Kansas United uses election to build familiarity and support for new party

TOPEKA — Political candidates who receive 4% of the vote aren’t usually happy about the accomplishment.

But for Scott Morgan, his success as a United Kansas candidate isn’t — yet — all about the numbers. It’s about building recognition for a new political party.

“For a five-month campaign with very little money, I feel very good about the response that we got out there,” he said.

Morgan received 4% of the vote in the secretary of state race, which hasn’t been officially decided. The count is close between Democrat Jennifer Day with 47% of the vote and Republican Pat Proctor with 48%, as of Thursday.

As executive director of United Kansas, Morgan dismissed the idea that his fledgling party pulled votes from Day. He said people called him a “spoiler” and caused her to lose the race.

“The ones really worried about spoiling are really pretty hardcore Democrats or Republicans,” Morgan said. “Most people don’t understand why we don’t have more choices.”

He said he received several “nasty notes” from Democrats criticizing him for running and pulling votes from Day, although he pointed out that a Democrat has only won the secretary of state race once in 165 years — in 1948. That, Morgan added, was because a guy with the same last name ran against the 81-year-old incumbent in a four-way race.

In looking at votes reported so far, Morgan said, he took more votes from Proctor than Day.

“If you take out my votes and distribute them to the other two based on how they did in each of those counties, Proctor’s numbers go up,” Morgan said, noting that he did better in the counties outside of Kansas’ five largest, which was where Day dominated as a Democrat.

“She was 70% in the five largest, and 29% out there, and so they look at my 45,000 votes, almost 46, and think, well, that’s the difference,” he said. “But that so misunderstands Kansas voters. How many would just never vote for her? How many don’t like either party and vote for me?”

Choice is better for Kansans, Morgan said, and his party wants to give that to voters.

Founding a new party is a long process, he said, and the party had to run at least one political candidate and get 1% of the vote to meet state requirements. He ran because he had past political experience, after running and losing in the 2014 GOP primary for secretary of state against Kris Kobach. He also lost as the GOP nominee for the 2nd District congressional seat in 1990.

“The idea was we wouldn’t run other candidates. We would use this opportunity to start getting the name known, and as I traveled around the state to build pockets for it,” Morgan said. “The existing parties have precinct people everywhere, or at least county chairs everywhere, and we have none of that.”

He called that work a “major success.” 

“I had very good luck out there finding people, connecting with them, giving them a sense that we had direction at this point because we have this two-year, we have a four-year plan,” Morgan said. “We knew this wasn’t going to happen overnight, and people really liked that.”

United Kansas was recognized as a political party in 2024, and in April, it merged with the Free State Party. Morgan had been an organizer of Free State, and when the two merged, he became executive director at United Kansas.

United Kansas party leaders will soon gather to determine which districts they want to target, based on where they found interest and people who want to be involved. 

“Where we have possibilities,” Morgan said.

When a new political party starts, it is frequently tied to other groups, such as unions and environmental groups on the left or religious or gun groups on the right,” Morgan said.

“Moderates aren’t big on organizing,” he said. “They’re big on organizing things like school carnivals, but they haven’t had a need for that. We are trying to create something from scratch with a group that are very busy, very engaged. And I think it’s taken us a while to wrap our heads around that.”

Morgan said he hopes people see “less yelling and more doing” with the party.

“We’re still going to argue. I mean, it’s not like this is some fairyland where we’re just all going to get along and hold hands, and it’ll be sweet and beautiful,” Morgan said. “The idea is that we will respect that we are a group of people with different views and, in our mind, the center left and center right, and that’s a broad spectrum.”