Fledgling newcomer to Kansas party politics working to create powerful kind of fusion

TOPEKA — Jack Curtis is testing a theory that if you organize a new kind of party, all sorts of people would show up to be part of it.

Curtis, founding chairman of the United Kansas Party, said escalation in divisive politics within the Republican and Democratic parties and a feeling among people across the political spectrum that they didn’t fit within confines of those two partisan options led to the idea of creating an alternative home for independent-minded Kansans.

It’s more than a nonprofit advocacy organization created to influence the outcome of elections or development of government policy. It would give United Kansas Party a spot on ballots, assuming the Kansas secretary of state confirmed enough petition signatures were submitted to formally establish the party. The requirement is 2% of registered voters in Kansas, and party organizers submitted to state election officials in March a stack of petitions with a comfortable 35,000 signatures.

“It has that ballot line, which right there is going to be a huge opportunity. So, first and foremost, that’s what we’re offering,” Curtis said.

Separate from the presence of United Kansas candidates on ballots, Curtis said on the Kansas Reflector podcast the party would open the door to debate — litigation perhaps — about implementing a nomination process in which candidates could be cross-nominated by multiple parties.

Curtis said the centrist political party would work to build support among the state’s 563,000 registered but unaffiliated voters. That block could be viewed as the state’s second-largest contingent of voters, given Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s report showing in April there were 874,000 registered Republicans and 503,000 registered Democrats. The two other parties on the roster are the Libertarian Party, with 24,000 members, and No Labels Kansas with 39 members.

Republicans hold two-thirds majorities in the Kansas Legislature, with all remaining seats controlled by Democrats. In recent years, two GOP senators changed their registration to independent to campaign statewide office. In 2022, Sen. Dennis Pyle ran as an independent for governor. Sen. John Doll was the lieutenant governor nominee for independent gubernatorial candidate Greg Orman in 2018. After those losses, both reverted their registration to the GOP.

“Kansas politics is currently dominated by the Democrats and the Republicans,” Curtis said. “But when we take a look at the state, there’s so much opportunity.”

He said the United Kansas Party would begin by concentrating on advancing “sensible, responsible governance” at the state level and place an emphasis on candidates for the House and Senate.

“The issue is that no one side, no one political party, has a monopoly on good ideas,” Curtis said. “What United Kansas is aiming to do is to be able to slowly, steadily and meaningfully start playing in the middle again.”

He said fusion voting could be a game-changer in terms of engaging with Kansas voters, because cross-nomination of candidates would offer them a more personal stake in elections. He said the ballot would be structured so nominees of each party would be listed on ballots. A person nominated by the Republican Party and the United Kansas Party would be listed separately, but votes for that individual would be fused in the final tally.

The Kansas Constitution outlined the idea that voters had the right to be politically associated with any individual, Curtis said. That right should extend to political affiliation of nominees on a ballot, he said.

“We have five states right here in the United States that do this. The most prominent is going to be New York. They’ve had a very rich and successful history,” Curtis said.

Curtis said this type of ballot construction has potential to appeal to right- and left-leaning independent voter convinced their voices weren’t been heard in the Republican or Democratic parties. The idea could serve as a moderating influence on extremes of the two major parties, he said.

He said the United Kansas Party would be a big-tent organization, but had no interest in amassing the kind of party power that dominated politics in Kansas.

“The way that we win is by getting sensible, responsive individuals elected who are going to do what’s best for their constituents,” he said. “At the end of the day, that’s really what the other parties should be looking for as well.”