KU and Arizona basketball: Comparing the fandom

The University of Kansas, in Lawrence, and the University of Arizona, in Tucson are both big basketball schools with very successful teams that regularly appear in the NCAA tournament; currently Kansas is ranked #7 and Arizona #9 in the AP Top 25. I lived in Kansas City, 40 miles from Lawrence, and worked for KU (at the KU Medical Center in KC, KS) for 15 years, and now have been back in Tucson (second “tour”) for over a year, so I’m in my second basketball season. I think I am ready to comment on some of the similarities and differences between Kansas and Arizona fans.

The similarities, of course, include large numbers of incredibly avid and passionate fans, who are regularly stoked by good teams and good coaches. Kansas has, so far, won or shared the championship in the Big 12 (now down to 10 teams, but still frequently referred to as the strongest conference in the nation) 13 straight years. Arizona is not quite as dominant in the Pac-12 (which, in fact, has 12 teams), with teams like UCLA to compete against, but is currently leading that conference. No team has the conference record of Kansas, but there are a number of other incredible dynasties, some of which (Kentucky, North Carolina) have won even more NCAA championships. The enthusiasm and noise level at both “The Phog” in Lawrence and McKale Center in Tucson is deafening. KU almost never loses at home (this year, though, it has twice) prompting an NBA scout I know to say it is less rewarding to see them at home than on the road because they always win at home. Plus they both have red and blue as school colors; I don't know why in Arizona, but KU was founded by New Englanders who were mostly graduates of Harvard and Yale, thus the "Crimson and the Blue".

But other schools have terrific home crowds; even smaller college (or really, university) towns can fill a stadium with loud cheering supporters; West Virginia U in Morgantown and Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in Ames, and even Kansas State’s Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan (the “Little Apple”) are well-known to be difficult places to win even when the teams are not having their best years. (My Big-12 bias based on following them).

But back to KU and Arizona. Neither has to depend solely upon residents of a small college town; Tucson’s metropolitan area is 1 million, and Lawrence is 40 miles from KC. But this may provide two reasons for the difference that I see in the ubiquity and degree of enthusiasm I see; it is more widespread in Arizona. More people wear Arizona shirts. More people, or at least a higher percentage of people, talk about the basketball team as “we” (as in “we didn’t shoot free throws as well as we should last night against USC”). This is not to deprecate Kansas fans at all; I see it as a result of a very big city starving for any other sports outlet.

After all, while the KC metropolitan area is quite a bit bigger than Tucson (2.1 million, #30, vs Tucson’s 1 million, #53), the Kansas Jayhawks have competition. For starters, there are incredibly popular professional football (the Chiefs) and baseball (the Royals) teams in KC. Also, the KC area is more than half in Missouri and so there are lots of U Missouri fans. Even if Mizzou hasn’t the track record of KU in basketball, many of its fans still see the two schools as bitter rivals (despite Mizzou’s departure from the Big 12 to the Southeast Conference, which one wag noted was appropriate because, of course, Missouri had been a slave state, even though, like Kentucky, it didn’t join the Confederacy). So there is more competition for the sports enthusiast. Sure, there are professional sports teams in Phoenix (including an NBA team, the Suns), but Phoenix is over 100 miles away, far to go for a game. And besides it is Phewnix, which is seen by many Tucsonans as a place to hold ones nose. Talk about rivalry!). The Kansas City Star, as well as the Lawrence Journal-World, covers KU basketball extensively, but nothing like the Arizona Star. Even in the off-season there are very often articles (i.e., several times weekly) about U of A basketball, and in season they are at least daily, often, especially after a game, 3 or 4. Big recruits at KU will be covered off season in the KC Star, but then their sports pages are more full of Royals or Chiefs. 

Of course, Kansas is the only team in the nation called the Jayhawks, with one of the most recognizable logos in sports, while Arizona is just one of at least 9 “Wildcats” in NCAA Division I, several of which are also perennial basketball powers – Villanova is currently ranked #1 in the nation, Kentucky as noted is always a national contender, and even in Kansas there are the K-State Wildcats (Northwestern would be the next most prominent).

So both schools have great basketball teams, and both have rabid fan bases, but the combination of the size of Tucson and the lack of sports competition makes Arizona Fever much more omnipresent than KU fever. And me? I will certainly root for Arizona, as well as for KU. But, should they meet in the NCAA, I still will say “Rock Chalk!”

Caucusing for Bernie in Kansas

On Saturday March 5 I went to a nearby high school in Kansas City, KS, where I live, to the Democratic Caucus so I could caucus for Bernie Sanders. I had never been to a caucus before; in 2008, intending to caucus for Barack Obama, I came late and couldn’t get near the school. This year one had to register between 1 and 3, and we got there early; the lines were long and there were still people in line at 3 (they got in; we waited). I’m not quite sure why the process takes so long; part of it is needing to ensure voters are registered Democrats (or, also time-consuming, register them on-site); some may be poor organization.

Wyandotte County, where KC, KS is, is one of the few Democratic counties in Kansas, and I was not too surprised at the large turnout, which in fact set a record for this particular caucus with over 1,0000 people, beating 2008. The fact that there were more Sanders than Clinton supporters was obvious early; as we searched for seats, we found ourselves in the Clinton section because, well, that’s where the chairs were – we, of course, moved. They tried putting us in groups of 10, lining us up in chairs, but as the crowds swelled they eventually had to move us up to the gym, with the two groups facing each other like fans of opposing basketball teams. There were a lot more Bernie supporters.

It took a long time, but finally the count was in and Bernie won 782-231. Then we could elect 12 representatives to join the other caucus reps in our KS Third Congressional District (143 in all) on April 2. Bernie won the state by 2:1 and will get 23 of Kansas’ 33 delegates. He also won Democratic caucuses in nearby Nebraska, as well as Oklahoma and Colorado. So he is popular among Democrats here in this deep red state.

But I get the sense that he is maybe not so popular among the Democratic establishment. As I said, this is a Democratic county, and several elected state representatives and a state senator were there; all but the senator, who ran the show, were caucusing for Clinton. Each side got one speaker, and the Clinton speaker indicated that she had been a Democrat for 45 years, and that now was Hillary’s “time”. There was a sense that these “new” people who were here, caucusing for Sanders, were perhaps interlopers, not true Democrats, not paid their dues.

And probably that is true. The cool thing about the caucus is that, even though it takes hours, compared to very little time to vote in a primary, you get to actually see all the people and interact with a lot of them. My group of 10 had a couple of retired people, 5 or 6 young people, some working and some students, and a couple of middle-aged people. Virtually all the young people were on the Sanders side. While there was a much higher proportion of African-Americans on Clinton’s side, there were many on Sanders’; they were a smaller percent, but maybe as many. There were also older people, retired people, working people, and a lot of people who had not been previously invested in the political process. So, maybe they had not paid their dues, maybe they had not earned their “chops” with the Democratic party. So what? They were Americans, and they were here now, and they were newly invested in caring who was the next president. That is 100% good. It could help the Democrats win. Even if the person they elect is not the one chosen by those who have been long-term Democrats.

There is a good chance that Clinton will win the nomination, and I will vote for her against whichever of the right wingers, mostly proto-fascists, wins the Republican nomination. I think lots of people will. But I fear that a lot of the folks who turned out for Bernie will not bother to vote. Is it a victory for the Democratic establishment if they get “their” candidate nominated but lose the general election? It is, as President Obama demonstrated twice in winning the presidency (and yes, Republicans trying to block him appointing someone to the Supreme Court, the American people HAVE spoken!) about bringing new people into the political process. This is the goal, both for the Democrats and for democracy.

The politicians from the legislature talked about how hard it is being a Democrat in that body, and how terribly reactionary the atmosphere in Topeka has become. They want us to elect more Democrats to the legislature. They also talked about how important it would be to not only elect a Democratic president, but to replace many of the Republicans in the House and Senate. And, yet, what are they doing in Kansas? In 2010, the blue-dog Democratic congressman from the 3^rd district retired, and a 34-year old Republican legislator was elected to the seat. In 2012, when he was completing his first term, the Democrats ran NO ONE against him! This year, there is someone, a legislator told me at the caucus, actually two people, one someone no one has ever heard of and the other someone whose name he couldn’t even remember. Is this the way the Kansas Democratic Party will take back what should be a winnable seat? Why are none of these relatively well-known legislative leaders running? Gave up already?

Of course, Kansas is a red state, and will go Republican in November. Our reprehensible Electoral College system means all of its votes will go to the Republican, whatever happens in the popular vote. This means that even if there is a huge increase in the percent of Kansans voting Democratic in November compared to 2012 (and there will be, because of the immense unpopularity of Governor Brownback and his minions, whose policies have bankrupted the state), it will have no greater impact than it did in 2012.

Indeed, most of the states where there have been caucuses or primaries have been solid red; Clinton’s big victory in South Carolina will avail the Democrats nothing in November. Only a few blue states (MN, MA, VT) and swing states (VA, CO, NH, NV) have voted so far. In this sense, it is irrelevant whether Clinton or Sanders win the red states, except to the extent that who is the eventual nominee may impact how many new, young, voters turn out in the general election in OH, PA, VA, FL, NC, CO and possibly NH and NV where the election will be decided.

It is pretty clear that there will be many more if Bernie is the candidate, and none of them will be dissuaded by Republicans calling him a Jewish Socialist. On the other hand, Clinton may bring out a larger African-American turnout in these swing states. But this has to be the question now: how can we vitalize both the Democratic Party and democracy?

Kansas Government has become yet more conservative

I know that there are not many people who consider themselves conservatives who read this blog. Largely, this is because there are not very many people who read this blog altogether. So nothing I say is going to surprise anyone, nor is it likely to change any minds. Still…

I moved to Kansas in 2002. I knew it was a conservative, Republican state. While I’d grown up in New York and lived much of my adult life in Chicago, I’d spent a number of years in Texas before coming here, so it wasn’t as if I was unused to conservative, Republican states. I also knew that there were a lot of good, hard-working, progressive people in Texas and there were certain to be those in Kansas, particularly in the Kansas City area. In Texas I lived in San Antonio, a Democratic city with a series of Democratic mayors, many of whom were progressive young Latinos like Henry Cisneros (before my time), Ed Garza, and now the dynamic leader Julián Castro. While the Governors, since Ann Richards, and Senators, since Lloyd Bentsen, were Republicans, my Congressman, who live in my neighborhood, was the venerable Henry Gonzáles, followed after he died by his son Charlie. While there were conservative  Congressmen from the area, Gonzáles was not the only progressive; Ciro Rodríguez maybe was more so.

And my state legislators made me proud. Also Latinos and Latinas, mostly young, they were unafraid to take on the big issues. In 2003, shortly after I left, Democratic members of both the Texas House and Senate left the state to try to block a redistricting plan that would favor Republicans. In each house, they were led by the people who represented my district, Leticia van de Putte in the Senate and Mike Villarreal in the House. While Texas as a whole has continued to move so far to the right that Governor Rick Perry’s pick to succeed him was defeated by a Tea Party candidate, and the Republican state platform calls for an end to the teaching of “critical thinking” in the public schools, good things continue to happen in San Antonio. When the Arizona Department of Education recently closed down the Tucson Unified School District’s Hispanic Studies program (Tucson is another place I’ve lived, a relatively progressive part of a very conservative state), it banned the poetry of Carmen Tafolla. Mayor Castro named Ms. Tafolla the first Poet Laureate of San Antonio. His brother, Joaquín Castro is running for Congress. The state representative from the district next to mine, Trey Martínez Fisher, is leader of the Democratic opposition in the state house.

When I moved to Kansas, I chose to live in Kansas City, KS. The “other side of the tracks”, it was not only near work, it was not the suburbs where most of my colleagues lived. In Johnson County, the wealthy county to the south of “KCK”’s Wyandotte County, everyone had to register Republican to have a say in the election. Wyandotte was, and still is, one of only two Democratic counties in the state (the other being Douglas, where Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas, is located). We even had a Democratic congressman, Dennis Moore. A “blue dog” Democrat, yes; he was from Johnson County, but at least not breaking my until-recently string of never living in a congressional district represented by a Republican. In 2010 Moore retired, and was replaced by a conservative Republican.

When I first voted in Kansas, in 2002, I was shocked to find that there was no one running against then-and-now incumbent senator Pat Roberts. Knowing little about Sen. Roberts but strongly favoring the democracy that requires contested elections, I wrote in the name of a colleague. In 2002, Kansas was pretty conservative. It was led by Republicans, but had a history of support for core government functions such as education. The legislature was about 1/3 Democratic, 1/3 moderate Republican, and 1/3 “conservative” Republican. When I visited the Capitol the morning after the end of the longest-running legislative session to date as part of a KU-sponsored tour, we were addressed by a panel of commentators. One was the Lieutenant Governor, a “moderate” Republican, who, obviously exhausted, was strongly critical of the right wing of his party. Yes, he called them “the black helicopter crowd”. He noted that “moderate” were moderate because sometimes they liked to do things like go to their kids baseball games, or fish or hunt or do something besides “plotting in basements”.

Things have not gotten better. While that year we elected a Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas had a history of electing a Democrat every 3-4 governors, while never ever turning over control of the legislature), the legislature became more conservative. Thomas Frank published his popular book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in 2004 while Sebelius was still governor giving his perspective on the rightward turn of the state, which included the replacement of long-time liberal, Jewish Congressman Dan Glickman from Wichita, named by President Clinton to be Secretary of Agriculture, by a string of very conservative congressmen. It has become much more so now. Conservatives replaced moderates as Speaker of the House, and later were replaced by more conservative challengers. In 2010, Sam Brownback, the very conservative US Senator and former Presidential candidate, was elected governor. The House strongly supported his agenda, but the Senate, in a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, blocked several initiatives. With his support, and the support of lots of money from Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers’ (they are from Wichita) funded group Americans for Prosperity (indeed, much of the COC money comes from AFP), conservatives ran against virtually every moderate Republican incumbent in the Senate.

The primary was yesterday, and it looks like most of them won. They only needed 3-4 Senate seats and got a lot more (presuming, of course, that the winners from yesterday are not beaten by Democrats in the general election, a pretty safe assumption). Even the long-time Senate President, rancher Steve Morris of Hugoton in the far SW corner of the state, looks like he is headed to defeat. Governor Brownback, the COC and the Koch brothers win. Health care and education, the two big items on the state budget, look like they will lose. Republicans sometimes accuse Democrats of “never having met a tax they didn’t like”; in Kansas this is untrue, but that the current Republican majority never met a tax cut they didn’t like is true. No matter how Draconian. After years of recession and state budget cuts stemming from inadequate revenue, projections were for a rise this year. The governor proposed, and the legislature passed new big tax cuts, especially (surprise!) for the wealthy. (The Senate also; word is that they thought they were “calling the House’s bluff”, but wrong. No bluff!) So this year’s and next year’s cuts in education and Medicaid funding will be even worse. And, of course, the Governor will not take federal money for Medicaid.

Why? Part of it is probably the trend that Thomas Franks pointed out is true and Kansans are getting more conservative (although at this point, the group elected are not “conserving” anything; they are simply destroying). A lot of it is likely that the big money contributions are effecting voters through their dominance of the voters’ main source of information, TV (and make no mistake; despite the media’s efforts to portray contributions by unions to the moderates as balancing, the funding from AFP and COC and others for the conservatives was several times higher). And a lot of it is that there are not many people voting, probably less than 20% in this primary according to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (himself an arch “conservative”, author of the Arizona immigration law). Voter turnout in this country is low, turnout in primaries is lower, and turnout among more “Democratic” constituencies such as the poor and minorities is lower still. The efforts to disenfranchise these folks by techniques such as photo-ID requirements (falsely sold as a counter to the non-problem of voter fraud) and decreasing the number of polling places (from having less state money) are likely to increase the problem.

I admit I didn’t vote; as a Democrat in Wyandotte County there were no races being contested for me. But I still usually would make a symbolic appearance, and this year, with no Democratic candidate running in the primary for Congress to oppose the Republican incumbent, I could have, as in 2002, written in my colleague. But my polling place, moved from the church down the street to farther-away-but-still-on-the-way-to-work a few years ago, has now moved a couple of miles in the opposite direction. I have a car, and even after a long workday would have definitely gone if there was any chance that my vote would have mattered. But a lot of folks don’t have cars or ways to get to the polls, or photo ID for that matter, and these are major obstacles to a large voter turnout.

I believe in democracy. If the majority of people want to vote for folks I disagree with, that is their right, even if it is not in their interests. It is too bad if they are convinced to do so by misleading-to-lying attack ads funded by billionaires. But efforts to restrict voting by any means, ID, or fewer polling places, or making it more difficult to register, or not having advance voting, is absolutely wrong.

Back in San Antonio, there was advance voting, and we could vote at the supermarket weeks before Election Day. Anything that gets more people to the polls is good, and a true expression of our democracy.

Spring in Kansas City: Really nice, but what does it mean long term?

“It’s February, and spring has finally come to San Antonio.”

Reading these words in the Sierra Club newsletter in 1997, during a March (it came a month late) in which spring had definitely not yet come to Chicago, we had to laugh. Although we found, when we moved to San Antonio that year, that spring not only came in February, but that it was not always clear that there was a winter between fall and spring. The trees had not yet finished losing their leaves when the new buds appeared. Spring, in whatever month, is a great season, and we enjoyed it in San Antonio as we looked forward, with less than excitement, to May, when temperatures would start to hit 90, or June when they went to 100, not likely to come persistently below until October. Still, we thought, better than a Chicago winter.

But what are we to make of this year in Kansas City? Kansas City is never as cold in the winter as Chicago, but this year it is San Antonio. We have had hardly any weeks this winter where the temperature didn’t go above 40 at least some of the time, and much of it has been above 50. For the last few weeks it has been above 60, and this week 3 days of over 80. And this was before St. Patrick’s Day! Everything is in bloom: magnolias are already losing their flowers; the fruit trees such as apple and especially the Bradford pears are in magnificent bloom. There are daffodils all over, and the little groundcover wildflowers, the clover and violets, are all visible. It is March, and spring has come full-bore to Kansas City. The beautiful redbuds that mean “spring” in this city are already in bloom.

 We just hope there is no freeze, to wipe it out. In Chicago sometimes there would be a few warm days in April, followed by a frost that killed all the buds, and Kansas City is certainly known to have its share of ice storms. Still, this is not a freakish few warm days; this is the reasonable follow-up to a winter that normally belongs several climate zones south of here.

And that, of course, is a concern. I am not complaining about not having had a chance to use the new snow boots I bought on sale in Winter Park, CO, last summer, nor to be without icy winds in my face. Winds, on the other hand, we have; it is Kansas. The days of 40 degrees felt frigid with the wind, and when it first was in the 60s, we went out lightly jacketed to freeze in the breeze. But with 80, it’s, well, 80, so you really need a gale to make it less than pleasant.

And gales we have had.  A couple of weeks ago there were dozens of tornadoes in the Southeast US. In February. There were some last year, but this year was worse. New York had major snowstorms, and there were hurricanes. There has hardly been a month without a big weather disaster. Yes, there are tornadoes and hurricanes and snowstorms every year, but for the last several years they are becoming more common more freakish, and more regular; so much so that the freakish is not so freakish anymore. But tell that to folks in Joplin, MO, or the smaller cities that have been devasted by tornadoes and other weather events.

Amazingly, there are still climate change deniers. Some have harped on the phrase “global warming” – which it is over the long term – when the weather change has led to colder weather with more snow in the winter. They can’t argue that what we have in Kansas City – and all over the Midwest, where the temperatures are higher, and planting zones have moved north (we brought crepe myrtles in pots from San Antonio 10 years ago; despite being uncommon then they survived the winter with good mulching and are now doing well; turns out they have become common in KC nurseries now).

So I look out the window at the flowering trees, rub my eyes from early tree allergies, enjoy the warmth, and worry about the future of the planet.