Special Interest

This column was published April 19, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury.

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When I look backward down the career highway, it dawns on me that it actually went the way I planned it.

At 19, I was a radio deejay who wanted to get into broadcast journalism. As a broadcast journalist, I sought to transition into politics and government. In politics and government, I knew the experience would lead to the private sector.

The end of another state legislative session in Topeka got me thinking about all this, since there was a time when two of my career stints revolved around state government. First as the enterprising journalist asking the penetrating questions, then overnight switching sides of the camera as the intrepid spin doctor answering them.

As expected, hoped and planned for, my political/government experience helped land me private sector work toiling in the vineyards of special interest groups, each right here in Manhattan.

That corporate-looking Taj Mahal on the northwest corner of town is home to Kansas Farm Bureau. It’s many things, but at its heart and soul lies a special interest group for family farmers and ranchers. I started there at the turn of the century, right when the 2000 census revealed that for the first time in history, there were more urban and suburban Kansans than their rural counterparts. 

My job was to take a conservative, hidebound, tradition-driven system used to getting its way by preaching to the choir and turn it around to face the congregation. For decades, not given even the first thought, but one day you wake up and you’re outnumbered. Then comes the slow, difficult realization that you always will be.

More gaged ears, tats and green hair. Fewer pearl snap shirts, cowboy hats and square-toed boots. 

The last two years of this career, before entering what I laughingly refer to as “semi-retirement,” was spent managing “external affairs” for the Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce. Men, women and families involved in business, wealth creation, commerce and free enterprise.     

External, meaning I succeeded when decisions that paved the way for more wealth creation, commerce and free enterprise, were made outside the confines of the office. Stakeholder relationships, policy agenda strategies, tactics and calibrations.    

Learning the societal cultures which support and surround these special interest groups was the ballgame. I developed a dozen different ways to talk about the weather. There’s a distinct business culture and there’s an agriculture culture (say that real fast three times) and they’re a lot more alike than one might think.

4-H, FFA, Farm Bureau.

Junior Achievement, Rotary Club, the chamber mixer.

The farmer who owns half the county doesn’t need a lobbyist. Sen. Moran will take his call, directly. To the long-standing, successful business in the community, especially those with financial skin in the economic development game, you’re contract help, one-off their org chart, but connected with a dotted line. 

Special interests are not inherently a bad thing. The Boston Tea Party was organized by a special interest group. The New England Emigrant Aid Company was a special interest group.  

Whether it’s a bureau, a chamber, a community chest, or some other ill-defined receptacle where the like-minded congregate, the motivation to belong is the same. People who recognize they’re stronger, together.

When you unpack it, trace it upstream and otherwise mangle metaphors trying to describe it, all of our interests are special.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in the Manhattan Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN. Follow his writings at mikematson.com