(Updated to include comment from Carr)
House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard has removed Democratic state Rep. Ford Carr of Wichita from his leadership positions on two committees following an altercation last week at a downtown Topeka pub.
Woodard’s office announced the committee changes without comment explaining the leadership changes. Carr had been the ranking member on the legislative modernization and welfare reform committees.
Woodard replaced Carr as ranking member with state Rep. Alexis Simmons of Topeka on the legislative modernization committee.
Rep. Jarrod Ousley of Merriam will replace Carr as ranking member on the welfare reform committee.
Both changes start Feb. 3.
Carr still serves on the transportation and public safety budget committee and the child welfare and foster care committee.
In an interview, Carr said he will continue to serve on the legislative modernization and welfare reform committees but without the ranking title.
Carr said he had asked Woodard as early as Jan. 5 not to be named as a ranking member on those committees.
He said it was explained to him that he was being removed as ranking member because House Democratic leadership was running into questions from the media.
“Because they felt pressure from the press, they felt like they needed to put out an email or send a brief or something, saying, ‘Hey we’ve made some disciplinary changes,'” Carr said. “These aren’t disciplinary changes.
“Shit, this is what I asked for back in January, back in the beginning of January, literally two weeks before we got here,” he said.
“But you frame it as it though you’re dishing out some sort discipline. I’ve got two words for that: weak leadership. That’s what it is.”
Last week, Carr made headlines when a video emerged showing an altercation he had with Wichita City Councilman Brandon Johnson at a downtown Topeka establishment.
The video shows Carr and Johnson in a profanity-laced argument at the Celtic Fox where onlookers tried to separate the two men while one lawmaker was shoved to the floor.
Carr acknowledge that racial slurs were exchanged in the confrontation.
“It really was just yelling and screaming and talk,” Carr said in an interview at the time. “There were no blows thrown.”
Carr said tensions escalated in a discussion he was having with Johnson over state and local funding for testing residents who learned a couple years ago about a chemical spill contaminating the groundwater beneath their homes near 29th and Grove in Wichita.
Democratic state Rep. Henry Helgerson of Eastborough was knocked to the floor when it appeared that he tried to separate Carr and Johnson from each other.
Carr acknowledge shoving Helgerson to the floor but said he didn’t realize it was the legislator as the argument ensued.
The Kansas Highway Patrol Capitol Police and the Topeka Police Department responded to a possible fight that night at the Celtic Fox.
When arriving at the scene, a Capitol police officer observed people walking away from the Celtic Fox.
The Capitol police officer was approached by a witness who advised there had been an argument between Carr and Johnson.
There were no arrests as a result of the incident, and no requests for any medical response.
