Moderates poised recapture Kansas school board

TOPEKA, Kan. _ Moderates were poised Wednesday to take back the reins of Kansas’ controversy-racked Board of Education. In final but unofficial results posted Wednesday morning, moderate challenger Sally Cauble hung on to defeat incumbent board member Connie Morris, a conservative, in far western Kansas. Cauble’s win means that moderates are virtually guaranteed to win back a 6-4 board majority. “We won this vote by vote,” Cauble said. “It’s the voters who changed things.” During the past two years, conservatives who now dominate the board have delighted supporters and enraged critics with their stances on the teaching of evolution, sex education and charter schools. The board oversees statewide education policy. In other races, conservative incumbents John Bacon of Olathe and Ken Willard of Hutchinson won their primaries; in southeast Kansas, moderate Jana Shaver beat Brad Patzer in the GOP primary; and moderate board member Janet Waugh of Kansas City, Kan., hung on to beat her opponent, Jesse Hall. Cauble defeated Morris 54 percent to 46 percent. The GOP primary winners will all face Democratic opposition in the Nov. 7 general election, so it’s possible moderates could pick up additional seats. All the Democrats are considered moderates, so no matter who wins in November _ absent a write-in candidate _ conservatives cannot regain seats lost Tuesday. In the face of blistering heat, summer vacations and few high-profile races, most voters stayed home. Initial estimates were that 23 percent of registered voters went to the polls Tuesday to decide the primary winners for the governor’s race, secretary of state race and local House of Representatives races. One Kansas City, Kan., voter said he braved the heat because he wanted to see the state board change its direction. “There’s a place for religion and a place for education,” said Roy Wiltrout. Kansas has long been a key front in the war over evolution and creationism, and Tuesday’s vote attracted national attention once again: National and international media covered the races, and in the weeks leading up to the election, out-of-state groups on both sides of the fray joined the debate. This year, 16 candidates filed for five seats on the board; in previous years’ elections the field was less than half that number. Last year, the board’s six conservatives pushed through science curriculum standards criticizing the theory of evolution. They hired Bob Corkins, an anti-tax lobbyist with no experience in the education field, as education commissioner. This year, the board’s conservatives voted to encourage local schools to require permission slips for sex-education class and stress the teaching of abstinence. All the controversy had moderates hoping for a repeat of 2000, when voters kicked out of office board members who had voted to minimize the teaching of evolution, the age of the Earth and the big-bang theory. The new board members reversed those decisions. John Calvert, director of the Kansas-based Intelligent Design Network and a leading advocate of the new standards, said a defeat for the conservatives would be a “short-term” loss, but that criticism of evolution would eventually prevail despite political and legal setbacks. “The facts are on our side,” he said. Bacon said the results in District 3, which includes much of Johnson County, showed that the people of his district are happy with his performance. He said his opposition’s campaign tried to paint him as an ideologue who opposed local control by school districts. “It kind of backfired on them, and I’m glad it did,” he said. Conservative incumbents predict that moderates will quickly rescind the science standards, and possibly hire a new commissioner. “A lot of people I talked to said they didn’t want the board to go back to the way it was,” Morris said. “They want us to move forward.” Bacon said it was too early to assess the impact of losing the conservative majority on the board, noting that he still faces a challenge in November. “I’ll just continue to do what I can,” he said. “I’ll still try to convince members on the board of my position. I don’t know beyond that.” ___ (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star. Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kcstar.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.