‘Big First’ Kansas Republicans set COVID concerns aside in race for coveted House seat
For most of the spring, COVID-19 froze traditional retail campaigning in the First Congressional District, the 63-county Republican stronghold that spans western and central Kansas.
“Big First” voters expect the same kind of personal attention from congressional hopefuls as they would receive from candidates for city council or state legislature, with visits to diners, community centers and coffee shops. The statewide shutdown imposed to fight the pandemic made that problematic.
But as Kansas opens back up in the waning weeks of this GOP primary, where a win all but ensures the victor a storied congressional seat, candidates are making up for lost face-time.
“During those two months (April and May) it really was like the rest of the world,” said Finney County Commissioner Bill Clifford, one of four Republican candidates. “Zoom conferences, just burning up the phone lines to talk to individuals and kind of set the stage for what we’re doing now, which is finally getting out throughout the First District,” Clifford said.
The August 4 GOP primary ballot also includes Salina real estate broker Tracey Mann, who served briefly as lieutenant governor under Gov. Jeff Colyer, Jerry Molstad of Lacrosse and Michael Soetaert of Council Grove. On the Democratic side, Kali Barnett of Garden City and Christy Davis of Cottonwood Falls are vying for the nomination.
The stakes are high because the Big First has become an important stepping stone for politicians with their eyes on a higher office.
Russell native Bob Dole represented the district on his way to becoming Senate majority leader and the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. So did both of Kansas’ sitting senators, Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts. Incumbent First District Rep. Roger Marshall is running to fill the retiring Roberts’ seat.
If voters in this town of 4,463 are concerned about the pandemic, it wasn’t apparent Friday afternoon when 15 people came out to a campaign event at Espresso Etc. to meet Clifford and Mann. Two attendees wore masks as they sat around closely grouped tables.
“For better or for worse, I think maybe folks here are a little less nervous,” said Andria Krauss, a Clifford supporter from Russell.
Espresso Etc. owner Daron Woelk said there is no substitute for personal contact with the candidates. “I feel as if I can tell how somebody is by their mannerisms of watching them in-person,” he said.
Although he turned to digital town halls and other forms of remote outreach over the last few months, Mann said he never fully stopped meeting voters in-person and doesn’t enforce social distancing measures at his events.
“It’s just up to people,” he said in a phone interview last week. “I think that this has gone on for too long, and it’s way past time to open up the economy and get back to normal.”
There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in surrounding Russell County. But Clifford’s home base of Finney County in southwest Kansas, which fully reopened on June 8, has had 1,515 confirmed cases — the third highest of any county in the state.
Clifford, an ophthalmologist and Air Force veteran, said Friday that individual responsibility, not government impositions, will preserve public health in the coming months.
“I told the citizens when we took our vote to open in Finney County, ‘We’re not voting the virus out of the county. The virus is with us,’” Clifford said. “You just have to manage your risk. You have to exercise individual responsibility.”
Agriculture is the economic lifeblood of the Big First, and Clifford and Mann agreed that by and large, the voters they’ve spoken to are eager to jump-start the economy and get back to life as usual.
“In many ways, day-to-day agriculture didn’t stop, because animals still need to be fed and taken care of, crops still need planted,” Mann said.
Commodity and livestock prices have taken a hit during the pandemic, and Mann said people need to start eating at restaurants again to restore normal demand for agricultural products.
Mann and Cifford will square off Saturday in a debate at the Dodge City Republican Expo in Ford County, which has the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 of any county in the state.
