Ellis County, KS

[minionofmidas]

Hays is an old frontier town. Not sure that explains anything, but maybe it does.

[minionofmidas]

I thought I would resurrect this old thread to give a complete answer to your question, A Tree For Trials.

Ellis County, Kansas was settled mostly by Germans from Russia, Volga Germans as they are called. These were German-speaking people who had settled in the Volga River region of Russia in the 1700s, seeking political, economic, and religious freedom. They started migrating to Ellis County, Kansas in the 1870s, homesteading land along the Union Pacific railroad. This particular group of Volga Germans were Catholic.

Which is quite unusual - they were mostly either Lutheran or weird protestant sects.

Thanks, very interesting!

[minionofmidas]

Two Democrats from Hays (the Ellis County seat) lost their House and Senate races in the election, so now there is not a single Democratic member of the Kansas House or Senate who lives west of Hutchinson

So it was the last place there to be able to elect Democrats. Traces of the old tradition still subsist, then.

[minionofmidas]

Two Democrats from Hays (the Ellis County seat) lost their House and Senate races in the election, so now there is not a single Democratic member of the Kansas House or Senate who lives west of Hutchinson

So it was the last place there to be able to elect Democrats. Traces of the old tradition still subsist, then.

It was the last place there to be able to elect Democrats on the state House/Senate level. But given the surge in Republican voter registrations/collapse in Democratic registrations and the results of the last two presidential elections, I don't think that the old tradition exists anymore. I would expect that Ellis County will continue to be slightly more Democratic-leaning than the surrounding counties in northwest Kansas, simply because it's a more urban county and has a major university, but I don't know if it will ever again be a Democratic county.

Yeah, I wasn't claiming that. I'm a bit surprised they held on at the state level this long, is all - probably couldn't have happened without cultural memories of there being Democrats one can support.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Quite true.