He's trailing by 8, as a republican from Kansas, as an incumbent. I don't know how this happens, but clearly he made it happen and he probably deserves losing.
I was at a rural county GOP meeting tonight - a lot of Republicans aren't too happy with him either. He's going to have to run a very strong General Election campaign.
What things are republicans not happy about? Education? Jobs? Taxes?
Education and the tax cuts Brownback implemented are the primary two issues. The argument is that Brownback's plan to localize education is causes tenure to be a non-factor and longtime teachers being dismissed in favor of "cheaper options." Brownback is arguing he is simply trying to decentralize the power and that the blame should be passed to the local level - he then contends that K-12 funding is higher than it was when he took office, that over 600 new teachers have been hired, with over 1/3 being for special education, and that teacher's salaries have increased by 2-3% on average since he took over (all true).
In terms of taxes, I'm not as informed on this issue as I should be, but the brief synopsis is that there were reliefs to property and income taxes at the state level, and this prompted county governments to raise their property tax, so even though the state property tax is lowered (or gone, I can't remember), the county one has risen so people are actually paying higher rates. Income tax was cut, as was sales tax, and we really haven't seen the economic growth that he predicted, though it is worth noting that our unemployment is still one of the lowest in the nation and our private sector job growth numbers have been pretty good.
Overall, I would say that Brownback's "experiment" hasn't lived up to the level he predicted, but it also hasn't been quite the disaster Davis and the Democrats are saying.
