Despite August Vote, Abortion an Issue in Kansas Governor Race

The Kansas State Fair kicked off its annual 10-day run with a noteworthy bang on Sept. 9 as Stillwell farmer Matt Jacobs’ 1,280-pounder broke the state’s all-time pumpkin record and ribbons were awarded for best scarecrows, biscuits, and butter sculptures.

Staged in Hutchison, the state fair is a late-summer celebration of tradition, innovation, and novelty with all three apparently baked into its signature ‘OMG Chicken Sandwich,’ a cereal-coated fried chicken breast wrapped in syrup-slathered bacon wedged inside a doughnut.

Among other Kansas State Fair traditions, it is where, every four years, candidates for governor meet to debate for the first time, signaling the start of the final sprint to November elections.

So it was that first-term incumbent Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, her Republican challenger, engaged in the first face-to-face exchange of their gubernatorial race on the fair’s Peoples Bank & Trust Arena stage on Sept. 10.

Although the 90-minute debate unfolded on a Saturday before noon, both candidates were accompanied by full-throated supporters who demonstrated full-throttled intolerance of opponents’ views in back-and-forth broadsides and shout-downs. A sober exchange and examination of competing ideas, it was not.

Schmidt, the state’s three-term attorney general, doubled-down on his opposition to abortion, claiming the fact that Kansans on Aug. 2 shot down a proposed amendment eliminating access to abortion as a right by 165,000 votes, or by a 59-to-41 percent margin, doesn’t mean the state’s conservative voters support “unrestricted” access.

He said if elected governor, he would support the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature if it imposed restrictions on abortion because it is the role of state lawmakers to make such decisions in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s June repeal of Roe v Wade.

“I’m pro-life,” Schmidt said. “I supported the constitutional amendment. Kansas voters have decided, which does not

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