The votes are counted. The campaign is over. And as of Tuesday night, Sen. Jim Barnett’s year-long quest to be governor has ended in defeat.
So what comes next?
Well, the first thing to come is a rarity in Barnett’s life — a day off. The Emporia physician plans to stay out of the office today so he can see his son, Blake, safely on a plane back to New York.
But after that, it’s back to the doctor’s office. No short vacations after a hard campaign. No time to recuperate. Just back into the swing of things.
“Thursday, I’m on call,” Barnett said.
The thing is, that might be true even if he’d won. With most of the precincts reporting and nothing to lose, Barnett still said he would have kept up a limited medical practice as governor.
“I would have been a full-time governor and in addition, I would have continued to see patients as time allowed,” he said. “I have very good partners and we had this all agreed on before I ever entered the race. Otherwise, I never would have entered the race.”
Which begs the question: Would he re-enter the race? Was this one a foundation for 2010, when there will be no incumbent governor?
“No,” Barnett said. “This is a foundation for me to return to serving in the Kansas Senate and fulfilling the responsibilities I have to the people of the 17th District and my patients.”
But is 2010 a consideration at all?
“I will complete my term in the Senate before making any other plans or decisions,” said Barnett, whose term ends in January 2009.
It could be an interesting few years in the Legislature, given the hard-fought campaign between Barnett and the newly re-elected Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Barnett himself said he still believed the two of them could manage a working relationship — in fact, it would be essential.
“I’ve been through many strong and at times bitter debates on the Senate floor,” Barnett said. “But at the end of the debate and the end of the day, you realize you have to work together to create effective legislation for the state of Kansas.”
All the same, Barnett made it clear that he and running mate Sen. Susan Wagle of Wichita were putting the governor on notice.
“We pledge to work with the governor and we pledge to work as state senators, because you have not seen the last of us!” he declared during his concession speech in Topeka on Tuesday night. “The governor will be held accountable. We hope she solves these problems. If not, we’re here.”
“These problems” include a state economy that Barnett has said is in the doldrums, a school finance bill that still needs to nail down its third year of funding and a need to make sure all Kansans have health insurance. For Barnett, it also means taking a tough stance on illegal immigration, an issue that energized some of his supporters early in the campaign.
“I think it’s a safety, and indeed, a security issue,” Barnett said.
Barnett expected all of those issues to come up for debate in next year’s session of the Legislature.
Those issues, he said, were probably the strong point of the campaign. The weakest point, he said, may have been fundraising. Sebelius was a popular governor with a huge war chest and Barnett admitted that he hadn’t been aggressive enough in raising money.
Even so, his candidacy made a lot of progress from the days of people asking “Who is Jim Barnett?”
“We started the race with a 10 percent name recognition at best,” Barnett said. “We came into the finish with a name recognition among likely voters of 80 to 90 percent. We’ve come a long way.”
One supporter who came to Topeka, Emporia school board member Grant Riles, thought that people still might not have had time to come to know Barnett well.
“It’s just a tough year to run,” Riles said. “And it’s hard for the rest of the state to get to know him like we know him.”
Several friends and relatives joined Barnett on Tuesday night, following the results with him in a seventh-floor room at Topeka’s Capitol Plaza. As his mother, Jean Barnett, kept up with both the results and the Emporia State basketball game, she found herself wishing that one more person was at the party.
“It’d be nice if his dad could be here,” she said, referring to Edwin Barnett, who died in May 2005. “He would be so proud.”
Barnett agreed. Thinking about it after the returns were in, his breath caught for a second before he let himself speak.
“There have been many times I wished Dad could still be here, especially Sunday when I had the chance to take the stage with and shake the hand of the president of the United States,” he said, referring to a rally in Topeka attended by President George Bush.
“I’m sure he did not expect his farm kid to be in that position.”
Meanwhile, for all the Barnetts, the end of the campaign means things can calm down a little. Barnett’s daughter, Chelsea, now a college junior in Kansas City, said she had been asked the same question all day: “Are you ready for it to be over?” Her answer: “Yes.”
“I think we’re all coming to that point,” she said partway through the night. “It seems like Dad has had a lot of good days and a lot of bad days and it’s wearing on him a lot.”
On the other hand, she mentioned, her dad hasn’t exactly been invisible to his family.
“I think I’ve seen him more since he went into politics then when he was just a physician,” Chelsea Barnett said with a grin. “I don’t know how he balances family and politics and medicine and all the rest, but he does.”
His wife, Yvonne, meanwhile, just laughed when asked if she was ready for life to return to normal.
“Tell me what that is and I’ll answer that question,” she said.