Moderate Kansas and Missouri voters might have a surprise in store for Republicans | Opinion

News flash: Kansas is still a deep-red state. Same for Missouri.

No surprises there, right? Republicans have long dominated politics in both states — and a national red wave election like the one we saw on Tuesday only cemented conservative power on both sides of the border.

In Missouri, voters put Mike Kehoe in charge of state government and governor — and left MAGA stalwarts Sen. Josh Hawley and Attorney General Andrew Bailey in place. Over in Kansas, voters strengthened GOP supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature, and gave conservatives a majority on the Kansas State Board of Education.

We’re going to get a lot of Republican governance over the next two to six years, in other words. That’s what majorities of voters in both states want.

Not what I would have chosen. But that’s democracy. That’s how it works. Fair’s fair.

But the underlying thesis of my writing here the last few years remains true, I think: Kansas and Missouri are indeed conservative states that deserve their red reputations — but the electorate in each state is actually way more moderate than you’d guess from those reputations.

Which means that Republicans in both Kansas and Missouri could easily overreach.

And my guess is they probably will.

You don’t have to look far for evidence that regional voters are more moderate than the people they elect. Just check out Missouri, where the electorate chose to override Republican representatives in order to restore abortion protections and raise the minimum wage while making Kehoe their governor.

And Kansas, don’t forget, is the same state that voted overwhelmingly two years ago to reject the Value Them Both amendment that would have opened the door to an abortion ban here.

Voters in both states love electing Republicans. They just don’t always love what Republicans do.

That disparity bewilders me at times. Trying to figure out the gap between what Kansas and Missouri voters demonstrably want and who they elect is probably the topic of another column. But that the gap exists is undeniable.

So is the likelihood that GOP officials will go further than voters want.

Kansas Republicans responded to the failure of Value Them Both by continuing to pass new abortion restrictions, while Attorney General Kris Kobach went to court to force the federal government to rescind its approval of abortion drugs. GOP officials in Missouri are prepared to do the same thing now that Amendment 3 passed there.

But here’s the thing: Where overreach happens, backlash is possible.

Even in deep-red states like Kansas and Missouri.

It’s not been so long, after all, since Kansans responded to then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s disastrous tax cuts by electing a more moderate Legislature, rescinding the cuts and refunding the state’s public schools.

Not so long before that, the state’s voters booted then-Attorney General Phill Kline after his anti-abortion-rights crusade became too much for them to bear.

And not so long before that, Kansas booted state board of education members who tried to take evolution out of our classrooms and turned the Sunflower State into a laughingstock.

Over in Missouri, meanwhile, voters have the luxury of citizen-led ballot initiatives. They’ve made a habit in recent years of circumventing the GOP to approve the stuff they want that Republicans won’t give them — including Medicaid expansion and legalized marijuana, just to name two prominent examples.

All of which leads me to an odd realization: The real political conflict in Kansas and Missouri isn’t between Republicans and Democrats — rather, it’s between Republicans and the people who elect them.

If you’re a liberal, like me, that can be frustrating. It’s no fun being on the sidelines.

But we should take heart. The recent history of both states offers an important lesson nonetheless: When Kansas and Missouri Republicans overreach, the voters usually win.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.