We don’t need a hero; we need each other
DEC 16, 2025 | LJWorld - Your Turn | By Scott Morgan
Kansans have a palpable hunger to do something. The times feel strange, the anger relentless, the cruelty almost casual. Most of us look around at the Kansans we encounter, whether at work, in the grocery store, at church, just walking down the street, and we think, they don’t seem angry or cruel. So why do our politics look like this? Why doesn’t “someone” do “something”?
Some blame social media. Others point to low-turnout primaries or the merchants of fear who profit from outrage. They’re not wrong. But the deeper problem is that too many sensible people have stepped back, convinced that decency can’t win. When moderates stay silent, the extremes take the microphone.
The truth is that Kansans who feel this way aren’t powerless. The “someone” we’re waiting for is us, the people who still believe in fairness and basic decency. The “something” is standing together and finding our political power. It doesn’t take magic or millions of dollars. It takes neighbors deciding that cynicism isn’t wisdom, giving up isn’t an option, and that it’s time to speak with a common voice.
The merchants of fear hope we never figure that out. Their business depends on our division. They’ve built entire careers selling the idea that moderation is weakness. They want you to believe that those out of power are too busy or too lazy to organize. But history, especially Kansas history, tells a different story.
Kansas has been here before. The first Free State Party was born in 1855 because neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were willing to face the moral crisis of slavery. Ordinary Kansans decided that if the existing parties wouldn’t stand for freedom and human dignity, they would. That movement didn’t just shape Kansas; it helped shape the nation.
Four decades later, when powerful monopolies and rising debt crushed family farmers, Kansas led again. The Populist Party rose up to demand fairness. In the 1890s, Populists in Kansas won a U.S. Senate seat, several congressional seats, two governorships, and control of the Kansas House.
Their ideas were later absorbed by Democrats and challenged by a new Republican progressive movement. The upstart parties didn’t last forever, but they changed the course of both major parties.
History’s lesson is simple: When the old coalitions stop working, new ones emerge. We’re living through such a moment again. Moderate Republicans were told to leave their party starting in the 1990s. Democrats today are pulled between competing visions of who they are. Both parties have a problem: Their extremes dominate, and moderates no longer have a true political home.
It’s time for the center-left and center-right to turn away from their fringes and make common cause with each other. Former moderate Republicans, centrist Democrats, and the growing number of independents have far more in common with each other than with the extremes shouting at both ends. We just need to realize it.
That’s why a group of us made up of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, are working to build a new Free State Party (joinfreestate.org). Our first goal is modest but meaningful: flip five Kansas House seats to break the Republican supermajority. We’re not spoilers. Our focus is on those seats without a choice in the general election.
In 2024, 40% of Kansas House seats went uncontested. In 2022, it was half. We’re not spoilers if the parties won’t even run against each other. Starting small and at the grassroots level is how we will build something possible and lasting.
Moderates have long trusted the system to work itself out. But the system is breaking, and when the center doesn’t hold, it creates space for voices that do not speak for the broad public.
We don’t have to give up or give in. We can build a political home for the reasonable middle. Not some bland, neutral space, but one grounded in principle. One that starts in Kansas and starts with each of us.
This isn’t radical, it’s just Kansas common sense. Dwight Eisenhower knew this 70 years ago when he committed his administration “…to a program of progressive moderation, liberal in its human concerns, conservative in its economic proposals, constructively dynamic and optimistic in its appraisal of the future.”
You don’t have to change who you are to help. You just have to stop assuming someone else will do it for you, or worse, that it’s not possible. Kansas has already shown that it is possible. We proved it again in the 2022 abortion amendment vote.
Give up or stand up. The choice is ours.
— Scott Morgan is the co-chair of the Free State Party.