Looking along the Horizon

And taking stock of what our community needs to move ahead

We’re two weeks out from the 2024 general election, and there’s been no shortage of pundits who have shared their views on what went wrong, or right, depending on your view.

I’m not going to increase the noise by deconstructing or analyzing the election results - nationally or locally. At least not today.

What’s needed now, I think, is to look toward the future.

Every election produces joy and disappointment. The people feeling the joy of election victories seldom consider that nearly half of the people hoped for a different outcome. In places like Kansas, oftentimes a local election is decided in a Republican primary - meaning the vast majority of voters aren’t at all happy with the outcome. (It’s also why the Kansas legislature doesn’t accurately reflect the values of Kansans at large. Gerrymandering and partisan primaries are great for dominant political parties, but bad for quality government). Nevertheless, the winners usually charge ahead with delusions of a mandate in what was, in reality, a sliver of Kansans’ support.

The people feeling disappointment, or even in some cases despair, often are left feeling disenfranchised and disillusioned. They lose heart in our political system, believing they have no outlet for their voice, and no power to influence policy. After an election loss, these groups tend to either drift back into their daily lives or step away from political engagement altogether, deciding that their effort is better spent elsewhere. This creates a self fulfilling prophecy that further erodes minority power, which in turn allows majority power to grow relatively unchecked. Which, of course, is exactly what the ruling class hopes will happen.

Most of my readers likely feel this disillusionment right now. And that is the reason for this post.

I want to ask this community to take a few minutes to fill out a survey so I can better understand what sort of information/action/engagement/tools would be helpful to you going forward. I want to know what a community built around our shared values will include, and how that community can best work to leverage our collective power to amplify our voices and demand representation in our systems.

Follow this link to complete the survey.

Please fill out this survey, and share it with as many people as you can. The more responses I get, from as many different people as possible, the better data I’ll have about how to best continue to serving Kansas, albeit in a somewhat different capacity.

As I built this survey, I remembered I had done something similar back in 2016, not long before I was drafted to serve in the Kansas Legislature. I got nearly 400 responses then, and I’m hopeful we can get more this time around.

I’d like to have a large data set filled with insight from throughout Kansas and from a variety of Kansans - information that will help me understand the ways we can continue to work together in an effective way to help create a Kansas that holds people in power accountable, and is more true to our state’s values - and its people.