Good morning everyone:
This is the 82nd consecutive edition of our weekly Sunday roundup. Why is 82 notable? It’s not necessarily. It’s only that we like to think of the fall in terms of weeks because it’s NFL season.
And since we’re just in Week 2 of the NFL, we decided to count up how many weeks we’ve been bringing this feature to you. It’s now basically been a little more than five NFL seasons. We just don’t take the same physical beating as NFL players. So, we’re good.
With that little factoid out of the way, let’s get started with the most significant stories that we published over the last week followed by the news you might have missed but need to know.
- A new era of transparency is coming to the selection of Supreme Court justices.
- The free speech case against the state stemming from protests at the state Capitol took a hit in federal court and now looks like it’s headed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
- Kansas Treasurer Jake LaTurner hired Congressman Steve Watkins’ former campaign manager in his bid to unseat the Republican incumbent in next year’s 2nd Congressional District primary.
- A Republican-turned-Democrat launches a bid to win the seat held by moderate Republican state Rep. Jan Kessinger.
- Former Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann announced Monday that he was running for the 1st District Congressional seat held by Roger Marshall, who is now running for the U.S. Senate. A couple days later, Garden City eye doctor William Clifford announced he was running for the seat as well.
- The Kansas Corporation Commission denied Westar’s request to pass on to ratepayers the cost of purchasing an 8% stake in a coal-powered plant in St. Marys.
- The state confirmed its first vaping death.
- Gov. Laura Kelly rolled out all the members of her panel that will study tax reform over the next 18 months.
Now onto other news….
Koesten comeback
Former state Rep. Joy Koesten plans to run for the Senate seat now held by Republican John Skubal of Overland Park.
Late last month, Koesten filed paperwork appointing a treasurer in order to run for Senate District 11, which rubs up against the Missouri state line and covers parts of Leawood and Overland Park. She plans to collect signatures and file by petition.
Koesten had represented House District 28 as a Republican before becoming a Democrat. She was elected to the Kansas House in 2016, when she defeated Republican incumbent Jerry Lunn.
However last year, Koesten lost her bid for a second term when she was defeated in the primary by state Rep. Kellie Warren.
Koesten acknowledged that she was friends with Skubal but said she thought voters need options.
“I believe the voters in Senate District 11 deserve a choice,” Koesten said in a text message Saturday.
“They deserve to have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who will not have to endure political pressure to vote for bad public policy that goes against the values and priorities of the district.”
Skubal has been a moderate in the Kansas Senate, advocating for transportation, supporting Medicaid expansion, backing increased school funding and voting to reverse tax cuts enacted under former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration.
“We’re going to run no matter what,” Skubal said Saturday. “We’ll have some fun.”
Skubal is now ending his first term in the Kansas Senate. He defeated Republican incumbent Jeff Melcher in 2016 with about 57% of the vote and then beat Democrat Skip Fannen with 65% of the vote.
The district is 54% Republican, 20% Democrat and 25% unaffiliated.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won the district by about 12 percentage points last year over Republican Kris Kobach, but it also was carried by Republican Kevin Yoder in the congressional race.
Every other Republican statewide office candidate besides the governor won the district.
Capps facing challenge
Republican state Rep. Michael Capps was elected to the Kansas House without any party support while facing allegations of emotional abuse involving foster children.
Now, the Wichita lawmaker will face opposition from retired Army Capt. Patrick Penn, who has announced a primary challenge against Capps in the 85th House district. Penn has already appointed a treasurer for the campaign.
“With the support of my family, friends and the former representative of the district, Steve Brunk, I am compelled to run for this position to bring integrity and decency back to the people of the 85th District,” Penn said in a statement.
“I share the values of the district, and my upbringing leads me to challenge those who harm children.”
Penn’s comments allude to a state investigation that found Capps had “inappropriate contact” and overinvolvement with two children as a volunteer for Court Appointed Special Advocates of Sedgwick County.
The Department for Children and Families confirmed it investigated Capps and he was affirmed for emotional abuse. Capps later appealed the decision, which was reversed because of a technical error. He said the allegations were a sham.
He said they were retaliation for telling child welfare investigators that a foster parent allowed a registered sex offender into her house and put kids at risk.
“I am focused on the job I was elected to do less than one year ago,” Capps said in a statement.
“There will be plenty of time for campaigning, but there are issues far more serious for our state than whether or not Mr. Penn is running against me.”
Penn joined the U.S Army after graduating from high school. He served multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He received the Meritorious Service Medal and the Combat Action Badge before retiring at the rank of captain in 2017.
Penn graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in criminology and earned a master’s in applied information technology from the George Mason University Volgenau School of Engineering.
Despite the emotional abuse allegations, Capps defeated Democrat Monica Marks with 54% of the vote last year. He finished the year with about $20,500 in his House campaign account.
He reported raising $25,948 from Oct. 26 through Dec. 31, which all came from loans he made to his campaign.
The district is deeply Republican, represented most recently by conservatives Chuck Weber and Steve Brunk. Both Weber and Brunk said they are supporting Penn in the race.
The district went heavily for President Donald Trump in 2016, Sam Brownback for governor in 2014 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
Where’s Alan Cobb?
The great parlor game of 2019 has been figuring out where Mike Pompeo is and whether he will run for the U.S. Senate in Kansas.
The secretary of state has been seen at IHOP. Then there were reports of him at Q39 in Overland Park. There was more hyperventilating when it was learned he was speaking at Kansas State University.
Forget Pompeo for minute. Just last week, Kansas Chamber of Commerce executive Alan Cobb posted a picture of himself on Facebook at the White House during a trip to Washington for a chamber event.
The picture featured Cobb with White House political director Brian Jack, which could easily set off some huffing and puffing about whether the chamber’s chief executive is running for the Senate.
Cobb would not comment through a chamber spokeswoman. But Cobb and Jack were tight on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and have remained in close contact since.
So is he running? We’ll let you make up the storyline.
DUI fee
Last week, we had a chance to catch up with the Department of Revenue about a recent state Supreme Court ruling that struck down a $50 fee for an administrative review of a driver’s license suspension.
KDOR spokesman Zach Fletcher said the agency has stopped collecting the $50 fee and is now developing a policy for refunds following the court decision.
“We do expect some requests for refunds,” he said in an email. “However, the policy is still in the drafting stages as to what steps a requestor will need to take and how a possible refund will be administered.”
The court ruled that the law imposing the $50 fee did not provide for someone who might not be able to afford the fee and as a result denied them due process.
Commerce Department restructuring
Secretary of Commerce David Toland has embarked on an effort to rebuild an agency that saw most of its sales force eliminated under former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration.
Toland announced last week that he was “rebuilding” the business development and international trade divisions within the agency with the creation of two new positions.
He said the agency would create the position of business development division director, who will “develop and administer programs designed to recruit and retain businesses within the state,” according to a Commerce Department statement.
He also plans to create the position of international trade division director, who will work on opening new export markets for Kansas products and bringing international businesses to the state.
“When you’re in the business of selling the state as a great place to do business, it makes no sense to eliminate much of your sales force, as happened under the previous administration,” Toland said in the statement.
“Gov. Kelly and I are determined to do the difficult restructuring work at Commerce that will yield strong economic growth in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state.”
Susan NeuPoth Cadoret, the current director of business development, will retire in December 2020.
She is moving into a new role as special adviser to the secretary, supporting the reorganization of the agency.
Alicia Janesko Hutchings, who was appointed to lead the business recruitment team in June, will remain in that position.
Kansas Democrats love Warren
The Kansas Democratic Party did this little survey about who they thought won last week’s Democratic presidential debate.
Not scientific but it gives you a little insight into what Kansas Democrats are thinking.
The survey revealed that about 36% of the 145 participants thought Elizabeth Warren won the debate. Seventeen percent gave the nod to Bernie Sanders. 
Joe Biden finished third, just one vote behind Sanders. South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg finished fourth (14%) while Beto O’Rourke came in fifth (5%).
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota received 4% while Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and entrepreneur Andrew Yang both received about 3%.
Orman’s musings
Former Kansas gubernatorial candidate Greg Orman is back in the spotlight, this time with a column on RealClear Politics about the Democratic candidates for president.
In the column, the former independent candidate for govenor chides the Democratic candidates for a lack of business experience.
He encourages those candidates to include more representatives from business so they can anticipate the unintended consequences of the policies they propose. If you want to know what Orman is thinking these days, here’s the column.
Pompeo break-in
The McClatchy folks had this report about storage units owned by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo being broken into Wichita. The units contained tables, chairs and other campaign paraphernalia, according to the report. Overall, four storage units were burglarized, including two owned by Pompeo. Here’s coverage from The Associated Press, the Washington Examiner, Eagle/Kansas City Star and KFDI radio.
Kris Kobach news
Fresh on Sunday morning, the KC Star/Wichita Eagle have a new report out about Kris Kobach turning names of people who applied to rent housing in Fremont, Neb. over to immigration enforcement.
As a point of reference, Kobach helped the city write a law banning landlords from renting to anyone living in the country illegally. Since the law was tough to enforce, Kobach in 2017 sent federal authorities a list of about 300 names who applied to rent.
On retainer for the city at the time, Kobach asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine the immigration status of each of the applicants.
For his part, Kobach tells the newspapers that he was trying to enforce the terms of the Fremont ordinance.
This was the first news the former secretary of state has made in recent weeks since releasing a much-talked-about video explaining how he had been wrongly labeled as an extremist by the media.
Kobach has been focused on raising money, this time in New York with Fox News personality Ann Coulter and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Here’s the coverage from Politico and The Hill newspaper.
The next round of campaign finance reports are due Oct. 15, and we’ll know the results of his fundraising.
Abortion reversal ruling
Last week, the American Medical Association won an injunction blocking a North Dakota law requiring doctors to tell their patients that it may be possible to reverse drug-induced abortions.
The judge said state lawmakers “should not be mandating unproven medical treatments, or requiring physicians to provide patients with misleading and inaccurate information.”
The judge found that the North Dakota law was “likely unconstitutional because it requires physicians to disclose information which is either untruthful, misleading, and/or irrelevant to the patient’s decision to have an abortion.”
The North Dakota legislation was similar to a bill passed by the Kansas Legislature last year but was vetoed by Gov. Laura Kelly. The Legislature failed to override Kelly’s veto.
Here’s coverage from CBS News and The Associated Press. about the North Dakota case. Here’s also a story from PBS Frontline that examines the North Dakota case. Here’s the opinion from the North Dakota case, if you want to dig deeper into the judge’s ruling.
Adkins campaign questions
The Kansas City Star last week revealed some questions about whether Congressional candidate Amanda Adkins ran afoul of federal election laws by holding herself out as a candidate before completing the appropriate paperwork. Here’s the coverage.
Medicaid expansion roundup
Idaho is now considering a plan that would require patients to get a referral from a primary care doctor before seeking family planning services.
It is one of five waivers to federal Medicaid rules the state is seeking, including one that has already been rejected that would have allowed some people who qualified for Medicaid to remain on the state health exchanges.
Meanwhile, Idaho is moving toward requiring counties to pay for the cost of Medicaid expansion, which was approved by voters in 2018.
Lawmakers believe that the counties won’t have to spend as much money on health care for the less affluent once Medicaid is expanded. Currently, the counties pay for health care for the poor from local property taxes.
And for you policy wonks, here’s an interesting report compiled by Idaho’s legislative researchers that shows how most states elect to pay for Medicaid expansion.
Thirty-four of the 36 states that have expanded Medicaid pay for it from their general fund, the report shows. At least five states have used a tax increase or redistributed an existing tax to pay for expansion, and at least 12 states have increased or modified their assessments on providers to pay for the program.
And if you really want to get into the tall grass, here’s a report compiled for Idaho lawmakers that shows different options for funding Medicaid expansion.
Funding options included sin taxes, a tax on e-cigarettes, removal of tax exemptions for hospitals, or an increase of the assessment on hospitals.
Health care costs
State lawmakers last week heard about ways they might control health care costs from an expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The joint insurance committee last week heard testimony from NCSL’s Colleen Becker, who laid out different options for reining in health care expenses.
She explained how Colorado required hospitals to report uncompensated care to the state and how Nevada capped the cost of diabetes drugs, among others. Here’s the coverage from the Capital-Journal.
Campaign videos
Here are some of the early campaign videos that are come out as candidates introduce themselves to the voters.
Here are videos from Roger Marshall’s campaign for U.S. Senate, Amanda Adkins campaign for Congress in the 3rd District and Bill Clifford’s campaign for Congress in the 1st District.
Roger Marshall
Amanda Adkins
Bill Clifford
Veep support
Embattled Republican Congressman Steve Watkins last week took steps to bolster his support within the party with this tweet showing support from Vice President Mike Pence.
The tweet comes as Republican Kansas Treasurer Jake LaTurner organizes his campaign for the 2nd Congressional District seat against Watkins. We’ll just drop this here for you to watch.
A message from the @VP #ksleg #ks02 #WinWithWatkins pic.twitter.com/UZruclVGrC
— Steve Watkins (@Steve4Kansas) September 13, 2019
