I read in today’s Kansas Liberty that there’s a Democratic primary election coming up in August to see who will run against Republican incumbent Pat Roberts. The election pits Jim Slattery against some other guy.

The other guy is a man from Overland Park named Lee Jones. He’s an engineer on the railroad, and if his buddies on the job don’t call him “Casey,” something’s wrong.

He’s backed by a former Democratic speaker of the Kansas House, Marvin Barkis, and Shirley Jacques, a former member of the Democratic National Committee. And he’s a stalwart union man, a former Vice President of Governmental Affairs for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

He’s been around the block a few times—tried to unseat Sam Brownback not long ago after the party's official candidate gave up. His issues are solidly blue-collar. In fact, Jones appears to be a classic Democratic candidate, a fighter for the working class, a man who is paid by the hour.

Slattery’s background is a little different. He’s a former Kansas congressman who ran an extremely unsuccessful campaign for governor against Bill Graves in 1994. A few months after the votes were counted, Slattery set out to make his fortune in the world. He became a lobbyist in D.C. and succeeded several times over.

He has tons of money and better hair than even Sebelius, plus he has the affection of Republicans who are so "moderate" that they want to work for him. Slattery’s a “new” Democrat, a politician in the mold of New Jersey’s Jon Corzine, Washington’s Maria Cantwell, Minnesota’s Mark Dayton or Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow—a candidate so rich that fund-raising is kind of an affectation, something one does to lend atmosphere to one’s stylish political campaign.

Slattery’s campaign says he’s fighting for the working man, too. Slattery, however, was making $85,000 at his last job—every week.

So you’d think this old-new Democratic primary would be high-drama for the state’s press, right? Wrong. Slattery’s campaign is in headlines. Jones’s is all in appositives.

Jones had been running for Pat Roberts’ seat for six months before Slattery showed up back in Kansas with his checkbook in tow. It used to be that one of the Harris papers would run a piece on Jones when he showed up to campaign early in the year. That’s not happening any more.

To see how Jones was faring in the Kansas press now that Slattery’s entered the contest, I went to Google’s news site, where I found that the state’s papers had “covered” Lee Jones a total of 13 times in the last month or so—but every single one of those stories had been about Slattery: Jones was only mentioned in passing. Meanwhile, there were 140 stories about Slattery.

Apparently, to the cash-starved newspapers in Kansas, a rich Democratic candidate is the answer to a prayer. Well, okay—to a fervent wish.

Jones, who describes himself as a “fiscal conservative, a populist,” said he was encouraged to run by the state party—only to have the rug pulled out from under him when Slattery filed. Slattery’s candidacy, he said, had been engineered by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

“The press thought it was a big deal when he made his announcement,” Jones told me, “because suddenly the governor was backing him.”

I asked if the party gave him a heads-up before Slattery announced. “No,” he said. “In fact, I was told there was no way he was going to run. [Sebelius] just blindsided me.”

Jones had been counting on the support of his labor friends, but lately things are looking a little less solid. He said union activists, essential to any Democratic campaign, “are getting a lot of pressure from the governor to support Slattery. She had her people out [promoting Slattery], and even made a few political appointments” to boost Slattery’s chances, he said.

Why are Democrats abandoning a working stiff in favor of a multimillionaire? Jones told me that in the Kansas Democratic party under Sebelius, "if you have money, that's all that counts."

According to Thomas Frank, ironically every liberal’s favorite Kansan, Democrats lose elections in the Midwest precisely because they’ve sold out to rich liberals and abandoned the romantic working-class themes made popular by FDR. (A Cliff’s Notes-style précis of Frank’s book, What's the Matter with Kansas? is here.)

New Democrats, Frank wrote, have “long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the [party leadership] wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor.”

To Frank, this is a “criminally stupid strategy.”

Since the strategy has resulted in producing Democratic politicians like Slattery and Sebelius—who strangely sees Frank as a special friend—Jones would have to agree.

One of Jones’ targets, he said, is “corporate greed.” Let’s see if Frank shows up to help him ring doorbells.