Olathe candidate’s payments to consultant raise red flags, ex-lawmakers say
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Olson paid consultant Michael Welton about $260,000 over two decades.
- Welton received state and campaign pay while living in Olson-owned rental.
- Ethics experts cite conflict and optics concerns; no clear law violation.
Over his 20 years representing Johnson County in the Kansas Legislature, Rob Olson paid an Olathe man more than a quarter of a million dollars out of his campaign account for consulting work and other services, campaign finance records show.
For over a decade, the consultant, Michael Welton, was also paid by the state of Kansas to work as Olson’s office assistant and as an assistant on committees that the Republican senator chaired during legislative sessions.
During Olson’s last four years in Topeka, Welton continued receiving regular payments from the lawmaker after a company Olson owns purchased the Olathe rental property where Welton and his wife live.
The ethics of Olson’s past financial dealings — and the blurred lines between his elected office and campaign team — matter now because he’s running for an at-large seat on the Olathe City Council.
Campaign finance experts told The Star that Olson’s arrangement with Welton does not violate any laws. But former state lawmakers of both parties said it raises ethical red flags about potential conflicts of interest.
In Kansas, it is illegal for campaign money to be diverted to the candidate for personal use. It’s also illegal for state employees to use state property or their time on the job for campaign purposes, although there is an exception for incumbent officials and their personal staff.
In a phone interview, Olson said he doesn’t believe there’s anything problematic about his $260,000 in payments to Welton, which average out to $13,000 a year.
“He did a lot of constituent work over the years for the campaign, doing voter information, building surveys. It’s all in the disclosures that I filed,” Olson said, adding that Welton only worked “after hours” on his campaign and personal matters during his time as a state employee.
He said he relied on Welton to manage databases, put together surveys and handle other outreach to constituents.
“I used him pretty hard because we liked to keep in contact with our constituents,” Olson said. “We had one of the best constituent operations in Topeka, I did, and a lot of it is us just trying to get information back to people about what we were doing.”
Property records show that Olson’s company, RENT-ME LLC, has owned the duplex where Welton lives in the 1400 block of East 123rd Street since April 2020.
Olson said he wasn’t using his dual positions as Welton’s boss and landlord to enrich himself.
“I haven’t owned that property that long, but everything’s on the up-and-up,” Olson said.
Welton did not respond to repeated phone calls, text and Facebook messages or a knock on his door.
Olathe City Council race
Olson, who served as a member of the House from 2005 to 2010 and the Senate from 2011 to 2024, is now running for a seat on the City Council that Kevin Gilmore chose not to seek re-election to. Because it’s an at-large position, voters across Olathe will have a chance to weigh in.
This isn’t Olson’s first time running for municipal office. Throughout his time in the Legislature, he served as a member of the WaterOne utility board before being unseated in 2019.
Olson’s opponent is Jeff Creighton, a recently retired business manager for an Olathe insurance agency. Creighton is a current member of the Olathe Planning Commission with past volunteer experience on the Olathe Citizens Police Advisory Council and the Olathe Police Foundation.
Creighton said he doesn’t know Olson or his campaign finance history well enough to comment on his past use of donor funds.
“My personality and my faith and just my general demeanor is, I don’t like to wade in on things about people that I don’t know about,” said Creighton, who is also a registered Republican running for the nonpartisan local office.
Olson blamed political enemies from his days in the Legislature for drawing attention to Welton’s years of work for him, adding that the consultant “worked 10 times the hours he was paid.”
“This is the problem with America right here,” Olson said. “Good people who work hard for the people just get picked on.”
While in office, Olson tried unsuccessfully to sell GOP leadership on the idea of legalizing medical marijuana. In 2023, after Olson broke with Republicans to sustain Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto on income tax cuts that he said were too beneficial to the rich, Senate President Ty Masterson stripped him of his position as chair of the utilities committee.
Former lawmakers raise concerns
Jim Barnett, a former Republican Kansas state senator from 2001 to 2010, said Welton’s living arrangement raises questions about potential impropriety — whether or not campaign funds were paid back to Olson in the form of rent.
“I think there’s a lack of clarity as to whether that could be payback under the table as opposed to something that is clearly disclosed, so I think there’s potential for an ethical issue there,” Barnett said.
He said Welton moonlighting on Olson’s campaign while being paid as a state employee for official business is just as concerning to him.
“I can’t tell you how commonly that is done now in the Kansas Legislature. But it is concerning that there would be undue influence on the committee structure, committee agenda, and the outcome of bills, so that actually concerns me as much as your rent issue,” Barnett said.
Tom Day, director of Kansas Legislative Administrative Services, said office assistants and committee assistants are considered temporary state employees and are only paid during the months that the Legislature is in session. Welton’s final pay rate during the 2024 session was $16 an hour, Day said.
Steve Morris, another former Republican lawmaker who served as Senate president from 2005 to 2013, said he sees Welton’s simultaneous campaign and legislative work as a potential conflict of interest.
“I was in the Senate for 20 years and I don’t remember that ever happening,” Morris said.
Certain transactions listed in Olson’s disclosures suggest Welton was receiving compensation for work related to the former lawmaker’s legislative duties in addition to campaign services.
On Dec. 6, 2010, Olson paid Welton $1,000. In the column of the report describing the transaction, Olson wrote “working on bills + sex offender bill.”
On Nov. 2, 2018, Welton received $2,000 for what appears to be a mix of campaign and legislative help — “research Senate bill, campaign work, consulting, data management & survey.”
On other occasions, Welton was paid $750 for gas and $150 for “office work on email.” His largest payment was also the final one he received, on Jan. 3, 2024 — $8,300 for “consulting - campaign work, news letter, survey, for office, press letter.”
Anthony Hensley, who served 24 years as the Democratic minority leader in the Kansas Senate before retiring in 2021, said he was aware of Welton’s dual roles supporting Olson.
“I found that questionable,” Hensley said. “I don’t know that it’s anything that’s illegal, but it’s certainly questionable in terms of its appropriateness. Because he’s being paid both by Olson’s campaign and the state of Kansas, and was probably earning a pretty good living as a result of that.”
Hensley was surprised to learn that Welton’s consulting gig overlapped with his time living in a rental property owned by Olson’s company.
“That very well could be illegal,” Hensley said. “You pay the guy to be a consultant and then he pays you back rent. Yeah, that does not pass the smell test at all.”
Campaign finance expert opinions
Wade Wiebe, executive director of the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the state’s campaign finance laws, refused to weigh in on the legality or ethics of a lawmaker’s campaign worker also being their tenant.
“I don’t make it a habit to comment on hypothetical situations,” Wiebe wrote in an email. He said he also cannot comment on specific situations involving current or former officials.
Tom Keating, a Democratic campaign finance consultant based out of Overland Park, said nothing about Olson’s arrangement with Welton strikes him as particularly problematic.
“Unless there’s something really untoward about this property being owned by the candidate and the consultant living there, I don’t see it,” Keating said.
He said he’s glad Welton didn’t get paid with taxpayer money for his work on Olson’s re-election campaigns.
“I think that having the campaign pay for campaign work is actually good ethical practice because you’re paying for your political stuff out of your campaign account rather than having somebody on the public side doing it,” Keating said.
Eric Petry, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government Program, said state and federal campaign finance laws give candidates broad leeway to spend their money as they see fit.
“It’s unfortunately becoming more and more common for elected officials to sort of blur the lines or push the lines of the personal use prohibitions,” Petry said.
The nearly $50,000 that Welton received while living at Olson’s rental property is notable, he said. But proving any impropriety would be difficult.
“It’s so fact-dependent, and you would really have to dig into the payment flows to really know,” Petry said.
“Whether or not there’s something going on here that is violative of the law, the optics itself are harmful and can undermine the public’s faith in the government and the systems that are supposed to be serving them,” he said.
Matt Harris, a political science professor at Park University, said he believes voters deserve an opportunity to decide for themselves whether Olson’s relationship with his longtime political consultant has been appropriate.
“You can see the numbers, you can see the arrangement, and you can, you know — there are things that maybe aren’t necessarily illegal, but voters can sort of look at the facts, look at the pattern and kind of draw their own conclusions,” Harris said.
“Because we don’t necessarily just want people who are following the letter of the law. That’s not the only thing voters look at. There’s also sort of the spirit of ethics…So I think it’s just something that’s worth voters having those facts and taking a look at before the election.”
The Star’s Kacen Bayless and Taylor O’Connor contributed reporting.
This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 10:36 AM.
