Posted on 12/12/2006 5:48:44 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, taken for dead politically a month ago, rose again Monday night to win a special election for Johnson County district attorney.
Kline, a Republican, defeated Assistant Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, 316-291 in an election among Johnson County Republican precinct committee members.
Kline takes office in January.
The vote means Kline will complete an unusual job swap with Democrat Paul Morrison, the current county district attorney.
Kline lost badly to Morrison in the November attorney general’s race — 59 percent to 41 percent. In Johnson County, where the two were perhaps best-known, Morrison trumped Kline 65 percent to 35 percent.
Kline rushed out of the Westside Family Church in Lenexa, where the vote was conducted, after the result was announced. He did not speak to reporters but issued a brief statement.
“I am honored by the faith the party has invested in me as their nominee for attorney general in 2002 and 2006, and by their vote today,” he said. “I will continue to passionately focus on the protection of our children and the vulnerable and to ensure the safety of our neighborhoods and communities.”
Reaction to Kline’s election was sharply mixed.
“The march to irrelevancy continues,” said John Martellaro, president of Kansas Families United For Public Education. “They’re trying to prove a point in the short run, and we’ll end up with a Democratic district attorney in the long run.”
“I’m thrilled,” said former state Sen. Kay O’Connor, an Olathe Republican. “He was one tough guy and always has been.”
Kline supporters dismissed concerns that Johnson County voters would be upset at the outcome.
“This is an election of the people in the Republican Party,” said John Altevogt, former Wyandotte County Republican chairman. “He’ll do a fine job.”
Moderate Republicans were quick to worry about the impact of Kline’s victory on the next election.
Kline has told precinct leaders that he won’t seek election to the job, but the controversy surrounding his selection will hurt Republicans when they try to hang onto the job in two years, moderates said.
Democrats, meanwhile, were licking their chops.
“I’m amazed they selected Kline,” said Bill Roy Jr., a local Democratic Party leader. “The guy was overwhelmingly rejected by Johnson County voters just one month ago. He’s like a bad rash; he just won’t go away.”
Roy pledged that a competitive Democratic nominee would be on the ballot in two years.
Two candidates — Assistant Johnson County District Attorney Rick Guinn and attorney Scott Hattrup — withdrew from contention early in the evening. A fifth candidate, assistant district attorney Chris McMullin, had pulled out over the weekend.
That left a one-on-one face-off between Kline and Howe.
Howe, 43, of Shawnee, is an assistant district attorney in Johnson County’s white-collar consumer-fraud unit and supervises the office’s intern program.
He has been with the county since 1991. Before that, he had worked in the Shawnee County district attorney’s office. He said he was running because he thought the county needed an experienced prosecutor.
The race provoked a furious weekend of lobbying, with Kline authorizing automated phone calls in his behalf and holding private meetings with precinct committee members. Others counted noses to see if enough votes existed to defeat him.
Moderates, through the work of a group called the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, coalesced around Howe, a self-described abortion opponent. But Howe wasn’t Kline, and that appeared to be qualification enough to win many moderate votes.
On Thursday, Kline had shown up at the Johnson County Election Office in Olathe to register to vote. That step was the last that Kline, who lives in the Topeka area, had to take to qualify for the job.
Kline listed an apartment in Stilwell owned by Ernest and Pat Adair, both of whom are precinct committee members, as his address. Pat Adair is a former executive director of the anti-abortion Kansans for Life in Johnson County. Pat Adair said neither Kline nor his family was living full time at the apartment.
Kline was elected attorney general in 2002. Before that, he served in the Kansas House of Representatives for eight years. In 2000, he unsuccessfully sought the U.S. House seat held by Rep. Dennis Moore, a Democrat.
The Johnson County district attorney earns $143,225 a year, while Kline’s attorney general pay is $94,597.
I'd be interested in your take on this. And if there's such a thing as a Kansas ping list I hope someone activates it.
Phill has been demonized by the RINOs in Eastern Kansas for years now. It's amazing that he can still walk at all. Good for him. There will be a lot of JOCO lawyers (a very liberal bunch) with their noses out of joint. hehe. Makes me smile.
Johnson County seems rather conservative; not sure what the fuss is over Kline or why Dennis Moore (D) keeps getting re-elected to Congress.
Lawyers with their noses out of joint......sounds good to me. Thanks for your bit of insight.
I just heard yesterday evening, on a local conservative radio talk show, that Moore was first elected as District Attorney here in JOCO as a Republican. I remember when he was first elected to that job but didn't remember which party he was in. I was in transistion at the time, both personally and politically and probably wasn't paying much attention. But if that's the case, then the Republicans in JOCO have a history now of two successive popular DAs who turned into RATS.
And Sebelius (D) won re-election as Governor... go figure!
For two years. Then the GOP hands the office over to whatever Democrat runs against him. Had the GOP chosen the Assistant DA instead then there's no reason why the GOP couldn't have held on to the office.
Because the Kansas GOP is at war with itself.
Dennis Moore's District, 3rd Kansas, covers not only Jophnson county but all of Wyandote county and Douglas county as well.
Wyandotte County is about 75% Democratic. Johnson County is about 50-50 at this time mainly due to a lot of growth over the last few years from folks fleeing Kansas City, MO. Douglas County has Lawrence, home of University of Kansas, aka Little Moscow on the Kansas River.
Taken all together you have a district that is about evenly split between the two parties, Dennis Moore carries a lot of goodwill from his days as the DA in Johnson County where he was, I have to admit, a pretty good DA.
Factor in the Kansas City (Red) Star and the rest of the drive by media with all of the usual bias and there you go.
Regards Kline I think he is a good man but he has a habit of tring to shoot hinself in the foot now and then. A mistake that most people would not think twice about is magnified by the (Red) Star in to a capital crime worthy of capital punishment.
My .02 worth
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Johnson County is politically more conservative than you give us credit for. We may have elected Moore and Sebelius and Morrison, but we also elected Brownback and Roberts and went big for Bush in two elections. The problem we have is the war between the two branches of the GOP. It's gotten to the point where if a social conservative is nominated to run against Moore, the political conservatives vote for Moore. If a political conservative is nominated, the social conservatives stay home. The Democrats have found out how to win in Kansas by taking advantage of that split.
They must have been thinking of Morrison. I believe Moore's been a Democrat all along.
I think your comment regards politcal vs social conservatives is about right. Toss in the drive by media's talent for playing up the slightest misstep by a conservative while ignoring the same by the liberal and there you go.
Brownback and Roberts have pretty nuch avoided the kind of missteps that Kline has made so it is harder for the MSM to play up the, for lack of a better word, "Stoopid" angle.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
He won't win re-election, but it is pretty neat still.
No, I think it's kind of sad. Kline's political career is over. He will have no future in elective office with three losses under his belt, which is what he'll have it he tries to run for DA in 2008. He's going to wind up as a joke, remembered as the man who was so desperate he took the job of the man who beat him in an election. He should have deserved better.
The sad things is that Phil Kline is a decent man, being demonized over many years by RINO's and area liberals. I have met him on numerous occassion and really like him. We have mutual friends.
I hold particular disdain for Johnson County RINO's, who smear conservatives, and the only reason they are Republican is because being a democrats would be "too blue collar, too working class" and would be embarrassing while in their weekend golf foursome.
OTOH, John Altevogt and his minions are dour, mean, and don't help themselves by much of what they do either.
I've heard from others that he is an honorable man, and I cannot for the life of me imagine why he would that the position. He has to know that there is zero chance of his winning election on his own so his political career is dead. He also has to know that it leaves him open to ridicule and second guessing and being blamed for everything that goes wrong in Joco. Unless he's looking at it as a stepping stone to something big in the private sector then I can't see the logic behind the decision.
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