TOPEKA — Democratic governor candidate Ethan Corson reached into the Kansas political playbook to reprise the guilt-by-association strategy of attacking Republican candidates by linking them to historically unpopular former Gov. Sam Brownback.
In a flashback to messaging popularized during successful 2018 and 2022 campaigns by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, Corson has bombarded social media with anti-Brownback rhetoric. His quest is to remind voters of links between between Brownback and 2026 GOP candidates for governor.
Senate President Ty Masterson, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt and former Gov. Jeff Colyer all endorsed Brownback’s signature tax policy. They got behind Brownback’s highly unpopular 2012 income tax cuts that favored the wealthy, cratered the budget, led to heavy borrowing, and forced cuts to education, transportation and social programs until repealed five years later.
Polling in 2015 and 2016 ranked Brownback as the nation’s least-popular governor. He was saddled with a morbid approval rating of 26%.
“My extreme-right opponents want Kansans to forget about Sam Brownback’s failed policies when they go to the polls. I’m not gonna let it happen,” promised Corson, the Democratic state senator endorsed by Kelly.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, who also seeks the Democratic nomination for governor, has rarely missed opportunities to bash the “disastrous Brownback experiment” that she contended didn’t live up to GOP hype. She gave that speech on the Senate floor and during the campaign. When Holscher introduced her running mate, Wichita Rep. KC Ohaebosim, she noted both of them voted in 2017 with a bipartisan supermajority to repeal the Brownback tax program.
Despite back-to-back election wins by Kelly, it’s unclear whether the tactic of relentlessly labeling Republicans as Brownback acolytes could clear a path for another Democrat in 2026.
It’s been 14 years since Brownback sat at a desk May 22, 2012, to sign House Bill 2117, which slashed individual income tax rates and exempted more than 300,000 businesses from the state income tax. It’s been eight years since Brownback resigned as governor to take a job in the administration of President Donald Trump.
Three perspectives
Several targets of the latest partisan bludgeoning of Brownback’s legacy said they were surprised Democrats thought the punchline still connected with voters.
Schwab, who voted as a member of the House for the Brownback tax package and against its repeal, said Democratic candidates must be stuck in a time warp.
“Do the Democrats not realize what year it is?” Schwab said. “Do they think (Barack) Obama is still president? Focusing on 2012 is foolish. Kansans want property tax relief.”
Masterson, the Andover senator who voted for the 2012 bill and against the 2017 repeal, had a similar reaction. He said Holscher and Corson kept referring to “ancient history because they need to hide their own extremist positions.”
“The simple truth is they want to raise taxes, allow men in girls sports and let criminal illegals roam free in our streets,” Masterson said.
Schmidt, who voted for the bill but joined the majority to repeal it, said there was no doubt Brownback’s tax agenda was a disaster. She said it deprive the state of sufficient revenue to function.
“The experiment failed, and we all paid the price for that,” she said. “I helped turn things around, and it has taken years to recover from the Brownback tax experience. I’m not willing to go back to when we couldn’t fund education and social services. But there is room for property tax reform.”
Colyer’s assessment
Colyer served seven years as Brownback’s lieutenant governor before sworn into office as the state’s 47th governor. He took the job in 2018 after Brownback quit to become Trump’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. In August of that year, Colyer narrowly lost the GOP primary to then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had Trump’s endorsement.
Colyer didn’t run for governor in 2022 due to health issues, but he returned to the political arena as Kelly prepared to depart after two terms as governor.
His campaign didn’t answer requests for comment about how Colyer responded to inquiries from voters about his deep connection to Brownback.
During a recent campaign appearance in Cowley County, Colyer did talk about the zeal with which Democrats denounced Brownback and those connected to him.
“Here’s the thing, whoever the Republican nominee is, they’re going to go after them,” Colyer said. “They’re going to say, ‘What kind of governor are you going to be?’ They’re going to go, just like they did with Vicki Schmidt, like they did with Ty (Masterson), like they’ve done with Scott Schwab, like they’ve done with everybody, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re just going to be just like Brownback.'”
Colyer said that if elected governor in November he would dedicate himself to working with the GOP-led Legislature to change state government.
“There are lots of great candidates that are out there,” Colyer said. “They’re all my friends. I’ve known them all, and they’re good people. Any one of them would be better than the Democrat.”
An outside perspective
Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University, said the unchallenged fact was that Brownback found himself held in the lowest regard among Kansas governors since such polling was initiated. He was able to win reelection in 2014 but did so with 97,000 fewer votes than in 2010. He won in 2014 by a margin of 3.7 percentage points after taking the 2010 race by 31%.
“It was a very difficult time for Brownback. He was able to win reelection, but things went really south after that,” Beatty said.
He said 2014 Democratic nominee Paul Davis pounded Brownback with negative advertising. Then-Sen. Laura Kelly continued to target Brownback’s record even though her GOP opponent was Kobach in 2018 and then-Attorney General Derek Schmidt in 2022.
“You do wonder: Is there a shelf life to this? There’s no expiration date, yet,” Beatty said.
He said there was a reservoir of Kansas voters who never abandoned Brownback and would have no difficulty voting for Republicans supportive of Brownback’s tax legislation.
“Jeff Colyer is the most vulnerable to the Brownback association,” Beatty said. “What Colyer has to do is figure out a way to counter that, and he very well may counteract that effectively.”
