Republican state Rep. Adam Thomas has filed to run for the state Senate seat that Rob Olson plans to leave after next year.
Thomas, who is now in his third term representing Olathe in the Kansas House, is running for the Senate District 23 seat.
Olson doesn’t plan to seek a fourth term in the Kansas Senate, bringing an end to what will be a 20-year career in the Legislature.
Olson has been in the Kansas Senate since 2011 when he replaced Karin Brownlee, who was appointed state labor secretary by former Gov. Sam Brownback.
Thomas filed to run for the Senate after he was hit by a line drive in a softball game that left him with serious injuries to his eye and cheek bone in April.
Doctors were not able to save the sight in his right eye.
He’s been considering running for the Senate since earlier in the year, when Olson first announced he would not run again in 2024.
“I believe this is the right move, this is where I’ve been called to go,” Thomas said.
“This was just a setback in my personal life,” Thomas said of the softball accident. “It’s not going to impact anything other than I’m going to work even harder than before.
“Once you’re on the path you’re supposed to be on, there is no looking back,” he said.
It was not immediately certain what Democrat might file to run for the seat, although Stacey Knoell, executive director of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, has been mentioned as a possible candidate.
Knoell ran for the state Senate against Republican Beverly Gossage as a political newcomer in 2020 and finished with 48% of the vote. Knoell has not made any commitments regarding another race in 2024.
Thomas said redistricting helps him because it moved Spring Hill into Senate District 23. He currently represents Spring Hill as a House member.
“A lot of what I do directly impacts that community,” Thomas said. “They know me down there, and we’ve built up lots of relationships. I think that puts me at an advantage there.”
Thomas has chaired the House Education Committee and has been a supporter of legislation intended to foster school choice.
He backed one bill allowing Kansas schoolchildren to use state aid to attend private schools, a measure that public education advocates criticized for a lack of a clear cost and its potential for draining funding from public education.
Supporters said the bill let parents match their children with a learning environment that’s best suited for them. They said the legislation provided “educational freedom” for parents to choose the right educational path for their children.
He also supported another bill that would have provided grants for children who attended public and private schools.
The bill provided $1,000 grant awards to public school students and $5,000 to private school students. Students would have had to come from a family with an income of 250% of the federal poverty level or less.
Thomas was undeterred campaigning on the issue.
“I think it’s an issue we can win on. We’ve just got to get out there and explain it,” he said.
“I certainly have no problems getting out and talking to people and explaining my vote, and they don’t always agree with me and that’s OK.”
Thomas also supported the education budget providing the $6.3 billion for elementary and secondary education, but that included a provision that would have changed how school enrollment would be calculated to determine funding in the school finance formula.
The governor vetoed language in the bill that would have allowed school districts to calculate their enrollment based on the current year or the previous year, a measure that critics said would have hurt schools with declining enrollment.
However, Thomas noted that section of the bill would have benefited the Spring Hill school district and other districts with rapidly growing student populations.
Thomas said the Spring Hill district was pushing for using current-year enrollment to calculate funding, and he represented that issue in the Legislature.
“I didn’t look at it as a left-right issue,” Thomas said of the enrollment provision. “I looked at it as I represent that growing part of the state, this could benefit them.
“My duty as a representative is to represent my district,” he said.
“When you take off the blinders of left, right, conservative, liberal and go, ‘What’s good for the district,’ I’m happy to have that conversation with Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians in the district and say, ‘This is how I represented you,'” he said.
“I don’t think they’re going to be able to say I haven’t represented the district well.”
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly carried the Senate district with about 53% of the vote when she was reelected last year.
Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt received about 44% of the vote in the district, followed by independent state Sen. Dennis Pyle with about 2% and Libertarian candidate Seth Cordell with about 1%.
The Value Them Both abortion amendment lost in this district with about 64% of the vote.
About 36% of the voters here supported the amendment, which would have removed the right to an abortion from the state constitution.
In 2019, Thomas entered into a diversion agreement with Johnson County prosecutors that allowed an election perjury charge to be dropped.
The diversion agreement came about 10 months after Thomas was charged with election perjury after he filed documents to run for the Kansas House in 2018.
The case centered on where Thomas was living when he filed to run for the Kansas House in May 2018. Democrats contended that Thomas misrepresented an Olathe duplex as his address within the House district when he filed to run for the Legislature.
Thomas has been elected to office three times since that case was made.
He said if Democrats choose to attack him for the 2018 case, it means they’re not challenging his record.
He said if the issue surfaces, it confirms he’s done his job well as a lawmaker representing the district.
“If they’ve got to go back to a five-, six-year-old attack on me, that just means they can’t go after my record,” he said.
“I would welcome that if that’s where they want to go.”
