Why don’t Kansas candidates show up to engage? Here are 10 reasons.

Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Inas Younis was born in Mosul, Iraq, and emigrated to the United States as a child. She is a writer and commentator who has been widely published in various magazines, websites and anthologies.

We live in a time where the essential currency is drama. The more politically traumatizing and grandiose the performance, the better. In midterm campaigns across the country, direct political engagement has given way to the echo chamber.

Running for public office used to mean showing up everywhere. It used to mean answering tough questions, unscripted and on the spot. It used to mean subjecting yourself to public scrutiny and critique. Campaigning required the kind of up-close public engagement that would reveal a candidate’s character as well as their strengths and limitations. It also engendered a sense of responsibility toward the public.

But it seems that a new blueprint is being developed: One where candidates don’t show up, don’t go door to door, and spurn public debates.

These would-be politicians only operate through the highly filtered world of online websites, political ads, and strategic social media. They cocoon themselves in the safe spaces of partisan news outlets and supporter-only crowds.

The hallmark of our democracy has always been the open exchange of ideas. When candidates refuse to show up for public forums, they end up communicating only one idea to their constituents. What’s that idea? Mainly that they do not intend to cooperate with the “other.”

What other? you might ask. The opposing party, the establishment, the news media, or something else?

You can fill in the blank with some unspoken fear. I am not suggesting that this is necessarily a conscious scheme on the part of every absentee candidate. What I am suggesting is that candidates who refuse to participate in legitimate, socially sanctioned forums and debates hosted by reputable organizations have intuitively absorbed the conscious decisions of their party leadership.

During the last few debates hosted by the Shawnee Mission Post, a mainstay of campaign season in Johnson County where I live, nearly half of candidates were absent from the stage. The Post is well regarded as one of the most balanced and nonpartisan providers of news coverage in the county. It reports on local and state-level political races but never makes any sort of endorsements.

The Post gives you the information, never the infomercial. So, when candidates refused to partake in a cherished local campaign traditions, they left me to draw some rather unflattering conclusions.

Here are my top 10 assumptions as to why candidates do not show up:

That’s what I believe most people process, consciously or otherwise, when a candidate refuses to attend a public forum in a nonpartisan, welcoming space.

Being absent is a form of drama making. It reveals far more than it conceals. And to me it’s nothing but an confession of contempt for our campaign norms and, by extension, our representative democracy.

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