Good morning:
Well, we all are set to return to Topeka this week. Everyone is wondering how long this special session will last?
Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope the Legislature settles its dispute with the governor over emergency powers and some other assorted issues quickly and cleanly. Be sure to pack well. Wishing safe travels for everyone this week.
Here are the most significant stories that we published last week with other stories you may have missed but need to know…
- The biggest story of the week: Susan Wagle ended her campaign for U.S. Senate.
- What the Legislature did and didn’t do in 60 major bills and votes.
- Complete list of state Senate candidates updated through Saturday.
- Complete list of state House candidates updated through Saturday.
- Former Kansas Democratic Party Chairman Lee Kinch passed away.
- An aide to former Congressman Dan Glickman is running for the state Senate.
- Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the emergency powers bill.
- A longtime educator is running against House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr.
- Democrats picked a replacement for state Rep. Dave Benson.
- A Democratic state House candidate apologized for misrepresenting endorsement.
- Abortion groups split their endorsements in the U.S. Senate race.
- Kelly nominated an appeals court judge.
The 24th special session
The Kansas Legislature will convene this week for the 24th time in a special session, the first since 2016, when lawmakers met to hash out school finance.
In more than 100 years of legislating, no special session has lasted longer than 28 days and none shorter than two.
They dealt with everything from foot-and-mouth disease (1886) and school finance (2005 and 2016) to a state highway plan (1987) and property taxes (1989).
There’s no telling how long this special session will last, but it is hoped that it will be short, especially after the overnight session a little more than a week ago that drew the ire of the governor, who called it a “spectacle.”
Lawmakers will have to figure out how to respond to Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill limiting her emergency powers.
There’s a lot to plow through, including measures that limit civil liability for businesses and health care providers in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
This won’t be the first special session to be held during a crisis.
The Legislature first met in a special session in 1874 to address the great grasshopper plague.
For those not around then, that’s when millions of the insects swarmed across the prairies from the Dakotas to Texas. There were so many they blocked out the sun.
Gov. Thomas Osborn called a special session of the Legislature to find a way to help Kansans survive the destruction and relieve damage caused by the grasshoppers.
The Legislature determined that it did not have the authority to take money directly from the state’s treasury to respond to the emergency, but it did approve $73,000 in bonds to provide aid, according to an account by the Kansas Historical Society.
Gov. Alf Landon is on record as calling the most special sessions, with three between 1933 and 1937, according to the Revisor’s Office.
The longest special session?
That would be 28 days in 1886 to address redistricting.
The second longest was 25 days in 1933 to investigate municipal bonds and respond to federal banking and work relief laws.
The shortest special session? Two days.
One session that lasted two days was called by Gov. Mike Hayden in 1989. It led to the extension of the deadline for paying property taxes after a statewide reappraisal.
The second two-day session was called by Gov. Sam Brownback in 2013 to respond to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling about criminal sentencing procedures used to impose a 50-year mandatory minimum prison term.
Kansas governors have the power to call a special session by proclamation, as Kelly did this time.
Although special session proclamations usually provide a start date and subject matter for a special session, the length and subject may not be limited by the proclamation, according to the revisor’s office.
In 2005 and 2013, the gubernatorial proclamations contained deadlines; however, they had no legal force. The 2005 special session addressing school finance lasted 12 days.
Here are nice recaps of special sessions from Legislative Research and the Revisor’s Office.
Special session fundraising
Last week, the Ethics Commission issued a memo, reminding everyone that legislative candidates cannot raise money from registered lobbyists, political committees, party committees and corporations during a special session.
“Candidates may solicit and accept contributions from any of these sources up until the day the special session begins on June 3,” the memo said.
“After the special session adjourns, candidates may again solicit and accept contributions from these sources.”
If a candidate receives a contribution during the special session from any of the prohibited contributors, the campaign must return the money.
The memo says that any fundraiser that had already been scheduled during the special session doesn’t have to be delayed.
“The campaign must be mindful that it can only accept contributions from non-lobbyist individuals at the event.”
Republicans target 14 statehouse districts
With an eye toward redrawing election boundaries in the next couple of years, national Republicans are seeking to flip 115 legislative districts in 12 states, including 14 in Kansas.
The Republican State Leadership Committee, which bills itself as the largest caucus of GOP state leaders in the country, is zeroing in on nine seats in the Kansas House and five in the Kansas Senate.
The RSLC is focusing its efforts on seats that are now held by Democrats in districts that went for President Donald Trump in 2016.
The districts – with the current incumbent – are:
House District 3: Monica Murnan (Trump won with 54.8% of the vote)
House District 18: Cindy Neighbor (Trump won with 47.4% of the vote)
House District 33: Tom Burroughs (Trump won with 46.8% of the vote)
House District 41: Jeff Pittman (Trump won with 50.9% of the vote)
House District 48: Jennifer Day, who replaced Dave Benson (Trump won with 49% percent of the vote)
House District 72: Tim Hodge (Trump won with 56.9% of the vote)
House District 95: Tom Sawyer (Trump won with 48.9% of the vote)
House District 96: Stephanie Yeager (Trump won with 52.3% of the vote)
House District 102: Jason Probst (Trump won with 54% of the vote)
Senate District 3: Tom Holland (Trump won with 49.4% of the vote)
Senate District 18: Vic Miller(Trump won with 53.3% of the vote)
Senate District 19: Anthony Hensley (Trump won with 50.7% of the vote)
Senate District 22: Tom Hawk (Trump won with 52.8% of the vote)
Senate District 25: Mary Ware (Trump won with 46.7% of the vote)
Two of those incumbents are running for other offices. Pittman is running for the Senate and Miller wants to return to his old House seat.
The group says it spent a record $45 million on state races during the 2017-2018 election cycle, which contributed to Republicans maintaining 61 of 99 legislative chamber majorities.
The Republican State Leadership Committee reported raising about $23.5 million this election cycle so far, according to federal tax records.
The group raised almost $8.2 million in the first half of 2019 and followed it up with $9.2 million in the second half of the year. It raised nearly $6.1 million in the first quarter of 2020.
“We’ve got a robust spending plan across the country that is focused on our 12 redistricting targets and Kansas is one of those,” said Austin Chambers, president of the organization.
“We’ve got to make sure that we maintain the super majorities in the Legislature to make sure the Republicans are able to draw maps despite having a Democratic governor,” Chambers said.
“We’re going to be all in and do everything we can in Kansas to make sure we maintain the super majorities in the Legislature,” he said.
Earlier in the year, national Democrats announced plans to spend $50 million to flip state legislative seats across the country in advance of redistricting.
Democrats don’t need many votes to break supermajorities in either chamber in the Kansas Legislature.
In the House, Democrats need just one member to snap the Republican supermajority of 84 votes. They need just three in the Senate.
Ben Meers, executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party, said he doesn’t think the Trump message will play in Kansas.
“We saw in 2018 that we can win statewide,” Meers said. “I think, we’re going to take that momentum into 2020. We know Democrats are charged up.”
He said both parties are going to concentrate their efforts where they think they can gain ground in the statehouse.
“It makes sense what they’re doing,” Meers said. “We know hardworking Kansans are going to show up in November.”
He said he expects Medicaid expansion to play large this fall.
“Undoubtedly, Kansas voters were really disappointed that the Legislature couldn’t get it through,” Meers said. “It’s at the top of the list. It’s something we’ll definitely focus on.”
Mail ballot applications soar
The Kansas secretary of state’s office continues to see requests for mail ballots for this summer’s primary election continue to pour in as the state and the country face the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
The secretary of state’s office reports having received 57,687 advance voting application requests for mail ballots for the Aug. 4 primary, which is already more than what was requested for the 2018 primary election.
The number has more than doubled since May 10, when the state had processed 24,897 mail ballot requests and more than quadrupled the 12,809 applications that had been requested as of April 30.
For comparative purposes, there were 54,127 mail ballots requested in 2016 for the primary and 51,455 were requested in 2018.
Many of the requests this year were coming from Trego County, where 24.6% of all registered voters requested a mail ballot.
Republic was second at 23.1%, followed by Sheridan and Stafford counties at 19.7%, Edwards at 19.4%, Clark at 16.6%, Cowley at 15.7%, Ness at 14.4%, Washington at 14.2%, Morris at 13.7%, Lyon at 12.3%, Butler at 11.8%, Doniphan at 11.0%, Decatur at 10.6% and Ellsworth at 10.4%.
The top counties with the most number of requests were Johnson (8,425), Douglas (8,066), Sedgwick (7,332), Butler (5,080), Leavenworth (4,860), Cowley (3,043), Lyon (2,427), Harvey (1,720), Wyandotte (1,421) and Montgomery (1,149).
Democratic convention delegates
The Kansas Democratic Party has elected its district-level delegates to the national party’s convention this summer in Milwaukee.
The election was done online and the results announced late Saturday night.
Here are the district-level delegates and the candidates they represented. Here is a link to the full balloting.
1st Congressional District: Laura White (Former Vice President Joe Biden), Jeremy Dorsey (Biden), Joanna Schwartz (Biden), Alejandro Rangel-Lopez (Biden), Christopher Renner (Sen. Bernie Sanders).
2nd Congressional District: Barbara Ballard (Biden); Carole Cadue-Blackwood (Biden), Susan Stover (Biden), Terry Crowder (Biden), Benjamin Cohen (Biden), Elise Fast (Sanders), Edward Rosson (Sanders).
3rd Congressional District: Alyce Edwards (Biden), Barry Grissom (Biden), Brandon Woodard (Biden), Anne Pritchett (Biden), LyLena Estabine (Biden), Jacob Moyer (Biden), Brendan Dean Davison (Sanders), Avneet Sidhu (Sanders).
4th Congressional District: Pat Lehman (Biden), Frances Jackson (Biden), Randall Rathbun (Biden), Justin Shore (Biden), Mackenzie Borland (Sanders), Diego Estevan Chavez (Sanders).
Churches and coronavirus
Kansas has just been through a legal storm pitting religious freedom against the state’s power to address public health emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic.
But over the weekend, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reject a request from churches to block limits on the number of people who could attend religious services in an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Of course, Kansas just went through a similar legal battle over limiting the size of religious gatherings, which ended when Gov. Laura Kelly eased her statewide restrictions on mass gatherings.
Here’s coverage of the Supreme Court case from Fox News, CNN, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press. Here’s some nifty insider coverage from Scotusblog and the opinion for your reading pleasure.
Pompeo travel investigation
The U.S. State Department last week revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not abused his position when he took four trips back to Kansas at a time when he was considering a run for the U.S. Senate.
The department released a letter Thursday from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel clearing Pompeo of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from being involved in political activities when carrying out their official duties.
The department also released a letter from Pompeo accusing Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez — who asked for the investigation — of “hackery.” Here’s the coverage from Reuters, Politico, The Hill and The Kansas City Star.
Norman & Kelly
Kansas Health Secretary Lee Norman was in somewhat of an unusual position last week when he acknowledged that he wished Gov. Laura Kelly — his boss — had not lifted statewide restrictions on movement and mass gatherings as the state battled for control of the spread of the coronavirus. Here’s coverage from The Associated Press.
Lindstrom’s jersey raffle
U.S. Senate candidate David Lindstrom may have crossed the line when he raffled away an autographed jersey of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The state Revenue Department says only charities can conduct raffles, not political campaigns. It’s a position that’s echoed by the state’s Racing and Gaming Commission.
What’s in a name?
The titillating story of the week came from news reports about Congressman Roger Marshall’s request to put the nickname “Doc” on the ballot.
The congressman’s campaign lawyer said it’s an affectionate name that Marshall’s friends and family called him for years and, of course, Marshall is an obstetrician.
The secretary of state’s office has denied the request, and the congressman is now appealing the decision to the state Objections Board.
State law generally prohibits candidates from using prefixes or suffixes next to their name unless they’re needed to more clearly differentiate the candidates from each another.
Two years ago, Secretary of State Kris Kobach allowed Congressman Ron Estes to use his title — Rep. — on the ballot when challenger Ron M. Estes filed to run for Congress in the Republican primary.
Middle names have been allowed if it was a modified first name, such as state Rep. Russell “Russ” Jennings, officials said. The law is silent about nicknames, however.
In 2018, Kobach’s team allowed Brian “BAM” McClendon and Vic “T-Bone” Miller to be on the ballot. It also allowed “Down River” Dan Brennan.
The Objections Board will meet this Friday, June 5, at 2 p.m.
Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday appointed Andrew Stein to fill the term of retiring Chief Judge Leigh Hood in the 16th Judicial District.
Stein is an attorney and owner at the Doll Law Firm, where he counsels clients in estate planning, bankruptcy, civil litigation and criminal defense cases.
Stein also serves as a municipal court judge in Dodge City. He also has worked as a city attorney for some small Kansas towns including Ensign, Montezuma, Spearville, Minneola, and Bucklin.
He graduated from the University of Kansas in 2010 and earned his law degree from KU in 2013.
District judges in Ford County are elected and serve four-year terms. When a judge retires in the middle of a term, the governor appoints a new judge to complete the term.
The position to which Stein is being appointed will be on the ballot in 2020.
The 16th Judicial District includes the counties of Clark, Comanche, Ford, Gray, Kiowa and Meade.
Watkins snags Right to Life endorsement
The National Right to Life Committee last week endorsed Republican Congressman Steve Watkins in the 2nd District Congressional race where he faces primary opposition against, Treasurer Jake LaTurner, who also is a staunch opponent of abortion.
“This endorsement reflects your commitment to strengthening a culture of life throughout the nation and in the U.S. House,” said the letter from National Right to Life’s president, executive director, legislative director and political director.
“We look forward to continuing our important work with you to protect the most vulnerable members of the human family – unborn children and medically
dependent or disabled persons, whose lives are threatened by abortion or euthanasia.”
Watkins & LaTurner tangle in 2nd District
Republican Treasurer Jake LaTurner criticized Republican Congressman Steve Watkins for taking political contributions from donors that “openly support liberals, pro-abortion groups, and anti-Trump candidates.”
“Kansas does not need liberals from the swamp buying our elections,” LaTurner said.
“A Republican congressman from Kansas has taken donations from many people who have literally given millions of dollars to the Democratic Party, liberal activist groups, anti-Trump coalitions and liberal candidates who are working against our cause every single day.
Congressman Watkins should immediately return the money or come clean with the people of Kansas and admit that he isn’t really a conservative,” said LaTurner.
Watkins in turn criticized LaTurner for using money in his congressional race that he raised when running for the U.S. Senate. Here’s the exchange from the Topeka newspaper.
New videos/campaign commercials
Here’s the latest roundup of campaign commercials/videos that came across our desk last week for your perusal.
Barbara Bollier
Bob Hamilton and China ad
Hamilton pro-life
Bob Hamilton – More China
Lindstrom
Here and there
The Kansas Department of Commerce said farewell last week to Deputy Secretary Patty Clark, who is retiring after more than 20 years.
The agency called Clark “a shining example of leadership in the public sector.”
“Patty, thank you for your service to Kansas,” the agency remarked on Twitter. “We know that even in retirement, you will continue to find ways to contribute to the betterment of our state. Enjoy your much-deserved retirement.”
Commerce Secretary David Toland offered his words of congratulations in a tweet.
“She’s served @KansasCommerce under three different governors in total, and to say that Patty has been an important figure for KDC would be a huge understatement. In my time, she’s been absolutely instrumental to our rebuilding,” he tweeted.
Clark reflected on her time with the state in this Q&A segment posted on the Commerce Department’s website.
She had this to say about economic development.
“We all need to broaden our definition of what constitutes economic development. It is not just incentive programs and tax breaks,” she said.
“Economic development includes investment in public education, parks and recreation, arts and culture, attractive and affordable housing, and infrastructure improvements, including investment in broadband.”
***
John Hess, a fiscal analyst with the Legislative Research Department, announced on Twitter that he’s leaving the agency to go to work with the Kansas Department of Education. Hess had been with Legislative Research the last 3 1/2 years, where he had been assigned to education, labor and other topics.
“The time I’ve spent working at KLRD for the last 3.5 years has been immensely rewarding and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my work in K-12 finance,” he tweeted.
