Former Kansas GOP governor explains why he's backing Democrat Adam Hamilton for Senate

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Former Kansas Governor Bill Graves, a Republican, crossed party lines last week to endorse Democrat Adam Hamilton in his bid to unseat Republican Senator Roger Marshall. Graves said the country is facing increasing partisan gridlock and division and that it’s time Kansas does something different. He’s backing Hamilton, a Methodist minister, as an alternative to the Republican incumbent.

Former Governor Bill Graves joins us now to talk about why he made that decision and what it says about his view of the Republican Party today.

Thanks for being with us.

Bill Graves (R-KS): Thanks, Geoff. Glad to be with you.

Geoff Bennett: You are a lifelong Kansas Republican who served for more than two decades. What is it about this race and Roger Marshall’s record that led you to cross party lines and endorse Democrat Adam Hamilton?

Bill Graves: Well, I think there’s probably a number of things.

First of all, Adam Hamilton is a fabulous candidate. He’s a great guy. His message is perfect for our state. He’s made no bones about running from the middle. He makes it a point of acknowledging that, in his ministry, he has Republicans, he has Democrats, he has independents, and they all gather together and serve together.

So I like Adam and his message. Roger has lost my support. I did support him early on in his political career. Started most notably when he was first elected to the United States Senate, and his first votes were to not accept the results of the elections from Arizona and Pennsylvania.

I’m also a former secretary of state. So I have a great deal of interest in and a great deal of respect for our process in this country. And that was very disappointing to me. Since his time in the Senate, he has been pretty much a yes-vote for anything the administration wants.

And while I understand that to some extent, there are times when you have to stand up and look out for the best interest of your state. And so we just believe — and, again, Adam’s message is, Kansas can do better, and I agree with him, and I’m supporting him.

Geoff Bennett: You recently said that you don’t recognize today’s Republican Party and compared it to a bad frat party, which is a very vivid line.

What do you mean by that? What has the party lost sight of?

Bill Graves: We have a we have a saying out in the Midwest. Maybe you have heard this, that the pig gets fat and the hog gets slaughtered.

You can you can push your power, you can push your authority to certain points, but there’s a limit, there’s a line where, if you cross, there can be repercussions. There can be some outcomes that perhaps you’re not expecting.

And it just feels like the Republicans have been full of this sort of euphoric, we’re in charge, we control the House, we control the Senate, the president is having his way. And I think to me it feels like this November they’re going to wake up. It’s like the morning after the frat party, and they’re going to wake up and understand that, gee, we are having all that fun and we might have overplayed our hand a little bit.

I believe that it’s going to be a very good night all across the country for Democrats, and I believe Adam Hamilton has a great chance to winning in Kansas.

Geoff Bennett: The Republicans in Congress who you have said have effectively walked away from their responsibility as serving as a check on the president, are we starting to see signs of that changing?

I ask the question because Senator John Curtis is calling for an investigation into Trump family business dealings, and Senator John Cornyn has now agreed with him that that should move forward. You have got Roger Wicker. He is publicly challenging the president over his solicitous treatment of China’s Xi Jinping.

And you have got a handful of Republicans who are breaking with the president over the war in Iran. Are those isolated examples or the beginning of something more significant?

Bill Graves: Well, I think it’s the beginning of something more significant.

I mean, you have seen a number of Republicans around the country. I mean, we had the Karl Rove Texas story…

Geoff Bennett: That’s right, right.

Bill Graves: … Marc Racicot in Montana, Jeff Flake supporting Ossoff in Georgia, my support for Adam in Kansas.

I think the members of Congress, the Republicans, are starting to see very clearly that they’re running out of time to do a course correction to save themselves this coming November. And while the president doesn’t seem to be too interested in or focused on the problems they might be having — in fact, I saw him the other day talk about how he hoped the Republicans did well in November, as if it’s some separate foreign apart body that is involved and he’s not.

November is going to be a lot about Donald Trump, and I think most of them are starting to appreciate that it’s not going to go well, and it’s going to turn the page on how this administration has traded the scrutiny that they’re under from perhaps a democratically controlled Congress.

And you may want to wake up on the other side of the table when that happens.

Geoff Bennett: Can the Republican Party find its way back to the party that you remember, the party of Bob Dole, to invoke the name of a famous Kansas Republican, so long as Donald Trump remains a dominant player on the field?

Bill Graves: I don’t think so. I think, as long as this style of bullying, this style of intimidating people from the White House is present, I don’t know that many people are going to change.

But the clock runs. We all have our beginning and our ends of our political careers. And we’re two years away from a presidential election. So I expect very, very minor changes over the next couple of years, and then more change in two years, and we will have to see who the Democrats — the Democrats are as capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as the Republicans are.

I’m a moderate Republican. I’m right in the center. And I think the extremes, both sides of our political parties, do a disservice to this country. We really need to govern from the middle. We need to compromise. There are so many problems, immigration, health care, deficit reduction.

All these are problems that cry out for compromise and getting the two parties together in the middle. And as long as we keep being pulled to the two extremes, I don’t think those comp — those solutions are going to appear.

Geoff Bennett: Former Kansas Governor Bill Graves, thanks so much for being here. Good to speak with you.

Bill Graves: Thanks, Geoff. Great