Today I attended a rousing and inspirational fund-raising luncheon for the MainStream Coalition, and I’m starting to get keen on Kansas.
Keen on getting Kansas back on track, that is, in light of the legislative debacle that has been taking place in Topeka.
I had heard of the MainStream Coalition but knew virtually nothing about it. A week or so ago, my friend and former colleague in The Star’s Wyandotte County Bureau, Mark Wiebe, emailed me an invitation to the luncheon at the Matt Ross Community Center in downtown Overland park.
Mark, who now works for Wyandotte Inc., Wyandotte County’s community mental health center, is secretary of the MainStream Coalition, which has its offices in Mission.
The coalition is a 22-year-old, bipartisan, non-profit organization — 501(c)(4) — that can spend up to 50 percent of its revenue on politics. Its mission is to oppose extremism and fight for good government, sound fiscal policy and strong public schools.
A noisy crowd of about 230 attended yesterday’s event, and a sense of energy, optimism and defiance permeated the room.
Speaker after speaker talked about the need to “Restore Sanity to Kansas” (the organization’s slogan) and cited reasons why Kansas was not a lost cause just because extremists hold sway right now.
For example, coalition president Sheryl Spalding, a former Republican state representative from Johnson County, said that although Gov. Sam Brownback was re-elected in 2014, he had the support of only about 25 percent of the state’s registered voters. (He defeated Democrat Paul Davis 423,666 to 390,614.) Spalding said she thought many people who voted for Brownback now regret it.
Spalding
Spalding was one of many Democrats and moderate Republicans who were washed away in 2012 by a flood of outside money from ultra-conservative outfits like the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity.
To rousing cheers, Spalding said, “With your help, we can make a stand, we can speak out, and we can turn this state around!”
Another speaker was Carol Marinovich, former mayor of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County-Kansas City, Kansas. It was under Marinovich — and at her agitation — that the Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County governments merged in the late 1990s.
Marinovich
Citing the importance of working across party lines, Marinovich said Republican legislators were key sponsors of legislation that authorized a vote on consolidation in Wyandotte County. In addition, she said, then-Gov. Bill Graves, also a Republican, “could not have been a stronger partner” in Wyandotte County’s ascendance.
“Consolidation laid the foundation for the economic resurgence of Kansas City, Kansas,” Marinovich said.
Republican state leadership supported Wyandotte County in those years — the late 1990s and early 2000s, Marinovich said, because they knew that a prosperous Wyandotte County would be good for the whole state, partly by generating millions of dollars a year in new sales-tax revenue.
Echoing Marinovich, Jill Quigley, another former Republican state representative, told the crowd that working across party lines was essential to “bringing about positive change.”
On the importance of mainstream politics, Quigley quoted the late Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was raised in Abilene, Kansas:
People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems come into the gray area. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
**
For the MainStream Coalition, the timing of Wednesday’s event was perfect. The organization appears poised to surge ahead in what could be a long and resonating backlash to the folly that extremists have unleashed on a once-moderate state government.
In his invocation yesterday, Rev. Robert Meneilly, retired pastor at Village Presbyterian Church, prayed that “our beloved state” would be saved from “its present state of shame.”
What reasonable, moderate person could argue with that characterization?
…If you’re interested in learning more about the MainStream Coalition, visit their website, http://www.mainstreamcoalition.org, or give them a call at (913) 649-3326. Brandi Fisher is the executive director. The organization’s office is at 5960 Dearborn, Mission.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Good for you, Fitz, for writing about this great organization. I’m not involved with The Mainstream Coalition but admire the work they do and the stance they are taking against the extremists in Topeka who are destroying their state. And I’m glad to hear that Mark is involved with them.
For whatever reason I checked the Mainstream website a few weeks ago and noticed that Carol and Mark were involved with the organization now. Originally it was a hateful and bigoted response to the rise of conservative evangelicals that caused an alliance between faux and sleaze-wing Republicans with JOCO’s miniscule left-wing community.
It was financed by Bond’s cronies and by Meneilly’s blue hair parishioners who were routinely fed a diet of horror stories about how the Lutherans and Baptists (if they were in a Catholic church), or Catholics and Baptists (if they were in a Lutheran church) wanted to create a caliphate here in Kansas.
They were given tons of publicity both by Steve Rose at the Sun and Art Brisbane at the Star and so, for a time, were a force in JOCO politics as useful idiots for the faux and sleaze wing Republicans.
The charade of being “moderates” and/or moderate Republicans quickly wore thin after a couple of election cycles as many of the faux Republicans came out of the political closet and declared as Democrats, or participated in one too many Republicans for (insert name of Democrat here). In addition, they lost some of their cachet among Jewish members after the Jewish Chronicle denounced PV Presbyterian for some of the anti-Semitic activities it promoted.
Worse yet their biggest mistake was supporting Dennis Moore against Adam Taff, the sleaze wings anointed money candidate for Congress, and hence even their value as useful idiots became tenuous.
Since then they all but disappeared. For a time Dwight Sutherland, Tim Golba and i owned the Mainstream Coalition name when they were so disorganized that they forgot to fill out the one page form required by the SOS’s office. Eventually we got bored with that joke and let our ownership lapse.
Since then Bond and company have tried to create other more reliably dishonest organizations like the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority (which was neither Traditional, Republican, or a majority) to replace the Mainstream. All of those have fallen flat despite a collaborative effort by the Kansas media to promote them. So perhaps that’s the reason why there’s yet another attempt to try to pump life into this dead horse. But I’m guessing that in spite of the clumsiness of the current circus in Topeka this group will play no more than a minor role in any sleaze wing comeback in JOCO and, at best, will become once again useful idiots for what I have come to term the Long Green Party.
Yes….do it now….lead!!
By the way, there is a very bright Kansas blogger who writes for the Daily Kos that did two columns on what The Kansas Democrat Party needs to do to become relevant again. He sometimes goes under the nom de Plume tmservo although I think lately he’s using his actual name, Chris Reeves.
Here’s a link to his first installment:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/05/1342275/-How-the-Kansas-Democratic-Party-Drove-Itself-to-Near-Extinction-Pt-1
There is only one political party in Kansas which can defeat the Republican Chamber of Commerce Religion Right Party hold on Kansas: the Democratic Party and its candidate, even if you have to hold your nose. Regardless, the last Governor’s election candidate, Paul Davis, was an exceptionally well prepared candidate to be Governor of Kansas. Whether you like it or not, the solution is to get involved in the Democratic Party and make a difference. Frankly, I have a concern about Kansas Democratic Party leadership, but I absolutely believe a third party is not the answer. Hello?
I think Paul Davis will run again in 2018 and will win handily. I also think Democratic candidates in other races will jam the income-tax issue down the throats of incumbents, and some of those Democrats will win. Inroads will be made…jimmycsays.
Paul Davis had a golden opportunity to beat Brownback last year and he blew it. Why would the Kansas Democratic Party put him out there again? Democrats in Kansas need to follow the far-right’s model of recruiting candidates for school board, city council and state races and grooming the best of them for statewide and national offices.
I find it intriguing that the Kansas Democrat Party is currently paying its new black ED 3/5s of what it paid its former white ED, so they do seem to have a sense of history, but Mike is right, they have no real bench to count on. Again, I recommend Chris Reeves’ articles in the Daily Kos on rebuilding the party.
The Pitch too had a good article a few months back about the Kansas Democratic Party’s ineptitude.
Can you give us a link, Mike?
http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/can-anyone-revive-kansas-decimated-democratic-party/Content?oid=5079141
http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/can-anyone-revive-kansas-decimated-democratic-party/Content?oid=5079141