Two Democrats go after Republican-held Senate seat in mid-Johnson County

More often than not, Johnson County residents send Republicans to represent them in Topeka, making a Democratic primary another step in an uphill climb for candidates.

That hasn’t stopped two Democrats from trying to claim Senate District 21, covering parts of Overland Park, Lenexa, Shawnee and Olathe. The two men, Michael Czerniewski and Logan Heley, will face off on August 2. The winner of the primary will then face either incumbent Sen. Greg Smith or his challenger, Dinah Sykes, in November. The district includes parts of Lenexa, Olathe, Overland Park and Shawnee.

The state of the Kansas economy spurred Czerniewski to run for the seat. Czerniewski said he opposed the 2012 tax cuts that the legislature passed at Gov. Sam Brownback’s emphatic urging. He said he’s been involved in the Democratic party for more than a decade and that he’d like to see the income tax cuts fully repealed, and lower sales and property taxes.

“Topeka’s having trouble just keeping their books balanced because of those income tax cuts and the shift of tax burden from those who can pay to it towards those who cannot,” Czerniewski said.

Another one of his campaign goals is to “stop fighting health care reform in Kansas,” and in an interview last month, he advocated for the state legalizing medicinal marijuana. He said he wasn’t hopeful that his positions would gain traction in Topeka if he were to be elected during the current administration.

“Probably not the first couple years,” he said about accomplishing his goals. “I’d just mostly be a thorn in Brownback’s side.”

Although he noted that education funding has loomed large this campaign season, the economy has been Czerniewski’s main focus.

“Education is important, but we as a party ran on education in 2014 and it got us creamed,” he said. “So I think we need to focus on the real issue and that is the economy.”

About a year ago, Heley had just graduated from college. The 23-year-old’s frustration with the direction of the state has been a focus of his campaign, he said. He compared Brownback’s economic policies to “1980s, trickle-down, voodoo economics,” and called them a failed experiment.

“We’ve got to think big and not small,” Heley said. “This is about the future of Kansas.”

Heley was critical of the legislature’s June special session on education funding that managed to satisfy the state Supreme Court’s equity order just days before a June 30 deadline that could have closed schools. And even though the equity portion of the court’s order was satisfied by the legislation, the adequacy portion, the larger part of the case, is still to come this fall. The legislature has wasted time and tax dollars, Heley said, and state lawmakers should already have solved both problems.

“We don’t need to wait for the court to rule on that,” he said. “We know schools are underfunded in Kansas.”

Along with investing in education, Heley said he’d like to focus on making Kansas a hub for renewable energy. The state also has the potential to grow its technology industry and become the heartland’s answer to Silicon Valley, he said. But to Heley, those changes are unlikely to happen if voters continue to embrace the economic policy that has become a hallmark of Brownback’s time as governor.

“It’s not going to be a one-year fix,” Heley said. “The analogy I like to use is that we’re buying a fixer-upper house. There’s a lot that needs to be done on the house to fix it just so we can live it again, but we have a lot of big dreams for it.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 10:32 AM with the headline "Two Democrats go after Republican-held Senate seat in mid-Johnson County."