Good morning everyone:
While most of the Kansas press corps was consumed with a nearly eight-hour hearing over an objection to independent Greg Orman’s petition to get on the ballot in the governor’s race, there’s was so much more going in in Kansas politics Thursday.
Let’s go around the horn this morning, starting with a new revelation about Democratic political rookie phenom Sharice Davids.
ICE or no ICE?
The Kansas City Star’s Bryan Lowry is about to leave Kansas City for McClatchy’s Washington D.C. bureau, but leaves us with this revelation about Democratic candidate Sharice Davids in the 3rd Congressional District.
Davids came out this week and denied wanting to eliminate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as she fought back against an ad from incumbent Congressman Kevin Yoder.
But then a podcast from July turned up where she said she wanted to defund the agency.
Here’s a link to where you can find the podcast but you will need to listen to it through the iTunes app.
As an aside, Davids campaign also has refused to answer questions this week about whether she attended Congresswoman Nancy’s Pelosi’s annual donor conference in Napa last weekend.
Of course, Yoder has been linking Davids to Pelosi in ads. It might explain why numerous calls have gone unreturned. At one point, a question was posed to a campaign spokeswoman who also didn’t answer the question.
Election predictions
FiveThirtyEight has a new update showing how it’s election predictions stack up against other prognosticators. FiveThirtyEight’s analysis gives Democrats a 27 percent chance of flipping the 3rd Congressional District, while other election handicappers consider the race as a tossup or leaning Republican.
Svaty speaks
This is more of a column (which we generally don’t like here) but it’s the first time we’ve heard from Democrat Josh Svaty after coming in third in the Democratic primary for governor. 
In an interview with The KC Star’s Steve Kraske, Svaty blames his defeat on Planned Parenthood, which vowed early on to stop an “extremist” like him from “gaining even the slightest political foothold in Kansas.” Well, it worked. Svaty finished with just 18 percent, behind winner Laura Kelly and former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer.
Svaty says he’s disillusioned. He has no immediate future political plans and it remains to be seen whether he’ll endorse Democratic nominee Laura Kelly in the general election.
Orman and the Democrats
The AP’s John Hanna takes a broad national view of the Kansas governor’s race and how it’s influenced by Greg Orman’s independent candidacy. In the story there’s this colorful quote from Democrat Chris Reeves. “Let’s say he picks up 15, 16 percent and (Kris) Kobach wins with less than 45 percent. Greg Orman better be prepared to be run out of town on a rail.” It’s a story that’s worth your time.
Medicaid expansion
A task force formed by Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer on Thursday recommended expanding Medicaid during the 2019 legislative session. Here’s coverage from The Associated Press and the Capital-Journal.
