Something's Happening in Kansas

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R-KS)

Early on in odd numbered years, it's relatively common for buzz to start building around Senate and House candidates.  We've seen that already this year with people like Stacey Abrams, Tom Vilsack, and Bradley Byrne taking serious looks at running against incumbent senators next year.  But what's happening right now in Kansas is bizarre, and perhaps more telling about the Republican Party's attitude toward Donald Trump as the unpopular president encounters his reelection with enormous uncertainty.

For a refresher, a few weeks ago Pat Roberts announced that he would be retiring after nearly 40 years in Congress.  Roberts, a perpetual backbencher who never really gained much distinction during his career, felt like the sort of "replace and forget" incumbent we're used to in the Republican Party.  His seat would fall to another straight white guy with a nearly identical voting record, younger, but surely not much more noteworthy & for all practical purposes no one would really notice the difference save the Senate clerk.  It certainly wasn't the sort of seat we'd be discussing in the same way we will Alabama or North Carolina or Maine-states where we could see a profoundly different person in office with a sharply divergent voting record from the current incumbent.

But the Republicans appear quite nervous about holding Kansas, to the point where I think there might be some fire to go along with the smoke.  Mitch McConnell has reportedly been pressing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to make the jump to the Senate, in hopes of clearing the primary, which made me wonder-should the Democrats take Kansas seriously as a takeover threat?  And what do Pompeo & McConnell's actions mean for Donald Trump?

I'm going to start with Mitch McConnell here, someone whose acumen as a party leader is of debatable quality (I think he is stronger than Boehner or Ryan, weaker than Pelosi, and evenly-matched with Schumer in terms of his ability to push legislation through the Congress).  McConnell's best set of skills is winning at literally all costs, and so as a result I get why he's going for Pompeo.  Despite not having elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, Kansas has a weird history of giving Democrats other offices (House seats, governor's mansions) when they fight between moderates and conservatives in the primaries.  This could be something of a problem for McConnell in 2020 as it looks increasingly likely that Kris Kobach, the former Secretary of State who lost the governor's mansion in 2018, seems a probable candidate to run for the Republican nomination in the state.  Kentucky doesn't have a runoff election, and considering how rarely Senate seats open up in solid-red states, it's very popular that without a giant-slayer, Kobach could take a plurality of the votes in the primary and thus become the standard-bearer for the Republican Party, which would put an easily-held seat in play for the Democrats.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R-KS)

There's a few caveats here.  For starters, Laura Kelly, who beat Kobach in the governor's race last year, did so in a non-federal election, which usually is an easier win for the "non-dominant" party because it's simpler to link to local issues like transportation and education, rather than issues like immigration or tax reform.  Kelly didn't have to worry about Donald Trump spouting on the same issues she's discussing on the campaign trail, and thus didn't have to constantly find middle ground with the Republican president (who is still the heavy favorite to win the Sunflower State) in the way that a Senate Democratic candidate would be required to do.  Additionally, Kobach's recent loss will make him less of an 800-pound-gorilla than he was in 2018, when he bested an incumbent Republican governor to win the nomination.  While still a powerful figure in the state, he's now a loser, and people don't like voting for a loser, & it's possible that President Trump (who famously hates when people lose), may not be as adamant in his support for Kobach this time around.

But considering the math for 2020 is much looser than 2018 (there are a lot more Republicans running next year than last), I get why McConnell would try for someone that might clear the field, and Pompeo's arguably his best bet.  While he's not a particularly noteworthy politician, it's difficult to see many establishment candidates running against him, and it's probable that he'd be the favorite in a 1-on-1 contest against Kobach.  Pompeo, though, would be showing a lot of cards against Donald Trump were he to run, and the fact that he's willing to let this conversation air publicly without squashing it (a sitting Secretary of State has the power to inform the "powers that be' that it ain't happening), makes me think that Pompeo not only wants out, but that he doesn't think Donald Trump has a prayer at winning the White House in 2020, and perhaps will be greatly limited in his international scope for the next two years.

Secretary of State is arguably the second most-coveted job in DC, and it's the sort of spot that you quit your Senate seat to hold.  Both of President Obamas Secretaries of State were ambitious former senators (both of whom had run for president previously), and Secretary of State has frequently been a stepping stone to the Oval Office.  It is not, however, a position from which people make the jump to Congress, or back to Congress in Pompeo's case.  You have to go back to James Baker to even find someone who held office after being SoS (he was briefly the Chief of Staff to the first President Bush during the final year of his time in office), and all the way back to Philander C. Knox in 1916 to find someone who ran for Congress after serving as Secretary of State.  Knox isn't even a direct corollary to Pompeo, since he was forced out as Secretary of State when President Taft lost reelection, and therefore was running for the Senate as a private citizen, not a sitting member of the President's cabinet.  By my research, you'd have to go all the way back to Edward Everett in 1853 to find someone who gave up the Secretary of State job to take a seat in Congress; every other person who gave it up for a different position did so either for a different cabinet position or for a spot on the federal judiciary.

There's a reason for this-you can have more impact as Secretary of State, even for a few years, than you can in decades in Congress.  Compare John Kerry's four years at Foggy Bottom to his decades in the Senate, and you'll see which one is going to be the headline in biographies of the man.  Pompeo giving up such a seat would only happen if he didn't think he'd hold it very long, which would only be true of Pompeo didn't see an option for Trump to win reelection in 2020 (making him a lame duck on an international scale) or assumed that Trump would fire him/not give him enough responsibility to make an impact.  Lest we forget, Pompeo just became Secretary of State in April, and even if he waits until the fall to announce, he'll give up a year as SoS, which is enough time that it would likely exceed the impact he'd have in twenty years in Congress.  It's entirely possible that Pompeo, who is only 55, has aspirations to someday seek the White House himself and thinks that running as a sitting senator would be easier to do than "Trump's Secretary of State," and there's some credence to that if Trump's popularity stays low when he leaves the White House (though that would fly in the face of literally every presidential administration of the past fifty years), but it's worth remembering how truly odd it would be for Pompeo to seek a Senate seat when he's got the "best job in DC," and how much it reflects on the uncertain nature of Donald Trump's administration.