A political action committee affiliated with Johnson County businessman Philip Sarnecki launched a new ad buy against Senate President Ty Masterson as the Republican primary for governor moves into the last full month.
The Kansas Comeback PAC has booked or spent about $360,000 on broadcast television, starting with a new ad that hit the airwaves Tuesday morning, delivering the first open attack against Masterson, who enjoys critical support from President Donald Trump.
The ad was only running in the Wichita market on Tuesday and had been seen about 110,000 times, according to national ad tracking service, AdImpact.
The PAC has booked about $268,000 in the Wichita/Hutchinson market and about $91,000 in Kansas City.
The new gloomy black-and-white ad takes aim at Masterson for supporting tax incentives for data centers and supporting a charter for the Kansas subsidiary of a Dallas-based financial institution, whose founder was recently found guilty on fraud charges unrelated to the Kansas operation.
A Masterson spokesperson derided the ad as a “smear.”
“Connections, power, money. After 20 years in politics, Ty Masterson has mastered this game,” the ad said.
“Thousands from big tech, rewarded them with tax breaks for data centers, and it doesn’t stop there. His longtime donor needed a special bank charter. Masterson pushed it through.
“The donor later indicted for bank fraud. Twenty years in politics, he’s mastered the insider game. Works for them, works for him, but it doesn’t work for us,” the ad said.
“This is a desperate smear from a candidate whose campaign is failing,” said Masterson spokesperson, Garrett Henson.
“Here’s what Philip Sarnecki doesn’t want voters to know: He skipped five Republican primaries, then lied about it to donors, and he helped fund the very Democrats trying to destroy Kansas. That is a matter of public record, not opinion.
“Ty Masterson cut taxes for every Kansan, defended our conservative values, and earned President Trump’s complete and total endorsement. Sarnecki is attacking Ty because he can’t defend his own record and has nothing to offer on his own but empty words.”
Sarnecki’s voting record shows that he’s voted in three statewide Republican primaries since 2008.
He did not vote in the 2022 primary election when Kansas voters defeated a constitutional amendment that would have removed the right to an abortion from the state constitution.
Last year, the Kansas Comeback group reported raising about $274,000 and had about $259,000 in cash on hand at the end of the year.
One the largest contributors to the PAC is someone only identified on the campaign finance report as “Cutler” with a post office box in Overland Park. Cutler gave $100,000 to the PAC.
There is a Bob Cutler with the same post office box who has given to other Republican legislative candidates. He’s also listed as a chief executive officer in marketing with the same post office box with a $10,000 contribution he gave to an Atlanta-based PAC in 2024.
The PAC received another $25,000 from Gary Blake, chief executive and founder of Creative Solutions in Health Care, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas. Oddo Holdings of Lenexa gave the PAC $10,000. Cindy Reeter of Houston gave the PAC $36,000.
Reeter and her husband, Jeff, managing partner at Northwestern Mutual, held a fundraiser for Sarnecki in Houston last year.
In a recording obtained by the Sunflower State Journal, Sarnecki mentions the PAC in talking to donors. He acknowledged that he couldn’t talk about the PAC, but referred questions about how to contibuted to his fundraiser.
He emphasized the need to let voters know Masterson’s record.
The ad alludes to Brad Heppner, the former top executive of Beneficient, the parent company of a unique type of Kansas financial institution that was created with the goal of giving sophisticated investors the ability to liquidate alternative assets such as venture capital and private equity that aren’t easily converted to cash.
Beneficient is the parent company of Beneficient Fiduciary Financial, which operates in Kansas as a Technology-Enabled Fiduciary Financial Institution under a state law the Legislature enacted in 2021.
Heppner was the face of Beneficient when lawmakers overwhelmingly approved legislation authorizing the institution in 2021. It passed unanimously with 39 votes in the Senate and 103 votes in the House with 20 opposed. The governor signed the bill into law.
The criminal case against Heppner accused him of setting up a shell company that benefited from tens of millions of dollars that he falsely claimed was owed by Beneficient to a third company that he controlled.
In the process, Heppner was accused of looting another publicly traded company – a company he chaired – by persuading it to invest in Beneficient to help pay the debt.
The company – GWG – later filed for bankruptcy, causing losses exceeding $1 billion for thousands of investors and bondholders, the indictment said.
A lawyer for the subsidiary told lawmakers last year that none of the allegations in the indictment against Heppner applied to the Kansas subsidiary and Kansas. He said none of the money that the subsidiary has paid the state in fees and charitable contributions was at risk.
Prosecutors indicated that Heppner carried out the scheme between 2018 and 2021, the year legislation related to Beneficient was passed.
