get all the government employees and dems to turn out and their leftist ballot measure has a chance. I’ve seen that far too often and don’t care for ballot measures to be in off year elections. This election was necessary but you could predict it would be low turnout because that is the norm for off years.
As for Brownback, we needed to have cuts in government along with the tax cuts for it to work properly and the moderates, dems, and the media fought hard for that not to happen. The people of Kansas can’t have it both ways if they want it to work. We have to learn to live within our means when it comes to government, but the libs, dems, moderates, and the local medias refuse to understand that and fight tooth and nail to keep it from happening.
We also have a judicial system out of control that thinks they can step in by judicial decree and force the taxpayers of Kansas to pay more for things, especially education. Where we waste so much money on having way too many districts and all the administration bureaucracy that goes with them. Our legislature is a co-equal branch of government and they need to tell the judicial branch where to go when they try to force their tyrannical will on the taxpayers of Kansas. Let the legislature do its job with what it has to work with responsibly instead of putting us in budget hell year after year.
On another note, I did see Jim Thompson already declared he will run in 2018 against Estes. I say good luck with that as the dems will not have the time and resources they had this go round, as they try to defend many more seats.
CGato