Politics
Chris Croft is Trying to Gerrymander His Way to Congress
He is contemplating running for Congress while chairing the state committee which will redraw congressional districts based on the 2020 census
Gotta love those Republicans. If they can’t win fairly, they resort to cheating. And they don’t even try to hide it.
Chris Croft, who is a Republican State Representative in Kansas, has expressed interest in running against Sharice Davids, a Democrat, who is the incumbent in the 3rd Congressional district.
Croft happens to be the chair of the state committee tasked with redrawing congressional districts based on the 2020 census. So he could potentially redraw the 3rd Congressional district to make it Republican friendly. And keep it that way for the next ten years until the next census in 2030.
In case that wasn’t glaringly obvious.
Croft, who is a retired Army colonel claims that his military experience enables him to compartmentalize so that his run for office would not affect his viewpoint on redrawing districts.
Yeah right.
Hey, if any of this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it should. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia defeated Stacey Abrams in 2018 for that office by purging half a million mainly minority voters from the voting rolls in his capacity as the Georgia secretary of state. In Georgia, the secretary of state is in charge of elections and voter registration.
Abrams decided not to challenge the elections results in court. Unlike a certain orange someone who challenged the results of his loss in almost every state.
Abrams opted instead to concentrate on voter registration and then in 2020, on get out the vote efforts. Those efforts helped Biden win Georgia in November and then two Democratic senators for Georgia won in runoff elections in January.
This is one of the big problems for Republicans. They just don’t seem to be able to learn from experience. Kemp cheated in Georgia and pissed off Abrams enough that she fought back and won the state for Biden and helped the Democrats win the senate with those two runoff election wins.
You would think that Croft would hesitate to gerrymander his district for fear of pissing off the Kansas equivalent of Stacey Abrams who could theoretically go on to turn Kansas blue in the presidential election in 2024.
But no, Croft is actively resisting calls by Democrats to resign as chair of the redistricting committee. And why should he resign? According to the Kansas City Star, “GOP leaders have been open about their desire to oust Davids by gerrymandering the 3rd District lines, creating a more Republican-friendly electorate.”
State Republicans are saying that they didn’t know that Croft was interested in running for Congress when they appointed him chair of the redistricting committee. If Croft does decide to run, legislative leaders will meet with him to discuss whether he should remain as chair.
Seriously guys? You’ve never heard of conflict of interest? Don’t you think that this will become a huge issue in the election? That he can redraw his own district?
Maybe the Republicans are hanging on to Croft because he is without a whiff of scandal unlike the Republican state representative in neighboring Missouri who was expelled from office when it came to light that he had physically and sexually abused his children.
Speaking of scandal plagued, Matt Gaetz anyone? How about Ted Cruz?
This same scandal-plagued party will be trying to retake the House and Senate in 2022 and the presidency in 2024. Haven’t we had enough scandalous behavior in government thanks to the Orange Menace? Do we really want more?
