Liberal Place: Kansas City, MO

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Kansas City, whether the MO side or KS side, is Conservative. Just because many minorities populate the east, that does not make a city liberal. Trying to say something like that only makes liberalism look like it's on the same level as mid-1800 slave owners. Both Missouri & Kansas are mainly Conservative states, with mainly only moderate Conservative opposition in the Democrat Party. Besides, the Reform Party has a greater presence in KC than any liberal organization.

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I don't know who wrote the first comment on Kansas City being "liberal friendly", but it couldn't be farther from the truth. On the Missouri side you have two Republican senators and on the Kansas side you have two Republican senators. While it's true the "center" of the city is "liberal friendly", aren't all inner cities? Face it, this is still the heart of "Republican-Populist Country".

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Wow...I don't why the previous two commentators like to paint with such broad brushes and unfairly characterize both Kansas and Missouri.

On balance, yes, Kansas as a whole is conservative. However, as a Midwesterner myself, Kansas currently does not suffer from red-meat conservatism that you'll find in, say, South Carolina. Yes, I know Senator Sam Brownback is very conservative, but Senator Pat Roberts is more moderate, and recently-retired Senator Nancy Kassebaum is very much a moderate. Even Bob Dole, as much as liberals might not like him, has some basic moderate strains in him. In terms of Kansas City suburbs on the Kansas side (such as Overland Park and Johnson County), the area is moderate to moderately conservative, much like most fast-growing suburbs in the Midwest. And now the Kansas-side KC suburbs are represented by a moderate Democrat in Congress, after booting out arch-conservative Vince Snowbarger (former moderate Republican congresswoman Jan Myers probably best exemplified the Kansas-side KC suburbs' politics).

Missouri is the quintessential swing state. Two conservative Republican senators, yes, but all the state constitutional officers are Democratic, albeit fairly moderate ones. The city of St. Louis, despite racial tensions, is solidly Democratic territory. The city of Kansas City, Missouri is not that different, and overall I would say it is more pleasant than St. Louis. The only "hard-core" Republican area is southwest Missouri, around Springfield and Joplin, the region from where Senator John Ashcroft is from. All of the KC's Missouri-side suburbs are represented by one of three Democratic congressman (two of whom are women). So now all of the greater KC region is represented by Democrats in Congress.

Also, you can't judge a state's political culture simply by the party and politics of two Senators, who may have been elected under "interesting" if not unusual circumstances. John Ashcroft came in during the Republican sweep of 1994. If Democrats are strong in 2000 and field a good candidate, he could lose. Kit Bond's elections have been reasonably close. In 1992 he ran against a relatively weak and probably too-liberal candidate. Yet Missouri has voted Clinton twice.

It's really hard to say if the city of Kansas City is really "liberal friendly". While most Midwestern cities are heavily Democratic, they usually aren't easily labeled as "liberal" due to various ethnic and social problems. In my opinion, only Minneapolis-St. Paul comes really close to a truly progressive-liberal city. Cincinnati (which does have a Democratic mayor) and Indianapolis (might have had a Democratic mayor if not for Uni-gov) are most certainly not liberal-friendly overall, except for a few small pockets in those cities. Chicago and St. Louis are strongly Democratic, but have a slew of intra-party racial and ethnic fault lines. Kansas City is probably somewhere in between: a moderate to moderately liberal city, with moderate to moderately conservative suburbs in both states. It is definitely one of the most liveable cities in the nation and the region in a general sense, and it shouldn't be terribly hard to find a reasonably liberal-friendly neighborhood and settle in. No, it's not Ithaca or Berkeley, and won't give you the Midwestern progressiveness of Minneapolis, Madison, Iowa City, or Bloomington, Indiana, but it most certainly not a liberal-UNfriendly city.

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KC has its share of liberal and conservative influences. On the Missouri side, the state as a whole is leaned towards the left. Despite the national representation of two far-right Senators (Kit Bond & John Ashcroft), the majority of the state government is dominated by Democrats. The governor, Democrat Mel Carnahan, garners considerable support from moderate conservatives, and is widely expected to trounce Ashcroft in a bid for his Senate seat in 2000.

For evidence of conservatism, note that the KCMO school system is still under court-ordered desegregation. Also, much of the middle class suburbs consists of evangelical Christians- driving through town, one notices an extraordinary number of their churches. If one goes about 10 miles out of the city, you're in the heart of redneck country, complete with Confederate flags in the rear windows of pickup trucks.

As a Chicago native transplanted to KC, I have to say that KC as a whole leans a little farther to the right than Chicago- although not far enough that I would consider it unfriendly.