Senate President Ty Masterson on Thursday stripped two Republican senators of their committee leadership positions after they held out supporting the new congressional maps earlier in the week.
Masterson pulled controversial Sen. Mark Steffen of Hutchinson from his vice chairmanship of the commerce committee, although he will remain a member.
Steffen also was removed from the influential tax committee.
He also pulled Sen. Alicia Straub of Ellinwood as vice chair of the agriculture committee, although she will remain on the committee.
She also was removed from the committee on transparency and ethics as well as the local government committee.
Masterson also removed Sen. Dennis Pyle of Hiawatha from his seats on the transportation and utilities committees. He is left with only one committee assignment: judiciary.
“To maintain unity in the caucus, these changes were necessary,” Masterson said in a statement.
The committee changes do not affect Republican state Sen. John Doll of Garden City.
Masterson will announce replacements to the committee later.
Pyle called it a “typical establishment Republican move.”
“Unity to him must mean you have to toe the line and do what the president says. That’s not my definition of unity,” Pyle said.
“I represent my district and I’m going to vote my district. I can recognize an ugly map when I see it,” he said.
Steffen and Straub could not be reached for comment.
Steffen, Straub, and Pyle voted against the congressional maps earlier in the week when the Senate first failed to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the new districts.
Steffen and Straub changed their vote to “yes” a day later and Steffen went on a Kansas City radio talk show and suggested he made a deal to support the map.
It is generally viewed that Steffen and Straub have increasingly annoyed other Republican senators, which became a larger issue when they refused to support the map.
They were seen as trying to hold the congressional map hostage for political gain, something that didn’t sit well with the rest of the Republican caucus, interviews indicate.
They also alienated Republican colleagues because they had not revealed their intentions to vote against the map after initialing supporting it a week earlier.
Doll, meanwhile, had always made clear his plans.
Steffen has been facing questions about whether he traded his vote for the maps in exchange for being able to get a bill passed requiring pharmacists to fill prescriptions for ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
The bill also prohibits school administrators and day care providers from asking questions about anyone who seeks an exemption from any mandated vaccine.
Steffen, an anesthesiologist from Hutchinson, has acknowledged writing prescriptions for ivermectin and has said he’s under investigation by the state Board of Healing Arts.
Steffen told Kansas City radio talk show host Pete Mundo that he voted for the bill because he had to make headway on some other issues.
Mundo asked Steffen directly why he voted for the map even if he didn’t like the idea of moving Lawrence from the 2nd District into the 1st District.
“Why vote for this map last week and then vote against it days later? That’s the part, I’m still trying to figure out,” Mundo said.
Then Steffen explains.
“I did that to make some progress on other some other fronts. Sometime that’s the way politics works,” he said.
Mundo then asked him more directly if he held up his vote on the maps to get something he wanted from Republican Senate leadership.
“I don’t know if it was that blunt. I do know I had concerns across the board.
“I was able to meet with the right folks to express all those concerns and we came to a mutual agreement.”
Pyle has given Masterson fits before.
Last year, Pyle was absent as the Senate got ready to vote on a constitutional amendment on abortion.
The Senate delayed action when Pyle and another Republican, Sen. Bud Estes, were absent. Pyle later said he was not in the Senate for “personal reasons.”
Estes, of Dodge City, has been sick for months, but many Republicans and abortion opponents were left puzzled when Pyle was absent.
At one point, an email went to members of Kansans for Life expressing concern about Pyle’s absence.
And Students for Life at Benedictine College in Atchison delivered an estimated 500 letters to Pyle’s home to get him to return to the Senate.
