The author’s uncle, Gene Suellentrop, a six-year Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives (and an ally of Gov. Sam Brownback).
Credit: Holly Andres/The New York Times

When I think of my uncle Gene, I think of a man who, late into the night at a particularly boisterous family wedding, would flatten his palms against the dance floor, extend his body parallel to the ground and then begin to undulate his legs and torso in a move known as the worm. Or I think of how, even later that same evening, he would agitate for a midnight meal at a diner in west Wichita, Kan., called the Golden Bell. Or of how, in his more abstemious workaday life, he left the family business — a small bank based in Colwich, a town of about 1,000 people in south-central Kansas, where he […]