Since Kansas is a red state many of its races in the general elections are non events. That is to say that most of the Democratic challengers are unknown personalities without state-wide name recognition. The Democratic Party puts up these candidates as token efforts with no financial support. They are strictly providing a token alternative to the Republican incumbents.
In the 4th district for the US House of Representatives the Democrats put up Perry Schuckman to run against incumbent Mike Pompeo. To date I haven’t seen a single campaign commercial for Schuckman on TV or in the newspapers. I doubt if most people could name the Democratic candidate much less give an opinion of him. For that matter I haven’t seen a single commercial for Pompeo. In his arrogance Pompeo has decided he will automatically win the race so there is no need to spend money campaigning. He just assumes that he will win since he has the name recognition that comes from being an incumbent. At the same time he can bet that most of his constituents would not vote for a Democrat anyway. They are especially not likey to vote for one that has no name recognition at all. Pompeo saves money by not campaigning.
Pompeo does have his mailings that he sends out to constituents. I receive them myself. In his last two he wrote about national security, with absolutely no facts or actual debating points:
This week, I spent a fair amount of time working to ensure that Kansans are safe from radical Islamic terror--by voting to take action against radical Islamic terrorists and by participating in the first open hearing of the Benghazi Committee--but we've also made major headway in passing policies that improve Kansans' lives.
He then went right to a Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act. His taking part in the Benghazi Committee is purely political. That committee only looks for proof that President Barack Obama is somehow negligent in the attack on the Libyan Embassy on September 11, 2012. It has nothing to do with making Americans safer.
Pompeo doesn’t mention his election campaign anywhere in these mailings. He seems to act as if there really is no election or he has no real opponent.
This brings up the question of why the Democratic Party puts up candidates if they aren’t going to actively support them. I know from taking to other Democratic candidates that they like to have a candidate in all elections. But once signed up they only support the candidates who can develop name recognition and raise money. Their treatment of candidates as Schuckman are just plain unfair. Schuckman might have had a real chance if he had a good campaign with some money behind him. But his run for office is just a waste. Only a few hard core Democrats know anything about him. To allow a half assed campaign as this one only allows other Democrats to waist valuable time on this campaign when they could be working on a campaign that has a chance of winning.
This is a case of neither political party being fare to the voters of Kansas. The Republicans treat the race with arrogance that shows disrespect for the voters and the Democrats are cheating their constituents out of a real contested election.
