Kansas and Missouri voters rejected science and competence in this election. Now what?
For those of us hoping that Americans would push back hard against a president so morally challenged that some of his thousands of documented, demonstrable lies may have contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths, well, this has not been a wonderful week.
Instead of repudiating cruelty and incompetence, voters in Missouri and Kansas repudiated science.
Missouri Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nicole Galloway ran on fighting COVID-19. She ran on a statewide mask mandate and against mixed pandemic messages. And voters very emphatically said no thank you.
In Kansas, candidates who spoke gibberish about the virus prevailed, while the U.S. Senate candidate and doctor who wore a mask lost to the U.S. Senate candidate and doctor who didn’t.
Not long before the election, with COVID-19 cases spiking, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly started talking about a possible new mask mandate.
“I do think masks — and I heard people wondering about a second shutdown, too — had a lot to do with the situation,” said Kansas state Rep. Cindy Holscher, who was elected to the Kansas Senate on Tuesday. “That was a factor” in Kansas election results.
So, on the public health rather than the political front, what now?
Election Day has come and gone, Mr. President, and yet the coronavirus has not magically disappeared. The hospitals have not emptied, and the deaths haven’t stopped: Since Monday, Kansas has reported almost 3,000 confirmed cases, 91 new hospitalizations, a shortage of ICU beds in some areas and 41 new deaths.
In an interview, Gov. Kelly said she doesn’t see the election results as “a repudiation of me or of science” but does see “facts getting overridden by fiction,” and so has been rethinking how to talk about masks and the pandemic more generally in ways that Kansans will be less apt to reject.
There’s not going to be a second shutdown, she said, and mandating masks isn’t her first choice, either, though it still may become necessary.
Instead, “We’re going to modify the language.” And hopefully, recruit some Republican messengers to try to convince the public, since “clearly some of the county commissioners cannot hear what I say. We’re really going to figure out a different communications strategy.”
Like what? “People don’t like to be told what to do,” Kelly said. “It has to be said in a way that they recognize what’s in it for them.” As in “This is how we keep your business open and your schools open.”
Apparently, at a time when people are already feeling socially isolated, the term “physical distancing” is less off-putting than “social distancing.”
And it does make sense that a conservative spokesman for taking the pandemic more seriously would have more impact on conservative Kansans.
So, has the governor gotten some Republican lawmakers to agree to work with her? On sponsoring a series of public service announcements, yes, she said. But beyond that, not yet: “We’re having those conversations.”
It would be nice to think that with Election Day behind us, Republicans would be more inclined to work with Kelly and other Democrats on the pandemic, if on nothing else. Now that they’ve won, what do they have to lose?
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
