A New Congressman But An Old Story

There was a special election yesterday in Kansas to fill the seat in Congress vacated by Mike Pompeo who took over as director of the CIA after the inauguration.  The Republican candidate won by 8% with a majority of the vote in a three way race.  That is no surprise since the district is a consistently Republican one.  If you read the news coverage, however, the real story is that the Democrat did so well.  He got, after all just about 45% of the vote.  This means, according to the media, that the nation is rejecting President Trump.  The only problem with this storyline is that it is, as usual, Fake News.

Here's the truth regarding the Kansas race.  The winner is a Republican who had run statewide twice and won.  His problem, however, is that he ran on the team of the governor, and that governor is unpopular in the district.  The Democrats tried hard to tie the two together.  Any weakness in the GOP vote was due to the governor.  Further, since this was a special election, it was easier for the Democrat to run a dishonest campaign.  His campaign ads portrayed him as a non-partisan moderate, something he is not.  It was not until the end of the campaign that there was any focus on the Democrat's actual positions.  After that, he fell quickly in the polls.  (Of course, polls in a special election like this are nearly meaningless.)  All that matters is that the people voted and Congressman Estes, a Republican, will take his seat in the next few days.