Miller's crossing

National Review, July 20, 1998 by Richard Nadler

Conservative activists are attempting to wrest control of the Republican party establishment in Kansas.

OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS

Kansas Republicans are fighting a civil war, with their party's top strategist and its top elected official leading opposing armies. Conservative David Miller announced on May 6 that he would step down as state party chairman in order to run against incumbent Gov. Bill Graves. The press, both national and local, is portraying the campaign as another intraparty ideological skirmish. It is partly that--the differences between Miller and Graves on guns, taxes, and abortion are real. But it is also a power struggle, as the activist wing of the state GOP fights back against the party establishment that has been trying to smash it.

Republicans have dominated Kansas politics for more than a hundred years. They currently outnumber Democrats among registered voters by 45.3 to 29.5 per cent. With Miller plotting strategy since 1994, they have held both the state's U.S. Senate seats, won all four House seats, and expanded their majorities in the state legislature. But Kansas Republicanism is not known for being particularly ideological. As Gov. Graves puts it: "A lot of Kansans wear political labels because they grew up with them. They were handed down from their parents or their grandparents."

Generations of Republicans have served the state's agricultural and petroleum interests in Congress. Ranging from Nancy Kassebaum on the party's left wing to Bob Dole on its right, these Republicans espoused a moderate liberalism derived from the prairie progressives of the early 1900s.

Bill Graves, heir to a Salina, Kansas, trucking fortune, fits the mold. Out of college, Graves worked in the 1980 Bush campaign, then as an aide to the Kansas secretary of state. He later won that post himself in a campaign devoid of ideology: here was another rich young man rising smoothly through Republican ranks. While serving as secretary of state, he married Linda Richey, whose father is CEO of Torchmark Corp., an insurance-based financial empire.

Republican moderates who retain power in the post-Reagan Republican Party do so by adhering to a simple rule: You can mess with conservatives on abortion, guns, or taxes, but not all three. Hence Ohio Gov. George Voinovich can raise taxes, and California Lt. Gov. Dan Lungren can advocate gun controls. Both received conservative support; both are solidly pro-life. But the Kansas Republican establishment has been slow learning this rule. Republican "moderate" Mike Hayden, who was governor in the late Eighties, consistently broke it. In 1990, abandoned by conservatives, he lost his governorship to a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat, and Republicans lost control of the state House of Representatives.

David Miller, then a five-term state representative from Eudora, led a conservative rebellion against the establishment. He toured the state recruiting conservatives to fill Republican precinct positions. By 1994, these foot soldiers had captured the state party. Miller became political director of Kansans for Life PAC and was himself elected to the to the party's state committee. Directing thousands of precinct workers to phone trees and ward walks, Miller and his colleagues prepared to recast the post-Hayden party. "That year, conservatives ceded the governor's race to avoid burning resources," recalled Christian Coalition organizer Michael Welton. Instead, they campaigned tirelessly for their candidates for the U.S. House and Senate.

On election day the conservative triumph was complete--with one exception. Bill Graves, an outsider in his own party, continued his smooth ascent. He told the Wichita Eagle, "I don't want to see those folks win who think we ought to slash and burn government"--like state House Speaker Tim Shallenburger and Tax Committee chairman Phill Kline. Graves soon locked horns with his party's leaders over taxes: in 1995 he fought to retain car levies; in 1996 he blocked a Republican bill to phase out state property taxes.

"Graves got off to a solid start," wrote Stephen Moore and Dean Stansel of the Cato Institute, "but he now seems to be a guardian of the status quo and an enemy of growth-oriented reform." They ranked him 14th among the 16 class-of-'94 Republicans in Cato's Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors in 1996. Since then, he has only gotten worse. State general fund spending has grown 22 per cent during his governorship.

Graves showed unrelenting hostility toward conservative social positions, too. In 1996, he vetoed a bill to permit concealed weapons. That same year, he vetoed a "right to know" law requiring abortionists to give each patient information regarding her child's fetal development, the nature of the procedure, the risks involved, and the other options available. "These provisions of the bill represent a powerful intimidation factor against doctors who perform abortions, and an unnecessary government intrusion into the relationship between patient and doctor," Graves wrote in his veto message.