In a move I’ve been expect­ing for some time,

Har­ry McDon­ald, a retired biol­o­gy teacher, announced Wednes­day he will chal­lenge John Bacon in the Aug. 1 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, mak­ing him the sec­ond con­ser­v­a­tive to face GOP oppo­si­tion. Both are from Olathe.

McDon­ald has become vis­i­ble as pres­i­dent of Kansas Cit­i­zens for Sci­ence, which wants pub­lic school sci­ence stan­dards to con­tin­ue treat­ing the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion as long-estab­lished sci­ence, cru­cial for stu­dents to learn.

…

He said he’s noti­fied oth­er Kansas Cit­i­zens for Sci­ence lead­ers that he’s giv­ing up the group’s presidency.

“The evo­lu­tion debate is just a symp­tom of what’s wrong with the State Board of Edu­ca­tion,” McDon­ald said dur­ing an inter­view. “My cam­paign is going to revolve around larg­er issues.”

McDon­ald plans to kick off his cam­paign at 9 a.m. Tues­day out­side the John­son Coun­ty elec­tion com­mis­sion­er’s office in Olathe. He is a 57-year-old who retired last year after 32 years teach­ing sci­ence, most of them at Blue Val­ley High School.

While Con­nie Mor­ris makes an easy tar­get, I think that some of the oth­er mem­bers, like Mr. Bacon, are bet­ter tar­gets for this elec­tion. McDon­ald has an incred­i­ble shot at this seat. 

For all it’s con­ser­vatism, John­son Coun­ty does­n’t want to elect Con­nie Mor­ris, and does­n’t want her run­ning the show. Her brand of con­ser­vatism is dif­fer­ent from JoCo con­ser­vatism. Cre­ation­ists did poor­ly in school board races there in the spring. Bacon has been rel­a­tive­ly qui­et, though he did pro­pose some cre­ation­ist changes.

In addi­tion, almost half of his last cam­paign was fund­ed by “Free Aca­d­e­m­ic Inquiry and Research” and its fed­er­al PAC (do the search here). FAIRPAC is a shad­ow group for the Kansas Repub­li­can Assem­bly, the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive, reli­gious author­i­tar­i­an par­ty appa­ra­tus which RSR and I dis­cussed a while back.

He’s too con­ser­v­a­tive for this dis­trict, and will be pun­ished not only for his own extrem­ism, but for that of his allies.

I haven’t yet endorsed either of Con­nie Mor­ris’s chal­lengers because I don’t know enough about either.

I do know Mr. McDon­ald and it would take some­thing earth-shat­ter­ing for any­one else to get my endorsement.

FYI, the dis­trict in ques­tion cov­ers most of Mia­mi, Linn and John­son coun­ties, most of Franklin Co. and some of Ander­son Co.