Republican Party Chair Mike Kuckelman is moving quickly to address members of the GOP who abetted state Sen. Dennis Pyle’s insurgent gubernatorial campaign, blamed for handing Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly a historic reelection.
In an interview Thursday, Kuckelman said he plans to deal with any Republican who joined with Democrats and Pyle to “give the governor’s office back to Laura Kelly for another four years.”
“My intent is to levy as many sanctions as possible under the bylaws of the Kansas Republican Party,” Kuckelman said.
“I am currently working on taking those actions and sanctions will be forthcoming.”
The sanctions could apply to precinct committee members and other party members aiding Pyle, who dropped his affiliation with the Republican Party last summer so he could run for governor as an independent.
However, Pyle got help from an outside group tied to an influential Democratic law firm in Washington, D.C., that ran ads and sent out mailers promoting Pyle’s candidacy as the true conservative in the governor’s race.
The group’s mailer characterized Schmidt as “soft on immigration” for voting against several amendments in March 2008 that among other things would have required local and state governments to participate in the E-Verify program.
The ad also criticizes Schmidt for voting against another amendment to a bill – SB 458 – that would have made it unlawful for undocumented immigrants to receive public benefits from the state and local governments.
Pyle, a longtime conservative senator from Hiawatha, drew 19,960 votes in a race where Kelly defeated Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt by 19,831 votes.
Any punishment could include suspension of party voting rights, meaning a party leader could not participate in upcoming local or state reorganizational committee meetings as well as the election of a new chair next year.
Earlier this year, the Kansas Republican Party delivered a reminder about its loyalty oath to party members shortly after Pyle revealed he was getting in the race.
The email put party leaders and officials on notice that they should not be backing Pyle after he left the party.
Party bylaws prohibit anybody in a position of leadership from endorsing a non-Republican or working to get a non-Republican elected.
Kuckelman said at the time that he wanted the notice sent out to make it clear that Republicans supporting Pyle – or anyone else not part of the GOP – was off limits.
Republicans have been angered over Pyle’s decision to run an independent campaign that they say drained critical votes away from Schmidt in a tight race decided by mere percentage points.
Social media has been circulating with angry comments directed at the senator, who had a reputation over the years of clashing with leadership in the Senate.
“Congratulations to Dennis Pyle who helped to ensure that Kansas will be saddled with the disaster that is Laura Kelly,” Terry Yarnell posted on Facebook.
“Pyle claimed in some of his ads that he was the only true conservative in the race,” Yarnell wrote. “Would a true conservative split the vote ensuring that the liberal would win? I don’t think so. I hope Kansan’s remember what Dennis Pyle did to us.
“When you look at the numbers, Kuckelman said it was clear that Pyle tilted the governor’s race in favor of Kelly.
“I am very frustrated with what happened with the governor’s race,” he said.
“Derek Schmidt would have clearly won the governor’s race but for Democrats playing Dennis Pyle as a fool and but for Republican voters that were tricked into voting for Dennis Pyle not understanding that a vote for Dennis Pyle was certainly a vote for Gov. Kelly.”
In an interview Thursday, Pyle said his critics are drawing the wrong conclusions about the results of the race.
“These people that are angry, they’re assuming that all of the votes that I got would have gone toward Derek,” he said. “That is just false.
“Were there a few? Yeah. But for the most part, those people wouldn’t have voted. Those people would have gone to the Libertarian.”
Pyle said he had no misgivings about running.
“We exposed the uniparty,” Pyle said of Democrats and Republicans.
“The uniparty is the system that is telling us who we’re going to support for candidates,” Pyle said. “They need to wake up to reality that we’re not going to take it anymore.”
“They’re either going to quit picking these establishment candidates that are backed by big money and big corporations and start paying attention to the people, or they’re not going to get our votes,” he said.
“I don’t have any regrets,” he said. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Pyle isn’t without supporters, including Republican state Sen. Mark Steffen of Hutchinson.
Steffen posted a video on Facebook this week defending Pyle’s candidacy.
“Everybody’s wanting to point towards Pyle,” Steffen said. “That’s a minuscule part of it.”
“The reality is we have a complete lack of leadership in the Kansas Republican Party at the top, in the Legislature, and it’s a problem,” he said.
Steffen said Schmidt didn’t bring energy to a campaign for a conservative platform that the attorney general didn’t really believe in.
“The simplistic idea that Sen. Pyle was the sole problem isn’t going to fly, and it’s not going to fly with me,” he said.
Pyle questioned why Republican leaders don’t castigate Republicans such as former Govs. Bill Graves or Mike Hayden and former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum for supporting Kelly.
“What did they do to those Republicans? Those are the people that cost them this election. They just to refused to do anything to the left-wing hierarchy.”
Now, Pyle faces the prospect of returning to a Republican-controlled Senate where resentment might still linger toward the senator.
“Some are downright unhappy,” Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn said in describing the mood toward Pyle at this point.
“There are are some that are very, very disappointed – very disappointed in him as a senator, as a colleague, as a team player, all of the above,” Wilborn said.
National Republican Committeeman Mark Kahrs said he hopes Senate President Ty Masterson will deal with Pyle harshly.
“If he wanted to be the governor, he should have competed in our primary and challenged Derek in the primary,” Kahrs said.
“He clearly ran to be a spoiler for Laura Kelly.”
Earlier this year, Masterson removed Pyle from his interim committees after he dropped his Republican Party affiliation to run for governor as an independent.
Senate rule No. 22 says that if any senator changes political party affiliation from the one that they were elected, they shall be removed from all committee memberships.
“I’m a state senator. I’m going to continue to do my job,” Pyle said.
“Maybe I’ll get a parking spot out on the street. Maybe I’ll have an office up in the dome. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Masterson put it this way through a spokesman:
“I am scouring the Capitol grounds for an appropriate space for our unaffiliated caucus member,” Masterson said.
“Not to be a spoiler, but there is roughly a 2% chance Sen. Pyle retains his current office.”
Pyle got 2% of the vote in the general election.
Pyle wouldn’t rule out returning the GOP, although not anytime soon.
“If I have somebody that I really like that wants to run for county commissioner or state rep and I want to help in a primary, that is a possibility,” he said.
“Could I see myself going to the Republican Party again? It’s possible.
“I’m going to enjoy being an independent,” he said.
