The Republic Will Tell You to Vote Ducey, But Check out Kansas Before You Do

Picking the winner in the Arizona Governor’s race is about as difficult as it gets. Last I looked, the polls were dead even.

Making a rational choice, however, is about as it easy as it gets. Why? Because Doug Ducey’s platform — gutting the state income tax — is exactly what Sam Brownback just did in Kansas. It’s worked out so badly that even conservatives in Kansas are upset.

Progressives consider Arizona a red state, but compared to Kansas it’s a pale shade of pink. Nonetheless, there are close connections between the two. Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach has authored some of the bills introduced by Arizona Republicans to suppress the vote here. The Koch brothers have an outsized influence in both states.

Elected in 2010, Sam Brownback proceeded down the exact path Doug Ducey hopes to follow. And, as Thomas Frank of Salon reports in In Brownbackistan, everything is awesome! And don’t let any liberal tell you different, the results have been beyond ugly. Frank:

You’ve got tax cuts so severe they’ve brought on fiscal catastrophe and thrown the state’s school system into crisis. You’ve got bullying by state legislators against organizations that criticize Brownback’s healthcare plans, and hints of pay-to-play corruption just under the surface. And, of course you’ve got credit downgrades as all this becomes known to the outside world.

The wrecking crew is in full swing in Kansas, and for once the people there seem to be ticked off about it. Once the hero of the state’s sin-hating millions, Sam Brownback is unpopular today. Indeed, his situation is so bad that the only sure way he can be rescued is by a mass disregard for economic reality—by cognitive blinders strapped on simultaneously by millions of individuals.

Brownback is now down 5 points in the polls in bright red Kansas. That’s right, even in the most conservative state in the country, the economic plan Doug Ducey is proposing for Arizona is seen as an abject failure.

Why? Because, as Frank explains, the easily predictable results of Brownback’s platform actually came to pass. Imagine that?

There has also been a shock-and-awe quality about the Brownback years. So numerous are the consequences of Kansas’s tax cuts (to choose the central item from Sam Brownback’s list of reforms), that it is difficult to try to process them all. By this I do not merely mean to point out that the tax cuts turned out to be much better for the rich than for everyone else; that’s kind of a cliché at this point—or that the tax cuts haven’t brought the economic growth Brownback said they would; that, too, is always the way these things turn out. More important is the panorama of disaster they have inflicted on education in the state: Fewer teachers working with more students, cuts to sports and art programs, and even school closings here and there.

Local governments, meanwhile have tried to make up the shortfall by raising property taxes (which are paid by a big part of the population in rural states), with the ironic result that while the hated moderate yuppies in the posh Kansas City suburbs get to enjoy Brownback’s tax cuts, the hardworking conservatives of the poorer counties have to pay much more. Other institutions have felt the pain as well: There was a risk, at one point, that the state’s courts would run out of money, and now Kansas prisons, that favorite conservative institution, are reportedly being forced to operate with insufficient guards. But what’s the big deal? A leader of the conservatives in the state legislature admitted in July that chopping back government was, in fact, one of the goals of the tax cuts all along.

Although the outcome here in November is anyone’s guess, picking who the Arizona Republic will support is a slam dunk: Ducey. Ducey and Brownback both are disciples of Arthur Laffer. Here’s Frank on the Brownback – Laffer connection:

And Brownback meant it. During the 2012 debate over whether to swallow his strychnine tax cuts, Brownback’s team brought to Topeka none other than economist Arthur Laffer, he of the repeatedly discredited theory that cutting taxes magically increases government revenues. Laffer’s formula has been tried again and again at the national level and has famously failed, but the Kansas legislature jumped when presented with its very own chance to defy “mental principles.” Unfortunately, the rules of accounting prevailed and now Sam Brownback’s reelection campaign is begging voters to persuade themselves that everything they’ve read in the newspaper is a falsehood; that things are really and truly OK, despite the evidence of the senses: “The sun is shining in Kansas and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

That last is the tagline Brownback delivers in one of his TV commercials that you can watch yourself on YouTube. It is something to behold.

And you know who else is a idol Laffer worshipper? None other than the Republic’s leading editorial writer, Robert Robb. I wrote about that earlier this year in Robert Robb, Shallow Thinker Extraordinaire. Remember when the Republic editorial board engaged in absurd, pathetic mental gymnastics to explain its endorsement of Ducey in the primary over the choice it acknowledged as the more rational one, Scott Smith? You can bet Robb was pulling the strings on that one.

Anyone want to bet against me on the Republic endorsement?

So, this election essentially will turn on whether Arizonans will make a rational choice, with the Arizona Republic’s thumb on the wrong side of the scale. When you’re casting your vote, remember Kansas.