NOTEBOOK: Voter turnout better than expected

By CHRIS GREEN, Harris News Service

Kansas voters turned out at a slightly higher rate Tuesday than Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh initially had anticipated.

Thornburgh’s office released statistics Thursday showing a 22.2 percent of the state’s 1.64 million voters cast ballots, according to the unofficial totals. That’s slightly higher than the 19.3 percent turnout predicted last week.

Rawlins County in northwest Kansas had the state’s highest participation with 60.32 percent of registered voters showing up to vote. Thomas, Greeley, Comanche, Stevens and Morris counties all topped 50 percent in voter turnout.

Ford County recorded the state’s lowest voter turnout at 2.32 percent. Sumner, Finney, Douglas, Barber, Geary, Reno, Meade, Ness and Kingman counties all recorded voter turnouts below 15 percent.

Among the state’s largest counties, Shawnee County led with 30.61 percent participation.

Stephanie Wing, a Thornburgh spokeswoman, said voter turnout figures could change slightly once counties finalize their voting tallies.

Close calls

State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins’ 1,379-vote victory in the 2nd District over former U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun was the state’s closest GOP congressional primary in four years.

Jenkins’ margin equaled 2 percent of the 66,435 votes cast. In 2004, the GOP’s 3rd District primary was decided by 207 out of 88,000 cast.

Another close race involved two-term state Rep. Virginia Beamer, R-Oakley, who led Dighton farmer and rancher Don Hineman by just five votes, 1,853 to 1,848, in the GOP primary for northwest Kansas’ 118th District seat.

Mike Slattery, son of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Slattery, trailed Andy Sandler by just three votes in a Johnson County House primary.

Either race could ultimately be decided by recounts requested by the trailing candidate after counties finalize the totals.

On the flip side, one of the state’s most lopsided contested races took place in Topeka, where Democratic state Rep. Annie Tietze defeated challenger H. Dean Zajic while carrying nearly 91 percent of the vote.

In agreement

In the heat of competition, State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins and former U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun didn’t always have kind things to say about each other.

Jenkins based her campaign on arguing that Ryun failed voters in Congress. Ryun claimed that Jenkins wasn’t as conservative as she made herself out to be. The battle culminated in a series of mailers and television ads where each one criticized the other.

But after Jenkins’ narrow win on Tuesday, Ryun stood beside her Thursday and offered his endorsement. The pair expressed unity in their desire to see Jenkins’ opponent, 2nd District Democrat Nancy Boyda, unseated this November.

“Jim and I agree on a whole lot more than we can ever disagree on,” Jenkins said.

One of the things Jenkins and Ryun agree on is that as a Democrat, Boyda isn’t in the line with the sentiments of her predominantly Republican district. But Boyda takes issue with the assertion.

“This is a Kansas seat,” Boyda said, arguing the seat doesn’t belong to a particular party.

Party wars

A political group that supports centrist Republicans angered GOP conservatives with a news release criticizing two right-wing candidates in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary.

The Kansas Traditional Republican Majority questioned the links former U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun and Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline had to a socially conservative group, the Family Research Council Action.

The moderate group claimed the FRCA’s executive director, Tony Perkins, had once collaborated with a member of the Ku Klux Klan while running a Louisiana political campaign in 1996. Perkins and the council have denied the charges.

Still, the FRCA had endorsed Ryun and hosted Kline at a conference, said Ryan Wright, the moderate group’s executive director. The pair, who both lost Tuesday, should have explained themselves, he argued.

But a conservative group derided the charge, which came just four days before the vote, as “baseless” and “outrageous.”

“KTRM claims that they are a group of moderate Republicans, but their actions are speaking much louder than their words these days,” said a written response on the conservative Kansas Republican Assembly group’s Web site.

Incumbents win

All seven powerful Republican state senators facing primary challenges survived those contests Tuesday, most of them without much of a sweat.

Only state Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, struggled to outlast Saline County GOP Chairman Tom Arpke of Salina by 202 votes in the 24th District seat. Brungardt is the chairman of the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee.

Moderate incumbents also won in four other races where conservative Republicans were trying to unseat them. The winners included Senate budget chairman Dwayne Umbarger, R-Thayer, and Sen. Ruth Teichman, R-Stafford.

Some moderate Republicans accuse conservative Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, of recruiting candidates to challenge his colleagues. Huelskamp has only said he talked to a few of the challengers about their runs.

Moderates took the contests seriously and the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority spent about $40,000 in the final five days before the vote, in part to help save Senate GOP incumbents.

However, the Nov. 4 general election could still change the moderate-conservative balance in the Senate, depending on which candidates win or lose against Democrats.