Kansas: what went right, what went wrong?

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Monkeyleg

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After the failure of the veto override here in WI, a lot of people were asking what went right and what went wrong.

So, I'd ask the same of those of you who were involved in the fight in Kansas. What do you think you did right that CCW supporters in other states could learn from? Is there anything you would have done differently?
 
Dick,

I think one key was how fast the Legislature got to the veto override vote. She vetoed it on what Monday or Tuesday ??? and the Override vote was today. Not much time for the Gov. to put the pinch/squeeze on.

IIRC, In WI there was a couple of weeks from veto to the override vote. Way to much time for Doyle to turn the screws.

Plus they had quite a majority in both houses. +3 or 4 in the Senate and +8 or 9 in the House, too many to flip and not enough time to do it.

HTH. :)

(Added another 13 cents to the pot today, I'm up to $4.37 for WCCA :D )
 
Thanks for the reply, Scout26. I'm 99.999% certain that the outcome of the veto override vote here was preordained. Right after the Assembly passed the bill in December, both Democrats who flipped stopped taking phone calls or talking to constituents.

The fact that supporters in Kansas had such an overwhelming number of votes for the bill is significant. It could mean any number of things: that Kansas is more conservative; that Sebelius isn't as strong as Doyle; that we here in WI didn't do something right; or something else.

Any ideas?
 
We owe it all to clean living.

Seriously, a handful of folks in the legislature have been fighting (some for almost 10 years) for this and they had their ducks in a row before it went to Her Nibs desk this time.
It helps that we had a few motivated congresscritters on both sides of the aisle, and in both houses. And it helped that some of the potential flipflop Democrats were interviewed on local radio asap after Her Nibs called them to twist arms yesterday, "daylight is the best antiseptic".
The group of citizens who appeared to testify and the letters we sent didn't hurt at the legislative level, even if Madame Bodyguarded ignored them and the will of the citizens once again.

Plus, clean living doesn't hurt. I'm just saying.
 
"We owe it all to clean living."

If, by "clean living," you mean that you don't have a governor as corrupt as Doyle, you're right.

BTW, the edit function on THR doesn't work for me, so I can't correct the misspelling of "Kansas" in the thread title. Could someone please introduce a bill to change the name of the state to "Kanas?" ;)
 
Right after the Assembly passed the bill in December, both Democrats who flipped stopped taking phone calls or talking to constituents.
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Dick,

Yep, the squeeze was on. Maybe Doyle knows when they stopped beating their wives or where their dead lovers are buried. He got to them and in a way only they know. (might be interesting to find out........)

Texascarl is right, maybe next time, get the fencesitters to explain RIGHTAWAY why they voted for it when it passes their house. Then you got them in the Kerry "I voted for it, before I voted against" trap.

-Dave
 
...another states goes shall-issue

Congratulations to all you Kansans out there. Time to give your governor her walking papers.

<sigh> When will California become shall-issue?
Paging Mr. Jim March... Paging Mr. Jim March. :)
 
So this means Kansas now allows carry?

Strike another one off the list of states I can never live in.
 
Yesterday evening I got two emails and a recorded phone call from the NRA giving me the names of House Reps who were under pressure from the Governess to change their votes.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that responded with phone calls & emails. The NRA did its job and grass roots prevailed.
 
This has been a long fight.Both of my Reps,Taffanelli and Pine have been supporters of the bill but then,I live in rural Jefferson county.The country club conservatives of Johnson county,which is just KC west,were against it.The free range RINOS got out voted by some of the Democrats that believe that we should be able to defend ourselves against the bad guys.There was some good bi-partisan support and the overide vote was held as soon as they could.This time they got it right and I will be thanking them for it.

Maybe I won't be missing Oklahoma as much as I used to....
 
State name corrected at the request of the poster.

LawDog
 
Thank you, LawDog, for correcting my typo.

There are plenty of other threads on this forum and others congratulating Kansans for their victory. Everyone from Wisconsin is celebrating with you.

The point of this thread was to ask those Kansans who were in the midst of the fight their opinions as to what they did right to win, and what suggestions they might have for those of us in WI who are going to have to start the fight all over again.

I've received input from folks at NRA/ILA, but I think perspectives from those on the ground would be much more helpful.

If you don't want to post your thoughts on a public forum, please email me at [email protected]

Once again, thanks for your replies, and congratulations for making Kansas a Free State.
 
F4GIB, take a look at the WI bill as finally amended. We gave up a lot more to the Dem's. A lot.

As in: if you were carrying, and a school bus owned by any school passed within 100 feet of you, you would be guilty of a Class E felony. In fact, if you were walking by a warehouse that was owned by a school, but didn't even have signage saying as such, you'd still be guilty of a felony.

We gave in to reducing the BAC from .08 to .02. Again, a felony.

And there's more.

I don't follow KS politics closely, so I'm just going to guess that Sebelius doesn't wield the same iron fisted control over members of her party that Governor Doyle does here. Doyle knows how to spread the money around.

If anyone involved in the KS fight has some ideas, please email me.
 
I personally feel the murder rate around here and that whole BTK thing pushed this issue to the forfront of everyones frontal lobe. I know it kept me sending letters to my reps...
 
take a look at the WI bill as finally amended. We gave up a lot more to the Dem's. A lot.
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Then start with a NEW bill after Doyle is gone. If you start from old compromises, you can only lose more. Every lobbyiest knows this. January 1, 2007 starts a new Legislature.
 
As a Wisconsin poster with an outside view, I'd have to say that the success in Kansas was one of two things:

The pro-gun Democrats actualy believed in concealed carry, or they feared thier constituents more than they did thier governor, or what she could offer them to flip.

Wisconsin was the opposite. For all we know, VanAkkren and Steinbrink never intended to vote for the WI PPA the entire time. It was just a bluffing game with Doyle. The reasons they stated for thier flip were painfully weak.

Hell, Kansas didn't even lose any of thier margin over 2/3rds! That could be because they knew it would pass and wanted to be on the winning team, or they actualy believed in it. Our guys knew thier flipping would make a difference so they knew they had leverage.

I think the info that would be the most helpful is that we need to find a trusted source who can ask and relay the real reasons the "weakest" pro-gun Democrats in Kansas stuck with thier votes.

Can an NRA lobbyist in Kansas take some of the pro-gun dems there out for a drink after the session ends, and ask them what the true nitty-gritty motivation was for overrideing thier governor? If they can, then they need to feed that intel back to us here in WI to see if we can use it on our weak members here.

My other idea is to see if we can stir up dissention within the Democratic ranks, and offer any real pro-gun Democrats to run against our WI flippers in a primary. Maybe a pro-gun Democrat Iraq vet, if we could turn one up. It would take someone who's more pro-gun than Democrat though, since they'd have to go into it knowing they'd stand just as good a chance turning the seat over to a Republican by splitting the vote in the district.

Maybe it's a kamakaze tactic, but what about having the lions-share of the WCCM's funds go to the pro-gun Democrats we can trust. At minimum using the carrot on the Dem's would make them take notice over the predictable "stick" of consistently funding the Republican challenger. Possibly one who has little hope of winning due to gerrymandering or demographics...

Crazy talk, for sure, but I'm just throwing everything off the top of my head out there to see what sticks.

Overall, when it comes to CCW in WI, logic dictates we have the upper hand, it's only a matter of when, not if. It's one of those tactical situations where the advantage goes to we, the agressor. Think about it, it sounds simplistic, but the WCCA and the NRA only has to win once. The anti's have to defeat us every time.

I feel upbeat about the fall elections. Anti Bush/War/GOP sentiment won't peak until the '08 presidential race, and even then, on the state level those issues are somewhat irrelevant. And on all the other issues, voter ID, taxes, school choice, the WI GOP is armed with being on the popular side of the issues.

Should the fall elections going against us here in WI, it would be a huge dissapointment, but even then it wouldn't dissuade me from believing WI will get shall-issue CCW before places like Illinois does, or New Jersy changes from thier highly restrictive "may-issue" to shall-issue.
 
Kansas: what went right, what went wrong?

After the failure of the veto override here in WI, a lot of people were asking what went right and what went wrong
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Dick,

Take a look at the demographics of the vote. I'll bet that the nay votes came mostly from those closest to Chicago and Milwaukee, where you probably have a lot of RHINOs.

We had the same thing here in Kansas. I live in RHINOland and most of our locals voted against it. It took several years to get enough out-state politicians who knew about guns and were not afraid of them. You'll need to work on the same thing. Start polling candidates for your legislature and make sure all the voters know how they stand on CCW.

Good luck. Kansas is rooting for you.

Bob

 
Robert J McElwain, the two flippers this time were from Kenosha county (close to Illinois) and Sheboygan (a couple of hours north). The last time the lone flipper was from the northern-most point in the state, way up on the shores of Lake Superior.

Every Republican voted for the bill, and for the override. Believe it or not, that's part of the problem. It's viewed by legislators as a Democrat vs. Republican issue, thanks to the bitterness in our legislature. You couldn't get the two parties to agree that the Declaration of Independence was a good idea.

AJ Dual: "Maybe it's a kamakaze tactic, but what about having the lions-share of the WCCM's funds go to the pro-gun Democrats we can trust."

There's only two that I think we can really trust in the Assembly. Max contribution to each is $500.

I'd love to be able to find a way to get two real pro-gun Democrats to run against Steinbrink and Van Akkeren. But the anti-gun leadership of the Dem party makes that decision.

I'm sure that, even before the first Assembly vote, it was decided that six Democrats could vote for the bill, but two would flip on the veto override. It was probably decided even then who those two would be.

I really think the only surprise in the last two sessions was when Senator Russ Decker voted to override. And that was because he had a really loud argument with Democrat Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach in closed caucus about being told how to vote. Decker was suspect before that argument.

The fact that Kansas had such a huge surplus of votes suggests to me that legislators were voting on the merits of the bill and not politically. Or, if politically, then Democrats were looking at their constituencies, and not the governor.

Back to the original question, though: what groups in Kansas were involved, and what sort of tactics did they use? I never read about open carry marches. What did the lead state group do?
 
The fact that Kansas had such a huge surplus of votes suggests to me that legislators were voting on the merits of the bill and not politically. Or, if politically, then Democrats were looking at their constituencies, and not the governor.
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I hate to say it, but I have a hunch Kansans are a lot closer in touch with America than most Wisconsin legislators.
 
I watched a lot of the legwork in Kansas over the past few months, I have one more observation I'd like to make. We had one dedicated Republican senator, a fellow once associated with various gun clubs and someone who could trot out facts when needed. He was very helpful in the Senate. Facts are always useful. I noted another dedicated democratic house rep, a lady married to an LEO, who sponsored the bill originally. She did so at the request of two of her constituents who were raped,and she made this clear at every opportunity. That may have made a difference. We just had another nutjob serial killer caught in Kansas this year, and with totally random attacks like his, self defense isn't as 'scary' to our Soccer Moms as it might have been 10 years ago. That may be reflected in our results, there seems to be a world of difference in voting for 'those good old boys who just want to play with their toys' and voting for 'self defense for men AND WOMEN', at least for some of the legislators.
There were men and women testifying before the hearings...while the men did their part the women seem to have made a big impact as well. I noticed the same thing in Texas when I lived down there, the lady who pushed so hard for the bill had lost her father in the Luby's massacre. It's hard for the GFW's to cry 'good old boy' at a motivated lady concerned with everyone's safety. It might not hurt y'all to line up some motivated ladies as bill sponsors, let them help soothe the chicken little society.
At any rate, now might be a good time to tip our hats to congresswoman Candy Ruff of Leavenworth and Mrs Stoneking as well as senator Journey. I know their names because they all worked HARD for us. Many others did too. Appreciated. Bad juju to our veto writing Governor. "We find your lack of faith...disturbing."
 
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