While Pres­i­den­tial games­man­ship is all the rage, with even Kansas try­ing to move its pri­maries ear­li­er to get a bite of that apple, major moves are under way low­er down on the ballot.

Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly for Sci­ence­blogs read­ers, Bill Wagnon, cur­rent chair­man of the Kansas Board of Edu­ca­tion and the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for most of the Lawrence area, has announced that he will not be run­ning again. A suc­ces­sor to this mod­er­ate seat should­n’t be hard to find in the Lawrence area, but we need to start ear­ly. Mod­er­ates Car­ol Rupe and Sue Gam­ble will also be up for re-elec­tion if they choose to run, and I think all three mod­er­ates would have a good chance of hold­ing their seats, assum­ing they aren’t caught nap­ping. Con­ser­v­a­tive Kan­ga­roo Kourt mem­bers Steve Abrams and Kathy Mar­tin will also be end­ing their terms. I can’t help but think that Mar­tin is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty for a pick-up, assum­ing some­one jumps into the race ear­ly enough. Steve Abrams will be tougher to unseat, but his record of waste­ful spend­ing when he was chair­man will work against him.

While Den­nis Moore’s easy re-elec­tion moves the Kansas 3rd into safe ter­ri­to­ry, Rep. Boyda’s seat is now a top tar­get:

When new­ly elect­ed Nation­al Repub­li­can Cam­paign Com­mit­tee chief Rep. Tom Cole talks about spe­cif­ic seats he wants to take back in 2008, he repeat­ed­ly men­tions Kansas’s 2nd district.

The arti­cle men­tions pantys­nif­fer Phill Kline, out­go­ing and dis­graced GOP chair Tim Shal­len­burg­er, for­mer state House Speak­er and some­time guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mays, Sec­re­tary of State Ron Thorn­burgh, Trea­sur­er Lynn Jenk­ins and Jim Ryun as poten­tial can­di­dates. Kline does­n’t cur­rent­ly live in the dis­trict, but giv­en that he just moved from the dis­trict to estab­lish res­i­den­cy for his cur­rent gig as John­son Coun­ty DA, car­pet­bag­ging would­n’t be a stretch for him. 

More analy­sis on those can­di­dates below the fold.

Thorn­burgh has been hap­pi­ly ensconced in his posi­tion for a long time, and may be con­tent to ride out his time as Sec­re­tary of State. He’s gen­er­al­ly well-regard­ed – I did­n’t see any rea­son for peo­ple not to re-elect him, nor did I have any com­ments at all about Lynn Jenk­ins. Both would have to estab­lish them­selves over the next cou­ple years in order to beat an incum­bent, even a Democrat. 

The 2nd Dis­trict has had a Demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive before, and Nan­cy Boy­da has made it clear that she’s got her eyes on con­stituent ser­vices. That means vot­ers will know who she is and what she’s done for the com­mu­ni­ty. The arti­cle sug­gests that Repub­li­cans see an oppor­tu­ni­ty in her vote for stem cell research fund­ing, but polls show Kansans pret­ty sup­port­ive of stem cell research. I sus­pect that that issue will only become a stronger wedge with­in Repub­li­cans over time, and I hope the Repub­li­cans do try to use that issue. It’ll do more dam­age to them than her.

Doug Mays showed his inter­est in high­er office, and also the pru­dence not to tan­gle with Gov­er­nor Sebe­lius. How­ev­er, his mes­sage nev­er real­ly caught on and he was­n’t rais­ing funds the way he knew he’d have to for a statewide cam­paign. He rep­re­sent­ed Tope­ka for a long time, and peo­ple know his name. That should help him, but it also means there will be lots of skele­tons peo­ple can drag out of his closet. 

Jim Ryun will only make him­self look pathet­ic by run­ning again. I encour­age him to try it.

Tim Shal­len­burg­er would be a fool to run. His “lead­er­ship” divid­ed the Repub­li­can par­ty and cre­at­ed the con­di­tions that let Phill Kline, Jim Ryun and Jim Bar­nett lose in statewide races, and which cost the GOP seats in the state House and the Board of Ed. If he could­n’t uni­fy Repub­li­cans when he ran for statewide office in 2002, and could­n’t uni­fy the par­ty behind its can­di­dates in ’06, why would he think he could do it in ’08? I hope he runs.

Phill Kline. If Phill Kline runs, it will be the dirt­i­est race imag­in­able. Kline does­n’t like to run on his own record, which is so nar­row and par­ti­san that it turns off even Repub­li­cans. He is a tough enough cam­paign­er that he can over­come that deficit. His intru­sive style of gov­er­nance did­n’t play well as Attor­ney Gen­er­al, in part because peo­ple felt like that posi­tion should­n’t be mak­ing the law, just enforc­ing it. His 2002 race against Den­nis Moore indi­cates his clear inter­est in a seat in Con­gress, and it’s pos­si­ble that vot­ers will have washed the bad taste of his re-elec­tion cam­paign out of their mem­o­ries by the next elec­tion, or that they will be more recep­tive to the idea of a Con­gress­man inter­est­ed only in abor­tion than they were to an Attor­ney Gen­er­al with a one track mind.

The House lead­er­ship obvi­ous­ly wants Boy­da to stay in office. They’ve giv­en her plum com­mit­tee assign­ments and a chance to take the lead on a bill strip­ping pen­sions from con­gress­crit­ters con­vict­ed of felonies. Her spot on the Ag. com­mit­tee will let her help rur­al vot­ers in lots of ways, and her posi­tion on Armed Ser­vices will give her both a plat­form to speak out for the con­cerns of Kansans and a chance to make a real dif­fer­ence in Iraq policy. 

If she sticks to what got her elect­ed, I think she can beat any of these chal­lengers. Phill Kline is prob­a­bly the biggest threat, but she has always empha­sized that pol­i­tics should­n’t be about wedge issues like abor­tion. That mes­sage got her elect­ed, and I don’t see why it would­n’t get her re-elect­ed. Rur­al areas and farm economies have been ignored while Con­gress fought cul­ture wars. By focus­ing atten­tion on kitchen table issues, she can improve lives in the dis­trict, and that’ll be a tough record for any­one to attack.