Rising Democratic star Josh Svaty: Abortion stance sank my bid for Kansas governor
Josh Svaty starts the conversation by saying he’s doing well.
But he’s not, really. Not even close.
The 38-year-old Democrat, widely hailed as a next-generation star for a party that lacks them, is still smoking over a tumultuous primary campaign for Kansas governor that resulted in a crushing third-place finish. Svaty was expected to run neck-and-neck with the ultimate winner, Laura Kelly. But it wasn’t to be.
And it wasn’t even close.
Svaty places the blame foursquare on Planned Parenthood for effectively taking him out of the race just hours after he launched his bid way back in May 2017. Svaty was depicted as an “extremist” for his anti-abortion votes in the Legislature. Laura McQuade, then the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, vowed to stop the Ellsworth farmer “from gaining even the slightest political foothold in Kansas.”
Turns out, she succeeded. Svaty now says he was answering questions about his abortion views all the way through his campaign to the point that he was barely able to talk about anything else. His fundraising was undermined, and Svaty wound up raising so little money he never even got on TV with an effective buy.
“It was probably unanticipated that they would be as aggressive as they were,” Svaty told me.
Svaty thought he could overcome the tough shots with good ol’-fashioned elbow grease. He’d go group by group, county by county, conducting private meetings with Democrats to convince them that he wasn’t toxic on the issue. He went after votes one at a time.
He insisted that he understood all sides. He insisted that he wouldn’t sign new restrictions into law.
But all that effort, and all those months of travel, didn’t work — especially after Kelly entered the race. Kelly, too, had an issue that threatened to undercut her support with the Democratic faithful. That was her once-upon-a-time support for gun rights.
But abortion politics overwhelmed guns. It didn’t help that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced in late June that he was retiring, catapulting abortion back onto center stage.
Svaty now is convinced that single-issue politics and special interests control party primaries. For years, Democrats looked askance at their GOP rivals and their litmus tests. Democrats, he says, are in exactly the same boat today.
For now and maybe for a long time, Svaty is done with politics. No U.S. Senate race in 2020. No second race for governor in 2022 should Republican Kris Kobach win in November.
As for endorsing Kelly, that may happen down the road. Or maybe it won’t. “We’re stepping back for awhile,” Svaty said. “I’m just kind of disillusioned right now.”
All this may sound like sour grapes, and maybe it is. But you haven’t spent more than a year of your life driving thousands of miles and putting in 16-hour days and talking to your young kids only on the phone for days at a time, either. All this while fighting for a cause you believed in with your entire being. Remember when you were 38?
The Democratic Party is in desperate need of candidates like Svaty who can win outstate and who have charisma to burn. Today, the Kansas Democratic Party doesn’t hold a single congressional seat or statewide office and has gone 0-32 in those races since 2010.
Single-issue politics is a bad groove for any party.
This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Rising Democratic star Josh Svaty: Abortion stance sank my bid for Kansas governor."