By DAVID KLEPPER
The Star’s Topeka correspondent
It’s a sweltering Saturday in Olathe. Hot dogs are sizzling on the grill. And already one person has fainted at the Olathe Republican Party’s summer picnic.
Eight hundred party faithful showed up this year — making it one of the best places to take the pulse of Kansas conservatives.
This year’s big attraction: all nine Republican candidates aiming to wrest the state’s 3rd District U.S. House seat away from the Democrats.
In fact, so many jumped into the race when Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore announced his retirement that even the candidates have trouble recalling all the names.
Still, one always rises to the top: Kevin Yoder, a 34-year-old attorney and state lawmaker who chairs the powerful Kansas House Appropriations Committee. Yoder commands a big fundraising lead, and his opponents acknowledge he’s the one to beat in the Aug. 3 GOP primary.
But some conservatives still aren’t convinced. So Yoder uses his stump speech at the picnic to rattle off his credentials.
“I’ve stood against the NEA. I’ve stood against the state employee union,” he tells the crowd. “I’m proud to have an ‘A’ rating with the NRA. I’m proud to have a 100 percent rating with Americans for Prosperity.”
Yet just a few years ago, Yoder was endorsed by the National Education Association. He voted against concealed-weapons licenses, for big school funding and against Kansas’ gay marriage ban.
Indeed, 10 years ago he was a registered Democrat.
Nevertheless, Yoder’s campaign for Moore’s seat has attracted support from many GOP stalwarts. As of a month ago, Yoder had nearly $500,000 in his war chest. The candidate with the next highest amount was former state lawmaker Patricia Lightner, with $87,000. New financial reports are due out later this month.
“For establishment Republicans — to the extent they still exist — they’ve made up their mind and they’re backing Kevin Yoder with their dollars and their support,” said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political science professor who knew Yoder when he was KU’s student body president. “Kevin is the golden boy.”
Yoder grew up on a farm not far from Hutchinson. He earned a bachelor’s degree and in 2002 a law degree from KU. That same year he moved to Overland Park and won election to the Kansas House.
He explains his move to the right as a gradual evolution.
“All of us as we get a little bit older and a little more worldly, we tend to be a little more conservative. When I first got out of college I had never paid a mortgage, never been married, never paid a car payment.”
While other ambitious, young lawmakers often leave the Legislature after a few terms, Yoder moved up the ranks and was named appropriations chairman in late 2008.
Larry Winn III’s father represented the 3rd District in Congress from 1967 to 1985. Now Winn, president of the Shawnee Mission school board, thinks Yoder is the candidate to take the seat back for Republicans.
“There are just some people that look like they were born to do the job. He’s a natural, as they say in baseball,” Winn said.
Moore has held the seat since 1998. His wife, Stephene, is now seeking the seat and will face Thomas Scherer in the Democratic primary.
Conservative support has proven crucial in GOP primaries in Kansas. But Yoder’s recent turn to the right still leaves some conservatives skeptical. In June, the influential Kansans for Life endorsed Lightner, Yoder’s main rival.
“I think he’s a liberal Republican,” said Johnson County conservative Charlotte O’Hara, who briefly considered running for Moore’s seat herself. “He’s definitely a chameleon. He’s whatever is politically convenient at the moment.”
Yoder’s critics seize on a recent campaign ad featuring himself and his wife, Brooke, walking through a field trailed by children. The Yoders have no children — the kids in the ad are his nieces and nephew.
Democrats and conservatives alike have charged that the ad is disingenuous. Yoder also used two of the children in a legislative campaign ad a few years ago. It featured a dog that belonged to another family.
Yoder said such criticism is a frivolous distraction from more important issues.
“That’s my family,” he said. “It’s not as if we’re parading them around as our children. Brooke’s also petting a horse (in the ad). Well, it’s not our horse either. It’s just sort of absurd. It’s petty personal politics.”
Lightner brought up the ad during her speech at the Olathe picnic. She made a point of going over her background, her marriage and her children.
“Yes, they are my real children,” she added with a sly smile, generating a few chuckles from the crowd.
Yoder would rather talk about the need to curb federal spending, or how he put together state budgets that cut more spending than any previous appropriations chairman. Government waste, debt and inefficiency are what the voters want to talk about, he said.
But Loomis pointed out that if Yoder can’t convince conservatives in the GOP base, he could be in trouble no matter how much money he raises.
“With conservatives, the rock-solid ones, you don’t just need their support. You need their enthusiastic support,” he said. “If they don’t turn out for you, campaign for you, you could have a tough race.”
If Yoder has problems with some conservatives, it didn’t appear to hurt him at the Olathe picnic. He won the “straw poll” with 156 votes. Lightner came in second with 117.
Trailing were candidates Dan Gilyeat, a Marine who lost a leg in Iraq and who was featured on the “Extreme Makeover” TV show; John Rysavy, a biotech salesman campaigning for the tea party vote; Jean Ann Uvodich, an accountant-lawyer who now runs an ice rink; and Dave King, whose blog warns that President Barack Obama could bring about the “end times.”
Rounding out the list are former congressional campaign manager Craig McPherson, greeting card salesman Garry Klotz, and Jerry Malone, who is retired from the pharmaceutical industry.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/05/2064686/yoder-insists-he-has-the-right.html#ixzz0svcGxBbU
