The Races I'm Watching

(originally posted at Swing State Project as a comment)

Of course, I am watching the Talent(less Hack) – McCaskill senatorial matchup in Missouri. Or course the Kansas Gubernatorial race has my interest – for one thing, I know Kathleen Sebelius, not well enough to call her a close friend, but well enough that she knows me when she sees me, calls me by name, and we chat about things other than the weather, like Kansas City’s music scene. She’s a huge Jazz and Blues fan, attending many, many live shows in Kansas City. I know her from my 2-year stint at a “fun job” working for the two-time Handy-award winning world-famous Grand Emporium, back when it was cool, before it sold and became just another nightclub. Kathleen recruited a Republican to change parties and run with her for reelection in November.

I am watching the Missouri 6th, held by that weasel Sam Graves. I own some land up there – if a decent Dem emerges, I’m voting in Mercer County and will spend a lot of time in that district this fall. He’s a punk and he needs to go. Where I am currently registered, in the Missouri 5th, The Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver is sitting in a safe seat, so this year he doesn’t need that much help from me, hence I am turning attention to the sixth.

Of course I am devouring every word in the local press about the Kansas Attorney Generals Race. Johnson County Prosecutor Paul Morrison grew so disenchanted with the AG from his own party (the R’s) that he switched to the Democratic party to run against Phill (KK)Kline, whose all-abortion, all the time schtick is getting old. People are starting to think his obsession with the sex life of teenage girls constitutes more a pathology than a thirst for justice.

But one race has me really excited! The Kansas State School Board is going to get bitch-slapped after making a laughing stock of the state by de-emphasizing evolution (it’s only a theory! Is their battle cry, but they know not what exactly constitutes a scientific theory.) The state board has five open seats coming up for election, four are held by the social conservatives who started this mess. Sixteen candidates have filed for the right to contest the bible-thumpers. It’s going to get raucous, it’s going to get volatile, and it’s going to get ugly. And I am going to wade right into the middle of it, because my children have high-school diplomas from a private school in Kansas. I take this one personally.

We have been down this road before, in the late 90’s – the state board de-emphasized science and tried to add creationism. The board was turned out and a new board returned the standards to the way they had been. The rationalist were unseated by the current crop of chisto-fascist conservatives who embraced “Intelligent Design” and de-emphasized real science, and for good measure eliminated sex ed, except for abstinence only education.

Kansans have too much common sense to return these weasles. I lived among Kansans for two tours of duty and next door to them since 1998. They will turn this board out in short order, election day can’t get here fast enough.