Kansas GOP Voters Remove Creationists From School Board.

A controversial Kansas policy down--playing evolution in the public schools may soon go the way of the dinosaur.

The change is coming thanks to Republican voters in Kansas, who went to the polls Aug. 1 and removed two creationists from the state Board of Education. The shake-up means that creationists are about to lose their majority on the board.

All of the Republican moderates who won will face Democratic challengers in November. But since Kansas is a solidly Republican state, the GOP moderates are expected to win. (None of the Democrats seeking office are creationists.) The moderates have pledged that once seated, they will vote to overturn a controversial policy the board passed last year that downplays the importance of evolution in science standards.

Board members became the focus of national and international attention last summer after they voted 6-4 to remove references to the age of the Earth, the Big Bang theory and evolution from the state science standards. Although teaching of evolution was not forbidden in Kansas schools, critics said it was downplayed so much that the state looked backward. To make matters worse, after the board took the action, several members who supported the policy said they don't accept evolution and indicated their support for creationism.

The anti-evolution vote galvanized Republican moderates who vowed to run a slate of candidates in the primary. In two closely watched races, moderate Sue Gamble of suburban Kansas City trounced incumbent Linda Holloway, 60 percent to 40 percent. In Wichita, the results were closer, with moderate Carol Rupe edging out Mary Douglass Brown 52 percent to 48 percent.

In the Salina area, moderate Bruce Wyatt, an attorney, defeated creationist Brad Angell, a former teacher, 58 percent to 42 percent, for an open seat. The only creationist to retain his seat was Steve Abrams, a veterinarian from Arkansas City, who easily defeated former school superintendent Roger Rankin, 62 percent: to 38 percent.

Abrams, who helped draft the anti-evolution standards, told the Associated Press he could not explain the results. Holloway complained that she had been tarred as an extremist, telling the Kansas City Star, "Unfortunately, propaganda still works. The campaign against me has been going on for over a year."

Phillip E. Johnson, a University of California at Berkeley law professor and leading proponent of the "intelligent design" school of creationism, blamed the loss on the media.

"I think that the academics and the journalists succeeded pretty well in embarrassing the people of Kansas," Johnson told The New York Times, "And there was a sense that, `people are laughing at us, people think we're rubes, industry doesn't want to come here anymore.' This is very heavy-handed intimidation."

But observers said many Kansans were weary of a board whose ignorance of the basics of evolutionary science had made the state a national laughingstock. They noted that just days before the election, Brown told The New York Times she rejects human evolution because, "I don't believe that humans descended from apes, no. How come there's still apes running around loose and there are humans? Why did some of them decide to evolve and some did not?"

Although Brown's race was closer, the Holloway-Gamble contest had been more closely watched and became the target of national media attention. It turned out to be the most expensive in state school board history. In the end, Holloway raised about $90,000 -- nearly three times more than Gamble. Gamble, however, walked door to door in the district and attributed her victory to old-fashioned legwork.

The day after the election, Gamble said changes are coming. "We expect to have a very busy January," she said. "This has been a bone of contention among all of us as we've talked over the past several months."

But the creationists have vowed to stay in the fight as well and will front candidates when five more seats on the board come up for grabs in 2002.

Despite the loss, John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, insisted his side has the momentum. "There's a resentment of the education elite," he said. "I think that's an undercurrent that's undersold. The creation message is getting better and better than ever. It will never go back to the way it was, when people go back to doing what the education elite say -- never again."