Grasses, trees and kudzu crowd the rural landscape near a “valley of death” in Alabama. (Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector)
We were motoring along a leafy stretch of road in rural Alabama that my mother-in-law has dubbed “the valley of death.”
Along this stretch, dozens or hundreds or thousands of people — depending on her mood during the telling — have driven their cars off the road and into a ravine overrun with kudzu. Perhaps their skeletal bodies remain, with the invasive vine wound around them like an organic straitjacket.
My mother-in-law enjoys herself.
Yet as I drove along that stretch over vacation, I found myself dwelling on the valley of death that we’re passing through right now in the United States and Kansas. I don’t need to write about the national situation: It’s traumatic enough and well covered enough. But here in Kansas, we can both see the road ahead and the steep slopes along either side with horrible clarity.
The gubernatorial election next year matters greatly. We’ve seen a bevy of high-profile candidates join the race — Cindy Holscher on the Democratic side; Scott Schwab, Jeff Colyer, Vicki Schmidt and Ty Masterson on the Republican side. More will join their ranks.
Our state took a flying leap off the valley of death during the administration of former Gov. Sam Brownback. His signature tax “experiment” showed many in the state just how wrong things could go after making bad policy choices. (Supply-side economics don’t work, have never worked and will never work. Just saying, kids.)
I’ve written repeatedly that the Kansas Legislature has forgotten those lessons. A new chief executive of the state could throw us back into the valley.
This time, the kudzu might not be quite so forgiving in releasing us.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s tenure was described in a fawning New York Times piece last week. Our nation’s newspaper of record appeared shocked to learn what everyone in Kansas has known for the better part of seven years: Kelly knows her stuff. She’s a outstanding retail politician. However, remaining in power means knowing your constituents and caring about results.
“Even as the national party shifted leftward, Ms. Kelly leaned into her image as a moderate pragmatist,” wrote Michelle Cottle about the 2022 gubernatorial election.
Later on she describes the governor: “Straightforward and steady, with a wry wit and an air of efficiency, Ms. Kelly indeed seems classically of the heartland.”
In a political scene stuffed with braggarts, showoffs and ego-driven maroons, Kelly stands out for her sheer normalcy. That’s an unfortunately rare commodity.
Meanwhile, a legislative task force plans to rejigger our K-12 school funding formula. It’s pretty clear, watching its meetings, that panel members yearn to impoverish public schools. I acknowledge that they deny this, but I also hear the contempt that drips from their voices when they talk about Kansas educators. As I wrote in May, we have reason to be afraid.
Again, this is not a new problem. During my work on a book about Kansas opinion writing, I found this prescient passage from a Hutchinson News editorial published on Feb. 24, 1964.
“As clearly as it does concerning representation, the constitution also demands uniform and equal education and uniform and equal taxation in Kansas,” the paper opined.
“We have neither,” it continued. “Some progress has been made lately toward both — with efforts toward school unification, study of a foundation plan of school finance, and a move toward more equal assessment of taxable property. But substantial equality in education requires increased state support of education. And equality in taxation requires shifting the tax burdens from real estate to other forms of taxation based on earnings as the true measure of wealth.”
We have always struggled to fund schools adequately. We have seldom, if ever, done so. Looking for ways to cut back now will propel us even further into the ravine.
Hovering over all this is the constitutional amendment proposal set for an August 2026 vote. It would allow for direct election of state Supreme Court justices. If approved by voters — by no means a sure thing — it would allow radical ideologues to buy justice in Kansas. It would hand over power to the same extremists who have poisoned the Kansas Legislature through gerrymandering and corporate donations. They have skewed our state’s politics so far to the right that they’re unrecognizable to normal people.
Yet another opportunity to veer into the valley of death.
I should note before closing that my mother-in-law is a wonderful woman, loving parent and fantastic grandmother. She just has an extravagant taste for the Southern Gothic.
But sometimes the flatness of our Midwestern landscape and plainspokenness of our everyday idiom can numb us to horrifying realities all around us. Sometimes we need a dash of west Alabama lunacy to comprehend the stakes.
For now, we’re still on the road, however uneasily. I pray we remain that way for the entire trip through the valley of death.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.