Kansas Republican Party sanctions activists who helped Dennis Pyle run for governor
The Kansas Republican Party is cracking down on members that supported conservative state Sen. Dennis Pyle in his independent run for governor, but legislative leaders have not said they’ll do the same for sitting lawmakers.
This week the state party’s loyalty committee sent sanctions to 40 party activists informing them they will be removed from any party committees they were on and they will lose voting privileges on party business, including the party platform, because they had signed the petition to put Pyle on the ballot.
The move came days after the election as Republicans largely pointed the finger at Pyle for Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s narrow loss to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Pyle ran to Schmidt’s right and sought to paint him as Kelly’s ideological equal.
According to the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office, Pyle received 20,057 votes. Kelly won by 20,886 votes as of Wednesday’s count.
Pyle, who lives in Hiawatha in northeast Kansas, remains in the Kansas Senate and said last week he does not plan to return to the Republican Party.
Mike Kuckelman, the chair of the Kansas Republican Party, said efforts to aid Pyle violated the party’s bylaws. The first round of sanctions, Kuckelman said, went to people who directly signed Pyle’s petition. But he said a second round could go to individuals who helped campaign for Pyle in other ways.
“These people ought to all be apologizing,” Kuckelman said Tuesday, referencing lost votes and the effort spent by the party to counter Pyle. “You have given Republicans four more years of Laura Kelly and that didn’t have to happen but for their wrongful conduct.”
Kuckelman said Thursday he had temporarily suspended the sanctions as the party works through a deluge of appeals from members who said they did not sign Pyle’s petition or did not intentionally sign the petition.
The bylaws requiring party loyalty date back to 2007 when Kris Kobach chaired the party. Kobach was elected Kansas attorney general last week. Individuals who sit on official party committees and hold leadership roles in the party must adhere to the party’s bylaws.
The recent sanctions prompted frustration among some in the Legislature. In a letter posted to Facebook, state Sens. Mark Steffen and Alicia Straub and State Reps. Randy Garber, Trevor Jacobs and Tatum Lee, lambasted Republican leadership. Garber served as Pyle’s treasurer in his run for governor.
“Attempting to cancel the very best members of our party using a loyalty oath that no one has seen, been given, or signed is an abysmal attempt to climb out of a hole while continuing to dig furiously,” the letter said.
It referred to the party as a “shill for big corporations” and called for a return to the party’s “core values.”
“Kuckelman and the Republican establishment, we are done with you,” they said.
Meanwhile, Mike Brown, a former Johnson County commissioner who ran a failed primary bid for Kansas secretary of state, has floated running for party chair next year.
When Pyle returns for the 2023 session of the Kansas Legislature, he will no longer have committee assignments because he left the Republican caucus. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, said he has not yet made determinations about whether to punish members of the Republican caucus who helped the independent.
“We haven’t made any decisions on that,” Masterson said. “Obviously we have to look at our chairmanships and committee assignments and all that.”
In the Kansas House, Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who is likely to be the next speaker, said he didn’t plan to take action against Garber over his role on Pyle’s campaign.
“You’ve got to fill the committee assignments up and with the numbers if you don’t have everybody in a committee you’re going to have somebody having to take up the slack,” Hawkins said. “I’m not sure that’s a really good method to take care of something like that.”
This story was updated to reflect the temporarily suspension of the party’s sanctions.
This story was originally published November 17, 2022 at 6:30 AM.
