Republicans have held onto the Kansas fourth congressional district in the special election to replace CIA Director Mike Pompeo, by not by an overwhelming margin.
Republican state Treasure Ron Thomson beat Democrat James Thompson by a seven-point percent margin. Estes lost Segdwick County, which includes Wichita and its suburbs and cast 68 percent of the district's votes, by just two points. But he won by carrying the remaining counties (besides Pawnee County, which cast exactly 62 votes and which I did not count in any of the comparisons below) by a 26-point margin.
Is this something in the nature of a moral victory for Democrats? They hoped for an upset and noted with glee that national Republicans were pouring money into the district, plus a robocall from Donald Trump. But they weren't really confident in winning a district that had last gone Democratic in 1992, when moderate Democrat won his last of 10 elections. (Dan Glickman, a bright and humorous man, went gone on to become serve as Agriculture Secretary in the Clinton administration and head of the Motion Picture Association, one of Washington's plum lobbying jobs, from 2004 to 2010.)
A 53-46 loss is a pretty good number for them in a district which Pompeo carried 59-40 in 2014 and 62-36 in 2016, and which Donald Trump carried by 59 to 32 percent.
But it's worth drilling down to understand the election results and the implication, and to compare the results with those in another race —the 2014 contest in which controversial conservative Republican incumbent Sam Brownback won re-election by just 50 to 46 percent statewide.
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05.04.2024