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6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2004
KANSAS GOVERNMENT
Republicans remain dominant
Former Lawrence city commissioner wins 2nd Senate District seat
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA - Four senators and three House members lost their seats, though the overall partisan balance of power changed relatively little in the Legislature.
Republicans maintained a 30-10 majority in the Senate after Tuesday's elections. Republicans picked up three seats in the House, boosting its majority to 83-42.
It wasn't clear early yesterday how receptive the new Legislature will be to raising taxes for education once it convenes Jan. 10. The issue dominated the 2004 session and could play an equally big role next year, after legislators receive an expected ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court on a lawsuit challenging the state's school finance system.
In the 2nd Senate District,
Democrat Marci Francisco, a
"It's important that our voices are heard
compared to the conservative voices across Kansas."
Lawrence business owner
former Lawrence city commissioner, defeated Republican Sen. Mark Buhler. In the 18th, Topeka lobbyist and Democrat Laura Kelly defeated Sen. Dave Jackson, R-Topeka, by 91 votes in final, unofficial results, with provisional ballots to be reviewed.
district that has a strong Republican majority.
Sen. Janis Lee, D-Kensington, defeated Sen. Larry Salmans, R-Hanston, in the 36th District to win her fifth term. Redistricting of Senate seats following the 2000 Census pitted the two incumbents in a
However, Republicans picked up a seat in Wichita, where challenger Mike Peterson defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Henry Helgerson. Late in the campaign, Republics questioned whether Helgerson actually lived in the district, but Democrats said he did.
Republicans also picked up one seat in a newly created district in Johnson County.
In the House, the defeated incumbents included one who voted in May against a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage: Rep. Jan Scoggins-Waite of Dodge City, defeated by Republican challenger Pat George of Dodge City by a 2-1 margin.
Other successful challengers were Republican Virgil Peck of Tyro, ousting Democrat incumbent Rep. Jim Miller of Coffeville, and Democrat Mark
Treaster of Pretty Prairie, defeating Republican Rep. Mary Kauffman of Hutchinson.
Meanwhile, voters in districts with open seats said they were looking for new voices in state government.
Jim Kemp, 35, a Lawrence business owner, said the Legislature needed balance, including more liberals. He voted for Democrat Jan Justice of Linwood in the 3rd District Senate race, an open seat. The seat was won by Lawrence farmer Roger Pine, keeping the seat Republican.
"It's important that our voices are heard compared to the conservative voices across Kansas," Kemp said.
Democrats last held control of the Kansas House in 1992 and held the Senate last in 1916. All 165 legislative seats were to be filled, with contested races on the ballot in 32 Senate districts and 66 House districts.
Moore continues reign in 3rd District
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA — Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore's comfortable reelection victory rested on an unusually strong showing in Johnson County, suggesting Republican challenger Kris Kobach alienated many GOP moderates.
Moore had 55 percent of the vote in the 3rd District, with final, unofficial results posted yesterday. Kobach had 44 percent, with two minor party candidates splitting the remaining vote.
Moore carried Johnson County — the first time he'd done that in four congressional races — even though registered Republicans outnumber Democrats there by more than 2-1. It was Moore's widest margin of victory in a 3rd District contest.
Kobach had identified himself as a conservative before securing a narrow victory in the August Republican primary, and Moore attacked him as too conservative for the district.
"In general, he was just too far to the right to be attractive to that whole bloc of moderates," said Steve Cloud, a former Kansas House member from Lenexa who serves on the Republican National Committee.
In other congressional races,
Republican Sen. Sam
Brownback and GOP Reps.
Jerry Moran, Jim Ryun and Todd
Tiahrt all won comfortable victories.
The Moore-Kobach contest had been viewed as highly competitive, and many Republicans viewed Moore as vulnerable because the district leans Republican. Moore captured his seat in 1998 with 52 percent of the vote but received only 50 percent in 2000 and 2002.
Dwight Sutherland, a Mission Hills attorney and conservative activist, said many registered Republicans in the 3rd District who identify themselves as moderates are really closet Democrats.
"A lot of the socially moderate
Republicans are walking away from the party," Sutherland said. "Kris is a good candidate, but Dennis is lucky and he worked the district."
In conceding the race, Kobach told supporters that his campaign was about principles
such as opposing abortion, supporting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage and doing more to combat terrorism.
Kobach, 38, a former U.S. Justice Department official from Overland Park, also made immigration policy and national security key issues.
He attacked Moore, 58, of Lenexa, for voting against the use of National Guard troops along U.S. borders, a position Moore suggested was too extreme for the district.
Mark Simpson, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said Kobach's campaign themes did not play well with moderate voters.
"I think the district is moderate, so I don't think a conservative will win it," Simpson said.
Sutherland disagreed that Kobach was too conservative for the district, noting that Republican registration has increased more than 16,000 in Johnson County since the year began. However, he said Moore's attacks on Kobach as an extremist took their toll.
"They managed to turn him into a caricature of an uneducated redneck," Sutherland said, noting that Kobach is a UMKC law professor with degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities.
While Moore has needed votes from moderate Republicans to win, he's depended in past races on racking up big margins while carrying Democratic strongholds in Douglas and Wyandotte counties. Those margins have allowed him to prevail despite losing Johnson County.
However, this year, Moore won Johnson County by nearly 5,400 votes out of about 248,000 cast.
Uncertainties fill U.S.'s future in Iraq
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - It could be a tough next four years in Iraq for President Bush, depending in part on the outcome of a planned U.S. attack on the insurgents' stronghold at Fallujah. Will a renewed U.S. offensive break the back of the insurgency?
"This is a George Bush project, and it's going to stay that way," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. He expects little new help from other nations, and thinks Bush will soon begin talking more openly about an Iraq exit strategy.
Hungary's announcement yesterday that it won't keep its troops in Iraq beyond next March underscores another uncertainty: Whether international support for the war, military or otherwise, will grow or shrink.
In his victory speech yesterday, Bush mentioned bringing the troops home.
The answers to those questions will go a long way in determining when the Bush administration might be able to substantially reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq — and foresee an end to its huge financial investment — without risking Iraq's collapse into civil war.
Bush said throughout the election campaign that if given a second term he intended to remain on the same course in Iraq, hoping to stabilize the country despite a U.S. death toll that already exceeds 1,100 and has averaged two American deaths every day since an interim Iraqi government was installed in late June.
"We'll help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom, and then our service men and women will come home with the honor they have earned," the president said.
The United States has about 142,000 troops in Iraq now, roughly the same as one year ago.
The Pentagon recently raised the possibility of reducing that number after Iraq holds its first
elections in January, assuming the Pentagon can increase the ranks of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops.
A fresh contingent of U.S. forces will enter Iraq over the coming few months, replacing troops who are completing their one-year tours. In a reminder of the unexpected duration of this war and the strain it has placed on the military, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which fought the opening stages of the war in 2003, is going back for a second tour.
Getting within sight of an end to U.S. military involvement has been stalled by at least two problems Bush did not anticipate when he launched the March 2003 invasion of Iraq: A creative, shadowy and tenacious insurgency, and setbacks in building a reliable Iraqi security force.
Those two issues have important military dimensions. But they cannot be overcome by the use of force alone, says Army Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, who was intelligence chief for the U.S. military command in Baghdad during an earlier phase of the war. She says more economic, political and information efforts are needed to complement the role of U.S. and coalition troops.
Fast and other senior officers have said the United States and its coalition partners must communicate more clearly to ordinary Iraqis that they must stand up to the insurgents, take responsibility for rebuilding their own country and realize the United States cannot do it for them.
"It's as much about perception as it is about (military) wins and losses on the ground," Fast told a recent Army conference.
In a similar vein, O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said: "Either one — Bush or Kerry — despite all this campaign talk about staying the course would have had to recognize pretty soon that our presence in Iraq is part of the problem. It's necessary, but it's also part of the problem. Therefore a strategy to get out is actually useful, and it's not a sign of weakness."
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