You can talk all you want about the quality of the candidates, or lack thereof, but one thing is clear looking at the maps of the 2018 midterm election, the battle is not so much Republican vs Democrat or conservative vs liberal as it is rural vs urban.

In the race for Kansas governor, Laura Kelly won 9 counties out of 105, but they were the four most populous counties on the I-70 urban corridor of Wyandotte, Johnson, Douglas and Shawnee. Throw in Sedgwick and a couple of others and she wins by almost 50,000 votes.

In the 3rd District Congressional race Sharice Davids won Wyandotte County and Johnson County outright. Yoder won rural Miami County and lost by over 25,000 votes to an unqualified carpetbagger. I defy anyone to show me a Congressman that worked harder in and for his district than Kevin Yoder. Kevin is a moderate who ran his office like he was running a seminar in how to be the perfect Congressman. Gone and liable to stay that way.

In the race for Attorney General the Democrat Party had actually repudiated their own candidate when it was discovered that she had a disgusting poster in her office showing a police officer being hung. She still won Wyandotte, Johnson and Douglas counties running against political moderate Derek Schmidt. He did win the state by an impressive 180,000 votes, but he still lost Johnson County by over 1400 votes.

In the 2nd District Congressional race severely flawed candidate Steve Watkins won enough of the rural areas of his district to overcome Paul Davis’ (another severely flawed candidate) victories in urban Douglas and Shawnee counties.

What is clear is that Republicans need to find a message that resonates with the more regulated urban dwellers or they will become a minority party once again. Worse yet is that if they do not start conveying their message to urban audiences atrocious candidates like Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillam in Florida will become the norm and they will win like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Sharice Davids in Kansas already have.

–By John Altevogt