The squat, bunker-like building in a south Topeka suburb does not look like a place to turn American politics on its head. Nor does Mark Parkinson, a tall, affable man, look too much like a revolutionary. But here, deep in the American heartland, are the warning signs of a political earthquake.
The two-storey office block is Parkinson’s campaign headquarters as he runs as Democrat candidate for deputy governor. So far, so normal. Except that only a few weeks ago Parkinson was a Republican. In fact, he was Kansas Republican party chairperson.
His defection to the Democrats sent shockwaves through a state deeply associated with the national Republican cause and the evangelical conservatives at its base. Nor was it just Parkinson’s leave-taking that left Republicans spluttering with rage and talking of betrayal. It was that, as he left, Parkinson lambasted his former party’s obsession with conservative and religious issues such as gay marriage, evolution and abortion.
Sitting in his headquarters, the new Democrat is sticking to his guns. Republicans in Kansas, he says, have let down their own people. ”They were fixated on ideological issues that really don’t matter to people’s everyday lives. What matters is improving schools and creating jobs,” he said. ”I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.”
Profound implications
This is music to Democratic ears and has profound potential implications for November’s mid-term elections. Kansas has been an iconic state for the Republican right, a symbol for issues such as teaching creationism in schools and fighting abortion rights.
The modern Republican party, masterminded by political guru Karl Rove, has harnessed fury over such topics to allow the Republicans to dominate United States politics since 2000. This was the topic of Thomas Frank’s hit book of the 2004 presidential election campaign, What’s the Matter with Kansas?. It used the state’s falling under the spell of conservative Republicanism to explain national American politics.
But in a swathe of heartland states such as Kansas, Democrats are seeing the first signs of their party’s rebirth. Parkinson is not alone in switching sides. In Virginia, Jim Webb, a one-time Reagan official, is seeking to be a Democrat senator. In South Carolina, top Republican prosecutor Barney Giese has defected after a spat with conservatives. Back in Kansas, another top Republican, Paul Morrison, also joined the Democrats and is challenging a Republican to be the state attorney general.
Democrats are hoping that the Republican party of President George Bush has passed its high-water mark; that, faced with disaster in Iraq, a host of domestic troubles and terrible opinion poll ratings, they can start to retake power in November. From there they can start to take aim at the White House itself. They hope the powerful conservative movement born in states such as Kansas will also die there.
An upbeat mood prevails at the monthly meeting of the Shawnee County Democratic party. The talk over iced tea in the dining room of the Topeka Ramada hotel is of Iraq, family, friends and sports.
It has never been easy being a Democrat in Kansas, but things are looking a little brighter. ”I know a lot of registered Republicans who no longer agree with what’s going on,” said Charlie Snow, a real-estate manager. Wearing a T-shirt with a picture of George Bush Snr and the slogan ”I should have pulled out”, Snow is not a typical Kansas voter, but he and his fellow Shawnee county Democrats see unaccustomed prospects.
”We have always been the underdog, but recently actions of the president and the Republicans have made it a lot easier to be a Democrat in Kansas,” Snow said.
Governor
One of the key reasons Kansas Democrats are in fighting mood is their Governor, Kathleen Sibelius, whose vote represents an island of Democratic blue in a sea of Republican red on the political map. She has impressed by reaching the middle-ground voters in a startlingly successful first term. Shunning the hot-button social issues, she has focused on education, jobs and health. This has earned her approval ratings touching 68% in a state that was overwhelmingly pro-Bush in 2004.
Sibelius has cracked the political holy grail: persuading heartland Republicans to vote Democrat. ”Her style works here, and then bringing over Parkinson to the Democrats has been the coup of all coups,” said Professor Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University near Topeka.
As the Democrats enjoy a resurgence, the Republicans are in disarray. Parkinson’s defection encouraged other moderates to abandon a party controlled by right-wing religious zealots. In political terms they are called Rinos, or Republicans in Name Only. If enough Rinos desert, the strict ideologues in the party are likely to drift further right. ”A number of conservatives are actually pleased that the moderates are leaving the Republican party. That really could spell trouble,” Beatty said.
There is a long way to go. Larry Gates, chairperson of the Kansas Democratic party, says his side is still vastly outgunned, but he is optimistic. ”The Republican party is just controlled by the neocons. They are not flexible. But in Kansas it is an issue like education that is foremost in people’s minds,” he said.
The Democrats bypass abortion and evolution to focus on jobs, schools and health. The Democrats’ local slogan for 2006 sums up the mood: ”Hope in the Heartland”.
Washington
The issues in Kansas mirror those in Washington, and could decide November’s election as well as shaping presidential politics for years to come. Nationally, the Democratic party is deeply split. It has not yet decided on a unified course of action for November or the presidential race of 2008.
The defections across the country have been spurred mostly by a reaction to the extremism of the right. The future, as Kansas predicts it, lies in the middle ground for the first party to stake a claim to it. ”That is the absolute lesson. No party is going to win an election by being on the edges. The first to go to the middle ground will win,” Gates said.
For the 2008 race, the Democratic front-runner is Hillary Clinton. Though she has steadily shifted rightwards, she is still portrayed as a liberal and is seen as having little appeal in Middle America. The Rinos of Kansas and elsewhere are unlikely to respond well to Clinton. Other senior Democrats, especially those from the north-east, do not go down well in Kansas. Such names as John Kerry and Senator Ted Kennedy have little appeal.
So, it could mean the centrist card is the Democrat lesson for 2008, electing someone from a southern or midwestern state who already occupies middle ground — candidates such as Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia; Tom Vilsack, Governor of Iowa; and Evan Bayh, a Senator from Indiana. If Democrats want to become the dominant party again, the revolution must begin in such places as Kansas. And Democrats in Kansas, deep in reddest America, are dreaming of a time when the whole country turns blue. — Guardian Unlimited Â