Kline loses GOP primary

Phill Kline gained national attention and the loyalty of many abortion foes by investigating clinics, but his reputation will cost him his job as the district attorney in Kansas’ most populous county.

Kline lost the Republican primary Tuesday in Johnson County to Steve Howe, a former assistant district attorney.

Howe won 60 percent of the vote and will face Democrat Rick Guinn, another former assistant DA who now is working in the attorney general’s office.

Howe’s main pitch to voters was that the district attorney’s office needs a professional prosecutor, not a politician — a less-than-subtle reference to Kline’s reputation as a passionate anti-abortion Republican.

“I think that truly has hit home to the people of Johnson County,” Howe said of his message. “I think that the thing people were troubled with was: Were decisions being made because of special interests or were decisions made based on the law and the evidence?”

Last year, Kline filed 107 criminal charges against a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park, alleging it falsified documents and performed illegal late-term abortions. The clinic has denied all wrongdoing and said Kline’s anti-abortion politics are driving the case.

Kline had said he was running against a caricature of himself, created by his critics.

He said the Planned Parenthood case was important, but one of thousands the district attorney’s office has handled on his watch.

“He has not tried to make this issue what he is defined by, but you can’t deny it has significant impact,” Kline spokesman Brian Burgess said.

Tuesday’s primaries did contain some good news for Kline’s allies. In Shawnee County, his chief deputy, Eric Rucker, received 64 percent of the vote in a GOP contest against two-term incumbent District Attorney Robert Hecht.

Hecht had raised Rucker’s ties to Kline as an issue, but Rucker countered by saying Hecht was trying to distract voters from a weak record as a prosecutor. Rucker faces Democrat Chad Taylor, a Topeka attorney, in the general election.

Kline has been a highly visible figure in Kansas politics for more than decade, dating back to his service as a legislator in the 1990s.

He served one term as the state’s attorney general and began investigating abortion clinics then. He lost his race for re-election to the state office 2006, but fellow Republicans in Johnson County then appointed Kline to fill the district attorney’s vacancy there. He was seeking a full, four-year term, and he will have to leave office in January.

Some Republicans had wondered whether Kline could win a general election contest against Guinn. In 2006, Kline received 35 percent of the vote in Johnson County when he ran for re-election as attorney general.

“I don’t like Kline,” said Eugene Mira, a retired factory manger from Prairie Village who is a Democrat. “I just don’t like him for the things he’s done. He seems to be fighting the abortion issue more than anything else.”

Kline addressed the National Right to Life Committee’s convention in 2007, a year after Planned Parenthood’s national online magazine listed him as one of 15 “anti-choice extremists and political hard-liners.”

And his stance on abortion was important to some supporters. Larry Growney, of Roeland Park, said of his family, “We’re for life.”

“That’s the main issue,” Growney said after voting Tuesday.

Kline said repeatedly that he’s simply trying to enforce state restrictions on abortion and uphold the rule of law. Many abortion opponents worried that the Planned Parenthood case would die if Kline left the DA’s office.

“Some people preferred to define him by that one case,” Burgess said. “There is no shame in standing up for what is right. You do not always measure people in success at the ballot box.”

Howe said if he’s elected, he’ll review the Planned Parenthood case and “do the right thing.”

“I’ll treat that case like all other cases,” he said.

Howe served 18 years as an assistant DA, most of them in Johnson County, until Kline dismissed him after becoming district attorney.

“As a prosecutor, you need to have the people trust the fact that your decisions are based on the law and the evidence,” Howe said.

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On the Net:

Kline’s campaign: http://www.klineforda.com

Howe’s campaign: http://stevehowe2008.com