Kansas election saw one politician stay middle of the road. Another jumped the shark.

An incredibly disciplined campaign: The last Democrat in Kansas to win the governorship with a Democrat in the White House was John Carlin in 1978. The odds were against Gov. Laura Kelly in a Republican state with Joe Biden in the White House. But she ran an impressively disciplined campaign, from start to finish repeating the message that she was bipartisan and middle of the road, caring only about such Kansas meat and potatoes issues as schools, roads, jobs and cutting taxes. The shots of her talking about these things while standing in the middle of roads or sitting between two people — featured in five of her 13 TV ads — became the indelible and, going by the election results, believable image to voters.

When Schmidt jumped the shark: The Derek Schmidt for Governor campaign committed itself to a strategy based on driving up Republican turnout by focusing on hot-button and often divisive national issues, such as critical race theory, transgender athletes, violent crime and border security, arguing that Kelly was too radical for Kansas. In the last weeks of the campaign, Schmidt himself waded into the arena of drag shows by accusing Kelly’s administration of funding them, which was not true. It not only was a colossal blunder to make false accusations, but also for the candidate himself to insert himself into a discussion about drag queens signaled a campaign that had lost its way.

Heeeeeeee’s back!: Running his eighth race for a seventh different office — and after losing races for governor in 2018 and U.S. Senate in 2020 — Kris Kobach narrowly won to be Kansas’ next attorney general. The AG office as Kobach defines it — meant to challenge and sue the federal government — is much better suited to Kobach than the governor role, where such Kansas-centered issues as education funding and road construction fit him about as well as an oversized jacket. He will be a very happy man for the next four years.

One Schmidt that did win in Kansas: Republican Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt is the most popular politician in Kansas if we go by total number of votes. She received nearly 610,000 votes. If you’re wondering, yes, this is the same Vicki Schmidt who was targeted for political extinction by conservative leaders of her own party in 2012 when they supported a primary challenger against her in her re-election race for the Kansas Senate. She won that race by 160 votes and won Tuesday by over a quarter of a million.

Some pretty good “Inaccurate Garbage”: Election polling has taken a lot of heat in the past few years, so we should note how awesome it was in Kansas this fall. The 27 News/Emerson College poll released on Oct. 29 had Sen. Jerry Moran ahead by 21%. He won by 23%. In the attorney general race, it had Chris Mann ahead by 1. Kobach won by 1.8%, so within the margin of error at +/- 3%. In the governor’s race, it had Laura Kelly up by 3% and she won by 2.2%. Schmidt’s campaign claimed the poll was the “Media’s determination to suppress the Republican vote with inaccurate polling like this.”

On Oct. 24, the New York Times/Siena College poll showed Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids leading Republican challenger Amanda Adkins in the 3rd District by 14 points. Adkins said the methodology was “garbage” and “nobody reads the New York Times.” She lost by 12%.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas election saw candidate stay middle; another jumped the shark