Between his unfortunate youthful indiscretions and a reliance on purely a negative campaign, without providing any real reason to vote for him, once rising star Democrat Paul Davis is now falling back to earth in his bid to challenge incumbent conservative Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.
The closely watched race has begun moving in the incumbent’s favor since the Republican Governors Association began bombarding television viewers with spots focused on how Davis was caught as a young attorney in a strip club during a 1998 meth raid. An officer reported finding Davis in a back room with a woman wearing only a G-string, a long-ago embarrassment that Republicans have used to question Davis’ judgment.
The unpopularity of Barack Obama and Democrat-aligned policies, along with a higher than normal GOP mid-term turn out, combined with a lower than normal turn-out among Democrats, may save Brownback in what otherwise could have been a disastrous re-election year for him.