Eight Republican candidates lined up at forum Saturday in Cowley County where they answered a variety of questions posed by former Republican state Rep. John Whitmer, who hosts a weekly talk show in Wichita. It may be the only time where all the Republican candidates – minus podcaster Doug Billings – will appear at a forum together during the primary. Whitmer asked questions ranging from taxes and spending to abortion to the constitutional amendment on electing justice to the Kansas Supreme Court. The forum was set up in a way where Whitmer questioned each candidate one at a time for roughly 10 minutes each. The Governor’s Choice Chili Feed & Forum was sponsored by the Cowley County Republican Party. The candidates appear here in the same order that they were questioned during the forum, which was broadcast live on KNSS radio.
Wichita businesswoman Joy Eakins: “Kansas should be the best place to live the American dream, and it’s not,” she said. “Our taxes are out of control, our education outcomes are not good. When I step back and look at that, I think about who has been in charge. Who has been stewarding that decline?” She said schools were adequately funded, but the state wasn’t getting value for the money it’s spending. “Nobody thinks they’re getting their money’s worth. Everybody’s concerned about education for their kids and what’s happening.”
Eakins said she has an education platform that calls for school choice. She wants the school finance formula to put money into the wallets of classroom teachers, not administrators or buildings. “Make sure that our teachers have the professional development they need. Make sure teachers don’t have to be part of the union to get a fair deal with their school district.”
She added, “There are people in this room, people running in this race, that will say that they solved the education funding back when they were in office. I would just say to you that’s what you’re paying for right now. We did not, when we had an opportunity in the last Republican administration, take the chance to…make sure that outcomes were rewarded, not failures. That’s why we have what we have right now.”
She said Kansans are overtaxed. She said Kansans weren’t paying much less in taxes than what Californians pay. She criticized the way property is appraised in Kansas. “This appraisal system does not work. I am talking to people in rural counties who are telling me their comparables for their property are from New Jersey. What planet does that make sense on?” She said there was a need for less regulation to help revitalize rural parts of the state.
She said the state has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. “The question is who’s going to go in there and actually look at the data and make a change and do something about it. Who’s going to do that? Who has a record of leadership of going in and changing things?” She said she’s had a business for 17 years that has helped companies evaluate their operations to run more efficiently. “I haven’t been out there figuring out how to spend more of your money.” She said she supports the constitutional amendment on the ballot that calls for electing justices to the Kansas Supreme Court.
Former Gov. Jeff Colyer: “I am running for governor because Kansas needs a strong, competent, conservative governor who’s going to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump. We have a lot to do in our state. We have the greatest state in the country. I think we’re truly the moral compass of the United States, and that’s how we began as Bleeding Kansas. For too long, the state has been going backwards. It’s been going backwards for a lot of reasons, and we have to go and confront all of those reasons.”
He said he wants to create a “dynamic economy” that is growing with higher wages, lower taxes and less regulation. He said he wants to make sure Kansas doesn’t “become the abortion capital of the world as it is become right now.”
He said state spending is out of control. He said when he served as lieutenant governor and later governor, “we were DOGE before DOGE was a thing,” alluding to the Department of Government Efficiency created by President Donald Trump.
He said state government eliminated 5,500 “unnecessary” state jobs and three cabinet-level agencies. “Nobody noticed,” he said. “We’ve got too much government. We’ve got government that’s doing a lot of stuff that just gets in the way.” Colyer said Kansas was a high regulatory state that makes it hard to start a business.
Colyer said the state needs to focus on outcomes for education and health care spending. He pointed to the state’s payment error rate for food-assistance benefits. The error rate assesses the accuracy of state eligibility and benefit determinations for households that receive food-assistance benefits. The error rate for the program was 9.98% in 2024, down from about 12% in 2023. When Colyer was governor in 2018, the error rate was 5.86%.
He also was critical of the 2019 state Supreme Court ruling that he said found “this unhinged right to an abortion that nobody else can see in the Kansas Constitution.”
Colyer added, “We have to stand up. We have to change the courts, but we also need to stand up for life. Right now, we’re at this phase where Kansas has become a destination for abortion.”
He said he supported the constitutional amendment moving the state to electing justices to the Supreme Court, saying that the committee that screens candidates for the court is disproportionately influenced by the five lawyers on the nine-person panel.
“We should have done this years ago,” he said. “We need to change that, and we need to change that yesterday.”
Johnson County businessman Philip Sarnecki: The political newcomer took a few minutes to explain why his outside experience makes him the best candidate in the Republican field for governor. He asked how it would be possible that Kansans haven’t elected a Democratic U.S. senator in almost 100 years but have elected a “liberal Democratic governor” twice since 2018.
“How does that happen? It happens, I believe, because we run career politicians for a CEO job. We need to do in the state of Kansas exactly what Donald Trump has done nationally with an outside business leader. There are a dozen states right now around the country who have governors who have never run for office before.”
Sarnecki was asked how he would address voters who might question whether he had enough experience to serve as governor, with Whitmer joking that it can take weeks for new lawmakers to find the bathrooms in the Capitol.
“Experience doing what? Experience spending a lot of your money and wasting a lot of your money. Experience not knowing how to build businesses, grow jobs and grow the economy. That’s what career politicians tell you to keep really good people, really good executives from running,” he said.
“That’s what they told President Trump, right? And then President Trump went in, and look at the results that he’s getting. Our experience is three decades of building businesses. My business paid out $135 million of dividends back to the people of the state of Kansas. How would you like that from your governor? We can make that happen. I think once I get into the governor’s mansion, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to find the bathroom.”
Sarnecki said he was pro-life and donated to Kansans for Life. He called the increasing number of abortions in Kansas “abhorrent.” And he added that his campaign treasurer also was the campaign treasurer for the Value Them Both Amendment, which would have removed the right to an abortion from the state constitution.
Sarnecki said the state was facing both a revenue and spending problem. “They’re both a problem. We are not growing revenue in our state, and we are spending way too much money.” He said the overall state budget has increased by about $10 billion in the last seven years, but the state’s population has not grown substantially. “That’s a tax burden that you all are taking on without any growth in our population. How do you fix that? You create more small businesses and you create more jobs. That’s how you fix it. That’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years.
“If you can’t start new businesses then you’re not adding new jobs, which means there’s fewer people to pay taxes,” he said. “We have got to grow this economy. We have got to build businesses and create jobs.
“If we keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing for the last couple of gubernatorial cycles, we’re going to end up with another Democratic governor this next cycle. I am pretty confident that none of you want that.”
Wichita businesswoman Stacy Rogers: “I’m a frustrated Kansas business owner that’s sick and tired of seeing the people of our state get run over by career politicians. We need to do something different in this state. This campaign is for the people. It’s not about me. I’m not the important one. But you are. As I’ve crossed this state talking to people, all I hear over and over is, ‘My voice doesn’t matter. Nobody is listening to me and nobody’s working for me anymore.’ It’s time for a change. I believe that Kansas needs to be led by people again,” she said. Rogers said she would explore options for imposing a moratorium on wind, solar and battery-sourced facilities. “We need to make sure that what we’re doing is right for this state and for our future of the state. I don’t believe we have enough information or we’ve been given the wrong information over the last 20 or so years.”
Rogers, too, was asked to respond to her lack of experience at the Capitol. She said her business background would serve her well as the state’s chief of executive. “I am well versed in handling budgets and managing people and departments as well. I think it does take someone who is a business owner to be able to make those kinds of business decisions that are need for the state.” She said she would want to take a multifaceted approach to lowering taxes, adding that the appraisal process in Kansas is “out of control.”
On education, Rogers said there was a lot of “indoctrination” and a lot of “very interesting things” being taught in public schools. She was not more specific.
She said she supported school choice. “I support educating the child the way that they need to be educated. Our education system should be about our children, period. And making sure that they are prepared for adulthood.”
Rogers said she would support the constitutional amendment for electing justices to the Kansas Supreme Court. “We have a few nonelected people making all the decisions of who sits on the Supreme Court. None of us as voters get a say in that, and that’s just plain wrong. We need to switch that so that we can start making some good, solid decisions in this state and not having everything we do practically being challenged.” She also said she was opposed to abortion and supported the Value Them Both constitutional amendment.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab: Emphasized the need to modernize processes in state government. He talked about how the secretary of state’s office moved to requiring businesses to file their reports every two years instead of annually. He said the decision cut the agency’s work in half and enabled the agency to cut fees.
“If the Legislature wants to get aggressive on cutting taxes, it’s going to be up to the next governor to say, ‘How are you going to make it affordable?'”
He said there is a need for the state to get rid of outdated, antiquated systems that are cumbersome and slow processes down. “I would tell every agency you’re either going to reduce, modernize or both. We need a more efficient government that we can afford so we can have the tax cuts the Legislature wants to advocate for,” he said.
Schwab said making state agencies decide whether to modernize, cut staff or both would be his first priority if he was elected governor. “We have to make state government affordable.”
Schwab said many can identify what needs to be done to improve state government. The question, he said, is how it will be done. “I’ve actually done what needs to be done. I answer the how. You are going to modernize. You are going to get off old systems. If it’s a paper process, we’re getting off it. If it’s not transparent, we are making it transparent.”
Schwab also said the Legislature needs to take public school funding decisions away from the court. And he criticized the appraisal process. “If you sell your property for less than your appraisal, do you get a tax refund? You should. If I overpay my income tax, I get a refund. But if you sell and they overappraise, you don’t get that money back. What we have to do is make it more fair to the taxpayer and not just advantageous to the tax spenders, and right now it’s not. Right now, the problem is the appraisal process is too advantageous to the county. They don’t want to raise the mill levy so they just change the appraisal, and it’s hurting every county across the state. ”
Schwab said he was pro-life and supported the Value Them Both Amendment. “I appreciate kids. The problem I have is if someone shoots a woman and she loses that baby in utero, there’s reciprocity. There’s recourse. But if a mom kills her baby because someone pressured her to do it, there’s no recourse on the people putting pressure on her. When does somebody get legal and constitutional protection? Let’s answer the question.”
Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt: Touting her record as insurance commissioner, saying she cut business costs by $75 million during the last seven years and returned more than $145 million to Kansas families. She said her record demonstrated an ability to cut fees, find government efficiencies and “make things happen.” She said she’s running because she thinks Kansans “deserve a governor who works just as hard as they do.”
But Schmidt was pressed on her position on abortion and the opposition she faces from Kansans for Life. She also was pushed on whether she would support the constitutional amendment for electing justices to the Kansas Supreme Court.
First, Schmidt was asked whether she supported limits on abortion. “The Supreme Court sent that issue back to the states. I do not believe in abortion on demand like the far left, but I do support reasonable exceptions and I think that’s where most Kansans are.” She was then given a chance to respond to KFL’s criticism of her record on abortion because she opposed “common-sense protections” and was in “lockstep” with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on the issue. “They are wrong,” Schmidt said, declining to elaborate further.
Schmidt was then asked whether she supported the constitutional amendment on electing state Supreme Court Justices. “Kansans chose the system we have now. It’s been a while,” she said. “Now, there’s an opportunity with the amendment for Kansans to make a different choice. I do think, though, that any method that you have of selecting a Supreme Court justice, including the one we currently have, gets politicized.” She was asked again whether she supported the amendment. “I support the will of the people and that is where it lays.” She was asked a third time. “I will support the will of the people.”
She also was asked whether public schools were adequately funded. “I’m the product of public education,” she said. “Every opportunity that I have been given in my career and in my life since high school has been a direct result of the great education that I have received in Kansas public schools. I support the school system. I do think there’s a lot of things that we can talk about with the schools. I think that overarching, we need to talk about a lot of things, about preparing the workforce for the next generation. This generation needs to make sure they have the tools and the skills and what the companies are going to need.” She opposes taxpayer-funded school choice initiatives. “I do not support vouchers,” she said. “There’s a lack of transparency and accountability to the taxpayers on that. The Kansas Constitution requires that we fully fund schools, and I intend to do that.”
Former Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara: Said he has stood strong as a conservative and over time has been “run over, backed over and run over again.” She was critical of government spending, including Johnson County where she served on the county commission. She also voiced opposition to economic development incentives and advocated for cutting taxes. “I support equal protection under the law. I can’t afford to pay other people’s bills, and no one else can either,” she said.
O’Hara said schools need to be controlled locally and called for elimination of the Kansas State Department of Education. “We need to decide at the local level what we feel that our children need to be learning – reading, writing, arithmetic. Phonics for reading. Cursive writing. We are not educating our children. We are in an avalanche of failure. We’ve got to get it back to the local level.”
She added, “Close the State Department of Education. Three hundred and thirty employees and they do nothing. They spend a ton of our money and they do nothing, and our test scores keep going, down, down, down.” She advocated for school choice as long as it’s funded by private scholarships. “Any time you use state money, you are opening the doors to state control of your private school,” she said. “That is why I have a real question about state-supported school choice. We have to protect those private schools from state involvement. Look at what the state has done to our public schools.”
O’Hara said she supported the constitutional amendment for electing justices to the Kansas Supreme Court because she thought lawyers have too much influence on picking justices. She said she was pro-life and was a supporter of gun rights.
“I will hard work for you. I know what hard work is,” she said.
Senate President Ty Masterson: The Butler County native with six children described himself as a “Christ-centered” conservative. He touted his record banning transgender women from participating in women and girls’ sports and banning surgery and the use of puberty blockers for treating transgender children in Kansas. He also pointed to passage of bills ending the three-day grace period for mail-in ballots (“Election Day is Election Day”) and the elimination of the state’s 1.5-mill property tax levy that funded maintenance and renovations of some state buildings.
He said that he believed that public schools were adequately financed, adding that the Supreme Court apparently agrees because it relinquished oversight of the school funding case. “Our investment does not match our outcome. Our outcome does not match our investment,” he said.
“This state invests a tremendous amount of money in K-12 education. We have to get a focus on literacy. At-risk money is not being spent on at-risk kids. Who’s more at risk than a kid that can’t read? We have to right-size that to get that money going in the right direction,” he said.
As important as the governor’s race may be to the Senate president, Masterson said the constitutional amendment on electing Supreme Court justices is the most important question on the ballot next summer.
He criticized the current system for picking justices where a panel made up of five lawyers and four nonlawyers recommends three candidates to the governor. The governor names one to the court.
“That creates a court that does not represent the Kansas people, and you can see it one decision after another.” he said. “You say who the governor is. You say who the legislators are. But you have zero say in who that Supreme Court is. I’ve talked about how important the executive branch was with the implementation of law. They interpret it and, in some cases, outright invent it.”
Masterson also was questioned about a possible special session to address a law that courts have interpreted, for now, to allow transgender Kansans to change their gender markers on driver’s licenses.
“We’re talking about things in the Legislature I never conceived that we’d even talk about,” he said. “The big giant dictionary in the back of the Senate chamber, Webster dictionary – this is from 1930 – the definition of gender in that dictionary is male or female.
“They’ve changed the definition of that. That’s that whole woke ideology, DEI garbage that we’re teaching kids to hate each other. That’s how you’re getting people shooting people for their ideas.”
