Key Kansas Republican donors Anne Hodgdon and her husband have withdrawn their support for Amanda Adkins in the 3rd District GOP primary for Congress.
Anne and J.B. Hodgdon pulled their support for Adkins citing a television commercial that started running this week criticizing GOP rival Sara Hart Weir for work she did for Democrat Dennis Moore shortly after graduating from college.
The ad was bankrolled by the Heartland USA PAC, which was funded with about $113,000 from Adkins’ father, Alan Landes.
“J.B. and I believe it is high time for Kansas Republicans to quit destroying our own from within,” Hodgdon posted Wednesday on Facebook.
“Bloody primaries are vile, and as of today, we are doing our part to put our foot down. We encourage others to take a stand with us.”
Hodgdon said she and her husband – in what she called an unprecedented move – had Adkins’ signs removed from their yard. They notified Adkins they were rescinding their support.
She said they have offered a place for signs to Weir and Adrienne Vallejo Foster.
“This matter is terribly unpleasant, but we believe it is high time for all of us to stand up to political dirty tricks designed to humiliate and demean other of our party’s candidates,” Hodgdon posted.
The Adkins campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Hodgdons have been key players in Republican politics in Kansas for years, contributing many thousands of dollars to GOP candidates up and down the ballot from U.S. Senate and Congress to governor and the Kansas statehouse.
Hodgdon said she was “shocked” by the Adkins ad, saying it “wildly” exaggerates a short period of time after Weir graduated from college.
She called the ad “condescending” and said it made Weir look like a “fool.”
“And since it was largely funded by Adkins’ father, it’s hard to believe that Adkins didn’t approve its use,” Hodgdon wrote.
“Adkins, with her vast political experience, knew all too well that Sara’s short stint as a Democrat following college is no different than existed with the likes of President Ronald Reagan and former Congressman Kevin Yoder, both of whom went on to be great and vital Republicans,” she wrote.
Last fall, Hodgdon went on Facebook to call for Adkins, Weir and Foster to sort out who might have the best chance at beating Democratic Congresswoman Sharice Davids.
She urged them to rally around that one candidate with a campaign the GOP could coalesce behind.
“That is the only way we Republicans will stand a chance in the general election,” she wrote last fall.
“I promise you, if you three fight your way through the primary, each trying to distinguish yourself from the other (which is virtually impossible philosophically) whomever prevails will not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the general.”
Hodgdon said that the decision to rescind her support for Adkins was not to signal that the candidate wasn’t qualified for the position. She and her husband will remain neutral in the congressional primary.
“We simply felt it was time to shine a light on how divisive to our party dirty campaigning can be,” she said in a text message.
“It has been going on for way too long, and we Republicans chat privately about it, but no one to my knowledge has ever taken a public stand and said, ‘No more.'”
