My Thoughts on Kansas’ 2022 General Election and where I’m going from here

Opinion - 9 minute read

Election Day has come and gone and depending on who you are and where you live, this may be a bittersweet time for you. I feel like this is true for me in some aspects, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope in my state of Kansas. In fact, I would say the opposite is true. This election has reminded me of the whole purpose behind The Kansas Constitutional. The reason I started The Kansas Constitutional is something that most people who know me are aware of. I started this newsletter because I have written for both the left and right news media and got tired of both extremely quickly. Even at the most local level, news media hides important details, misrepresents information, and literally incentivizes reporters to bend the truth to fit a political narrative. They all do this while many boast that they’re “unbiased,” and I have called out journalists and exposed news sources through my newsletter for their so-called “unbiased” reporting.

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, it’s probably not a surprise that my views tend to lean more “conservative” (at least typically, though depending on the issue, that may not be the case). While I try to find stories that no other news sources are talking about, I always encourage my readers to look at other news sources for a firmer understanding of whatever issues they read about. After all, the whole purpose of this newsletter is to have a state of more informed voters. This is the whole reason I do my political deep dives (PDD), of which I’m skipping this week for the election, thank you for understanding. Conservative Kansans love themselves a good RINO and my PDDs have really been showing me this. Nevertheless, I look to the future with a toothy grin, and for good reason. I started my newsletter less than a year ago (April of this year to be exact). I have met so many wonderful people in this great state through this endeavor and it is through meeting these people that I get great supporters reading my work, like you. I do not and will not focus on the federal level as it does not interest me. I have very little power at the federal level, but at the state level, we can move mountains, and that’s what I intend to do as my readership continues to grow.

Kansas is a really interesting state in my opinion, and I am glad to be a born and raised Kansan (even if I wasn’t always thrilled about it). With all that being said, let’s talk about the election.

As far as Kansas Governor goes, we are going to have to endure another four years of Laura Kelly. I do not like Kelly as she has been the most tyrannical governor Kansas has ever seen (at least in my lifetime). No government should have the power to tell a business that they must remain closed because they deem the business as “unessential.” That is a direct assault on capitalism and NOT for the government to decide, but rather the consumers who will let a business thrive or die by where they choose to spend their money. That is how capitalism works. Leading up to election she has gaslit the entire state by raising our taxes to provide grants for the nearly destroyed small businesses she deemed “unessential” all under the guise of caring about small businesses. She’s lied about fully funding schools as she has been called out by a school board member who said their school had to sue to get the funding and it still wasn’t the full amount. She has continuously virtue signaled for the alphabet mob at the expense of women and children (and I say that as someone who is gay). She referred to the inflation as a “pandemic-induced inflation” rather than calling it what it really was—a government-induced inflation brought on by terrible economic policies by Democrats. She has vetoed two food tax reduction bills before finally signing one during election year. And on top of all this, she lied throughout her reelection campaign about working with both sides when in reality she has vetoed more Republican bills than any other governor in recent Kansas history.

Nevertheless, the majority of Kansans were not in favor of another four years of Kelly, and I look at that as a win in itself. I, along with 465,780 other Kansans voted for Derek Schmidt, who lost to Kelly by 14,733 votes, according to most recent polling data. I think Dennis Pyle is going to have a hard time showing his face in Kansas politics ever again as he received 19,768 votes which would have given Schmidt the win had Pyle not been so selfish about the election.

For U.S. Senate, I was happy to know that Jerry Moran would be staying and was rather quite popular compared to Democrat Mark Holland whose fanbase, at least the ones I’ve seen, are extremely unhinged. Also, don’t get me wrong, Moran is decent, but I am ready to see new blood take over his seat. The dude is nearly 70 years old and has held the position of U.S. Senator for Kansas since 2011. I’m hoping when his seat is up again that a younger Republican will rise to the challenge of filling his spot.

When it comes to the U.S. House of Representatives in Kansas, there are four. With the redistricting that Kansas did earlier this year, I was, honestly, a bit worried for District 1 as Lawrence, the wokest city in the state, was added to this district. Being a city of about 100,000 people, I was unsure how the rural population would fare in the election. To my delight, Republican Tracey Mann, not only won the district, but of all the U.S. House of Representatives in Kansas, he received the highest percentage of voter support in his race. Although I wasn’t surprised that Republican Ron Estes would win Kansas District 4, Kansas District 2 had me holding my breath for a moment before Republican Jake LaTurner finally came out on top. The most interest was clearly in District 3 where Democrat Sharice Davids ultimately won with the help of a lot of dirty tricks from outside Democrat organizations. This is an extremely blue area of the state, however, so even with the redistricting, it was going to be tough for Republicans. Whatever happens in the next district election, however, I do hope Republicans go with someone other than Amanda Adkins.

For Secretary of State, I was really gritting my teeth between who to vote for. I almost went with Libertarian Cullene Lang before ultimately settling for Republican Scott Schwab. This is the position that handles voting, and Schwab is the incumbent. I have not been impressed with him as Secretary of State, or even as a person as he is extremely rude, at least from interactions I’ve seen. I did know he was going to be the winning candidate though; however, I hope another Republican wins this position next time.

I must admit that I was greatly relieved when I learned that Kris Kobach won Attorney General. Though his election was close, and though he comes off as your run of the mill politician, I do believe he is going to do Kansans far more favors than his opponent, Democrat Chris Mann, could ever dream of doing.

State Treasurer is one of the biggest reasons I am a registered Republican. Before primaries, I was unaffiliated because the groupthink makes you dumb, people. However, I absolutely love Caryn Tyson, and I was going to vote for her. Unfortunately, Kansans went with Steven Johnson who is a Republican with a capitol D. I absolutely do not like this man. If you look at his voting record, he is not based in almost anything and I was not going to vote for him in the general election either. I, instead, went with Libertarian Steve Roberts which, as it turns out, many other Kansans did, too. In fact, he received 44,203 votes, the greatest number of votes of any Libertarian in the state of Kansas. This, of course, was only 5 percent of the votes and Johnson won anyway, but I do give my congratulations to Roberts and I’m grateful he ran, because I would have left it blank otherwise.

I’m looking forward to the State School Board after this election. Education is one topic I’m really wanting to focus on more, especially in 2023. There are a lot of based candidates on the State School Board. It’s a 10-member board that just got Danny Zeck, Cathy Hopkins, Michelle Dombrosky, and Dennis Hershberger, meaning there are now seven Republicans on the school board and I’m sure they’re going to have a lot of fun because the amount of porn and gender ideology books students have access to in their schools is absolutely mind boggling and disturbing. Not only this but data collecting, SEL, CRT, Queer Theory, and all the woke teachers and staff in our schools need to go.

As far as the judges go, I wasn’t too surprised that they were all going to stay. Most people had no idea about them and were just going to be okay with keeping them. Due to this, while I did want to see the majority of them go, I will live with this. There’s always next time, and I plan to be a lot bigger in the future so more people can be aware of who these people are.

The final things I want to talk about are the two constitutional amendments. I don’t think people really understood them, especially the first one. This may be oversimplifying it, but the first one would have basically put a check on the executive branch via the legislative branch to keep government tyranny from happening at the state level. I was in favor of this, and about half of Kansas was, too… just not the bigger half, unfortunately.

The other amendment Kansans seemed to understand better, with about 61.9 percent of voters being in favor of the amendment, adds the election of county sheriffs to the state constitution, which I also supported. I think the People having power to vote in and out elected officials is essential to stopping government tyranny and keeping those with power in check.

With all this being said, whatever your thoughts are on the Kansas elections, I hope you look forward to the future as it is filled with opportunities. A lot of changes are getting ready to happen for me as I have a few new adventures coming my way in the next couple months (more on that later). I appreciate everyone’s support, and if you can afford it, a $5 monthly paid subscription or $55 yearly paid subscription does help me out a lot. I’ve realized recently that many of my readers don’t know that journalism is not my fulltime gig. After quitting other news sources, I had to get a fulltime job while building this audience with a goal of being able to do this fulltime eventually. If you cannot afford a subscription, totally fine. I understand. Liking and sharing my posts does go a long way as it gets the word out there.

Thank you for reading and for your support!