Friday, November 19, 2010

Spreading the blame around

In response to some of the conversations I've been having, and to some of the earlier blog posts, there are some people who feel that I've been too harsh on state Democratic Party chair Larry Gates - specifically, in my criticism that he couldn't find someone to run for governor until it was much too late. I've been told that he called over 100 Kansas Democrats before he found someone who was willing to get in front of Sam Brownback's oncoming train. Well, ok - I can accept that. But even if the candidate had to be Tom Holland, having him in place in early 2009 would have been better than what ended up happening - no candidate in early 2010, and the comedy of errors that led up to that, which I've already talked about, didn't have to happen. And don't tell me that Sebelius didn't declare until March or whatever of the year she ran - she was Insurance Commissioner at the time, and had already won statewide races.

But the mention of Sebelius reminds me that I have to take a moment to criticize the Great Kathleen and her handpicked successor, Mark Parkinson. First, Parkinson. I'm under the impression, though he denies it, that he promised Kathleen he would run for governor before he took the appointment as lieutenant governor, only to announce as soon as he succeeded her that he wasn't going to run. The nice way of looking at it is that he decided to pull himself out of the political fray in order to get the 1% sales tax increase that kept last year's state budget in balance and kept it from doing too much damage to social services. The idea being, if he were running for governor, the budget issue would have become a partisan free-for-all. And the budget was an impressive accomplishment in an anti-tax political environment, and he deserves credit for it.

A less clear "accomplishment" was his handling of the Holcomb coal plant issue, which he seems determined to force through before leaving office (and before new national EPA regs on the construction of new coal plant come on line in January). He cut the legs out of his Environment chief, Rod Bremby, and the people who had done incredible, winning organizational work on this issue, particularly GPACE. From a strictly partisan political point of view this is a mixed bag, because while Kansas greens are furious at the governor about this, the unions are for the plant (jobs) and it might maybe have had some political benefit in Western Kansas (jobs) - that is, it might have before it was stopped by Bremby. As I say, a mixed bag.

But this is a political blog, and I think it's safe to say that the Mark Parkinson, who is after all the Democratic governor of the state, never gave a fig about the fate of the Democratic Party in Kansas. I got a blog posting on my Google Reader in late October saying that he had endorsed the Democratic Attorney General candidate - that's mighty big of you, Mark. But did you see him on the campaign trail? Neither did I. And this was after the budget issue had already been settled, so his "I need to be above partisanship" jig was no longer an excuse.

But the real responsibility for the situation goes back to Kathleen Sebelius. She is after all the one who convinced Parkinson to convert to being a Democrat after a long career as a moderate Republican. (She also convinced former Attorney General Paul Morrison to convert, also with unhappy results.) She left him in charge here when she went off to Washington to save the world. She also didn't spend any time on the campaign trail here, which might have had some effect as she retains popularity in the state.

And, my friends, it was Kathleen Sebelius was who left the cupboard bare when it came to viable candidates in the Democratic Party in Kansas. She was the one who should have been calling prominent Democrats to get them to run, not Larry Gates. It is part of the job of the most prominent statewide politician to make sure that the party infrastructure is prepared for succession - organizationally, financially, and in terms of the talent pool. And she just didn't do that. And the result is what we saw on November 4.

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