Kansas’ third-party secretary of state candidate eager to inspire electoral evolution

TOPEKA —  Scott Morgan’s third-party candidacy to become Kansas’ top election officer is based on the premise that voters are intensely frustrated by hyper-partisan lawmakers motivated by winner-take-all showdowns instead of good-of-the-whole collaboration.

As the United Kansas Party’s nominee for secretary of state, Morgan said his campaign sought to tap into exasperation among voters who didn’t feel they were being heard by elected representatives in Topeka and Washington, D.C.

He said the campaign was working to change the perception that no third party in Kansas could rattle the Republican and Democratic parties enough for them to embrace, or at least tolerate, bipartisanship.

“It’s trying to do something instead of hitting your head against the wall,” Morgan said during a campaign livestream event with political commentator Bill Kristol. “It’s like a product that the market is crying out for, and nobody’s designed it yet. You don’t know where it’s going to come from, but you know you have to try different things to find the answer for it. And that’s what we are very much a part of.”

United Kansas was recognized in 2024 as an official political party by Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican not seeking reelection. In April, United Kansas merged with Free State Party to work together for moderate candidates and policies. Morgan, an organizer of the Free State Party, assumed the role of executive director at United Kansas.

The Nov. 3 statewide ballot in Kansas features three candidates to replace Schwab. In addition to Morgan, voters  have the option of Democratic nominee Jennifer Day of Lawrence and Republican Pat Proctor of Leavenworth.

Morgan, a Lawrence resident and unsuccessful Republican candidate for secretary of state in 2014, said that if elected he would advocate for making the job of secretary of state an administrative position instead of an elective office. The person with regulatory authority over elections in the state’s 105 counties should be politically agnostic rather than a registered partisan, he said.

“It is an odd thing that we elect the person who runs our elections,” Morgan said. “It really doesn’t make sense that it’s Republican or Democrat. It should be a neutral professional that’s appointed by a board that no one party can fire.”

‘Negative partisanship’

Kristol, who worked in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, is a critic of President Donald Trump. He blames Trump for initiating and exploiting political division in the United States.

He said the U.S. two-party system had become increasingly polarized during the past 15 years. He welcomed Morgan’s bid for political reform in Kansas.

“We once had parties that were pretty functional and pretty partisan at times, where people could work across the aisle,” Kristol said. “Certainly, in most of the country … we had a real two-party system when voters went back and forth and politicians worked together. So, we know we can do it in principle. America has changed a lot. There’s more polarization, more socio-economic sorting, but still it is not something that is beyond our ability to achieve.”

Kristol said during the conversation with Morgan that he was supportive of activists striving to create third parties, promote independent candidates and support insurgents within major parties.

“We need to be experimental in this time. We can’t just sit and say, ‘Well, I guess we’re just consigned to this bitter, negative partisanship.’ It’s really bad for the country,” Kristol said.

He said harm was done to U.S. politics through zealous gerrymandering of political boundaries. The seizure of power by congressional leaders and diminished role of rank-and-file members led to more party-line votes that made politicians distinctly red or blue, he said.

In 1985, he said, 26 states elected one Republican and one Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Currently, only three states fit that mold.

“The key is to realize the system is broken,” Kristol said. “We need people who are willing to go to the state capitols or the national capitol and say, ‘I want to change the system.'”

‘They do work’

Morgan, who conceded there was nothing easy about building United Kansas into a political presence, said intense partisanship wasn’t a core value of Kansans. He said state residents still pulled over to help stranded motorists without quizzing them on their political beliefs.

That’s why he remained convinced that a centrist agenda built around a third party could eventually pull the two major parties back to the middle.

He said young voters were so alarmed by the ugly side of modern politics they don’t want their fingerprints on the system. The ability of dark-money donors to drown out the message of individuals discouraged people from taking part in politics, he said.

“That’s a very scary thing. If we lose our next generation … that’s a long-term risk to our republic,” Morgan said. “I call it … the fear and hate industrial complex that has been built to take that money and make us all really mad at something and really afraid of something.”

He said a goal of United Kansas was to earn a measure of legitimacy by netting at least 1% of the vote in November.

“When neither of the two parties are dealing with the issues that we’re all facing, that’s when America actually has changed,” Morgan said. “We need to do that now. The pressure valve is ready.”