For Melissa Rooker and other moderate Republican candidates in Kansas, the center cannot hold
The citizen who answered Melissa Rooker’s knock at his door only wanted to know one thing. Which political party was she with?
Rooker, who is campaigning for a fourth term in the Kansas Legislature, told him she was a Republican. He handed her back her campaign material.
“I won’t vote for any Republican,” the man said.
Rooker had heard this on other doorsteps. But something about this encounter set her off.
“You are everything that’s wrong with politics today,” Rooker told the startled constituent. He wasn’t willing to look at issues, she said. He wasn’t willing to get to know her as a person, or a public servant. All he saw was labels.
Rooker was three doors away, still steaming, when the man caught up with her. He apologized. So did she. Later he sent her a campaign check and put one of her signs in his yard.
But that was just one door, and one voter. As she trudges through the campaign season, Rooker feels besieged. She represents a rarified political species: Kansas Moderate Republican. Conservatives have always despised her. One of their groups, the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, is currently targeting her in mailings, even though she is the Republican on the ballot.
Like other “mods,” as that wing of the Republican party is known, Rooker has gotten along well with Democrats in Topeka. Now, though, she’s as much a pariah with some of their factions as with the conservatives.
“I’m in the midst of a fairly ugly campaign being waged by the very far left,” she says. “Right now Democrats say compromise is bad. My opponent is being supported by a group of people pushing the narrative that the GOP is a party of fascists and anyone who’s part of the GOP is a fascist.”
Rooker’s opponent is Rui Xu, one of a wave of candidates who were shocked into political activism by the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
“I just couldn’t do nothing anymore,” Xu, a marketing analyst for a children’s charity, tells The Pitch.
Xu, who pronounces his name “Ree Shoe,” is affiliated with Democratic groups like Run For Something. Through those and other channels he raised almost $19,000 by the end of July — a healthy sum for a first-time candidate. On doorsteps and at forums, he comes across as smart and engaging and someone who, in the right place and at the right time, might have a bright political future.
Xu’s supporters want that time and place to be right now, and right here, in the Kansas legislative district centered around Roeland Park, where Democrats account for 31 percent of registered voters and where the many of the 38 percent who are registered Republicans tend to think like Democrats.
Rooker votes the way a good Democrat would want her to much of the time. She voted to roll back former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s tax cuts. She receives failing grades from the National Rifle Association. She is strong on issues related to reproductive rights and equality, and she’s an ardent supporter of funding public schools fairly and sufficiently.
But, for reasons that appear to be both personal and political, Rooker drives Democratic activists crazy.
“I really don’t see any good reason to have a Republican in that spot,” says Megan England, who was Rooker’s Democratic opponent when she was first elected in 2012. “Her record doesn’t indicate she’s a champion, let alone an advocate.”
England and others have been fine-combing Rooker’s legislative past, looking for daylight between her and them. They found a No vote on an amendment that would have prohibited teachers from carrying guns in public schools. They found an email in which Rooker appeared to counsel a fellow moderate Republican to vote against a school funding increase. On Rooker’s own Facebook page, they found a photo of her posing happily with a beaming U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder — an unfortunate pairing in a district that appears enthusiastic about kicking Yoder out of Congress. All of these transgressions have been blasted out on social media and in mass emails.
The average voter may be blissfully unaware of all of this, but the accusations have gotten under Rooker’s skin. She feels compelled to post lengthy explanations on her own pages to set the record straight.
Rooker counters that the gun amendment she voted against was attached to a bill requiring public schools to develop safety plans, and she feared the amendment would not only kill the bill but reopen the dangerous debate about allowing guns in public schools. She says she never told a fellow lawmaker to oppose a school funding increase, but rather to vote his conscience. And the photo with Yoder, Rooker says, was snapped at a charity event — one of those functions that are part of a legislator’s job.
Xu says he is aware of the sniping, but “as a first-time candidate, I can’t be thinking about what everybody else is posting all the time.”
Xu says he is heartened by the reception he gets when he knocks on doors.
“There are plenty of people who are like, no more Republicans, ever,” he says. “A lot of times I feel like a therapist.”
On his campaign sites and mailings, Xu goes after Rooker for accepting donations from businesses and corporate PACs. He questions her support for net neutrality and criticizes her Yes vote for a bill that allows higher concentrations of chickens on farms.
“I kind of realized there was a bit of difference in the way she is perceived and how she actually votes,” Xu says.
Stephanie Clayton, a GOP lawmaker running for re-election in Overland Park, says Rooker is at a disadvantage in an environment where everyone is expected to choose sides.
“Moderates, by our nature, tend to follow nuance and be more about process and policy and getting into the weeds,” she says. “Voters have lives. They’re busy and they don’t have time for nuance.”
Clayton sees a fraying of the legislative alliance of moderate Republicans and Democrats, which was forged to extract Kansas from the wreckage of tax cuts and other policies enacted by former Gov. Sam Brownback and conservative lawmakers.
“Democrats have necessarily been our allies under the Brownback regime, when things were truly terrible, but we’re not in the Brownback regime anymore,” she says.
There is a too-close-for-comfort possibility, though, that Kansas may soon find itself in the Kobach regime. If GOP candidate Kris Kobach wins his race for governor, he promises harsh and bigoted policies that would make the Brownback debacle look like the good old days.
Despite all the optimism about Democrats picking up Congressional seats and possibly electing Laura Kelly as governor, Kansas is a Republican state. The essential question is what brand of Republicanism will hold sway at any given time: Moderate or conservative?
Across Kansas, at least six moderate Republicans, including two in Johnson County, were ousted in August primaries by conservative opponents backed by well-funded and determined interest groups.
Groups like Americans for Prosperity play a long game. That’s why the Kansas chapter is targeting Rooker and at least two other Johnson County mods up for election this year. Get rid of them now, and they’ll gladly field conservatives in the next election cycle to deal with the one-term Democrats who would replace them.
This is the conundrum of Kansas politics. Moderate Republicans and Democrats are both natural allies when in office and likely opponents at election time. And while they duke it out, conservatives sit back and smile.
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