I haven't written much about Jim Slattery's race to replace Memory Pills Roberts. Not because it isn't an interesting race, just because I haven't had much to say. Slattery knows Kansas and is experienced at winning elections there, Roberts has done a crappy job, and I hope Slattery wins. For more on his biography, check out the MyDD profile.

It's been encouraging to see polls come out from the Slattery campaign showing Roberts consistently in poor position. An incumbent polling below 50%, as Roberts does in several successive polls, is in sad shape. But internal polls are iffy, not least because the campaign can pick and choose, leaking only the most favorable results.

That's what's so encouraging about a new poll released by the Roberts campaign. Based on 541 likely voters sampled on the 22nd and 23rd, Roberts has 51% to Slattery's 34%, and McCain has only 50% support. This is a Roberts poll. Slatter unquestionably has a good shot at being the first Democratic Senator from Kansas since the 1930s!

These results are the same as in a poll the same pollster took back at the end of March, suggesting that the voters are reacting mostly to names at this point, and that neither candidate has found an issue that is swaying voters.

That could change, though. The GAO report overturning the Air Force's decision on a new air-refueling fleet has big implications for Boeing workers in Wichita, and Pat Roberts doesn't come out of this looking good. While he should have been doing everything to get those air tankers to be built in Kansas, Roberts didn't fight to keep a Buy American provision in the bill authorizing the competition for the new tankers. That made it easier for Airbus to get the contract the first time around.

What also made it easier was that Pat Roberts' son was lobbying for Airbus and Northrop. And several top staffers in the McCain campaign had previously been lobbyist for the same consortium.

This is an issue that may not seem important outside of Kansas, but Boeing is a huge employer in one of the few areas in Kansas with strong unions and genuine swing voters. Wichita had been electing Democrats at the national level for years, until the rise of the religious right. As that sort of Republicanism crashes and burns, Democrats are wooing disaffected voters. That could work very well for Jim Slattery, and for Donald Betts, who is running against incumbent Republican Todd "Mother-hater" Tiahrt.

Roberts is also on the wrong side of warrantless wiretapping, an issue which won't go away. Nancy Boyda has been a vocal opponent of that program, and it hasn't done her any harm. Indeed, early polling gives her a high approval rating and strong position in a rematch against Ryun, or in a matchup against Lynn Jenkins.

And heck, McCain's numbers in Kansas are about as weak as Roberts's, suggesting that we could see Democrats winning from the top to the bottom of the Kansas ballot. Hopefully even in the Kansas Board of Education.