2 Kansas doctors but differing COVID-19 takes in Senate race
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall’s audience of about 40 people packed a banquet room in a Kansas City-area bistro. No one wore a mask during his lunchtime remarks about the coronavirus. The Republican nominee for Kansas’ open Senate seat put one on later while talking to masked reporters but dropped it for a moment, saying, “I can’t breathe.”
A few days earlier, Democrat Barbara Bollier invited half a dozen officials and activists to her first in-person event of the fall campaign. They stood in a distanced circle outside an empty elementary school in Manhattan in northeast Kansas.
In the polar opposite approaches to campaigning, awkwardness often seems the only common ground. Marshall and Bollier, however, have another shared experience: medical school.
At another time in U.S. history that might have meant the two doctors would be closely aligned on how best to prevent the spread of disease. But in this one, it only highlights how partisanship is shaping campaigns’ messages on public health.
Across the country, Democrats are largely abiding by health officials’ guidance, using the moment to model safe practices and signal respect for experts. Republicans are regularly flouting that caution, using it as a moment to celebrate what they view as personal freedom.
The split extended to voting in Kansas’ primary earlier in August. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans voted in-person, while roughly two-thirds of Democrats used mail-in ballots.
Bollier has Democrats hoping they can win a Kansas Senate seat for the first time since 1932. The retired anesthesiologist is a state legislator and former Republican, who left the party in 2018, saying it no longer represented her values.