Tag: Jonathan M. Davis

A political candidate once gained traction in the Kansas governor’s race running on only a single issue. That political outsider — to put it in today’s terminology — was Emporia’s own William Allen White, and he wanted to ensure the Ku Klux Klan did not gain a foothold in Kansas, much as it had in several other states at the time. The talk addressed the attempted rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Kansas and what White did to help shut it down. Whatever the cause, this resurgence ultimately resulted in White running for governor as an Independent candidate in the 1924 election. Those three anti-KKK candidates all won their races, including incumbent Attorney General Charles B. Griffith. White ran because he was dissatisfied with both Republican candidate Ben S. Paulen and Democratic incumbent Jonathan M. Davis. Though Paulen ultimately won the governorship, he didn’t show any favoritism to the Klan, she said. Buller said she believes he may have learned from White’s campaign. “Whatever his Klan ties were, I like to think that he learned something from William Allen White, from all of the things that he said for those six weeks,” she said. “But yeah, that’s really something to think about and I think he very well could have been one of them — could have joined the Republicans that we’re seeing on TV now saying, ‘I’m a lifelong Republican, but I can’t vote for our current candidate.’ I’m not positive.