From TV weather to the culture war: The tight race for re-election in JoCo swing district
Mike Thompson spent 30 years as a trusted on-air meteorologist in the Kansas City metro area. But his five years on the job as a Kansas state senator have made the Shawnee Republican a decidedly more polarizing figure than he was in his TV days.
Thompson is running for reelection in one of the hotly contested Johnson County swing districts that could determine whether or not Republicans preserve their ability to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto on a party-line vote. His opponent is Shawnee realtor Andrew Mall.
The race to represent Senate District 10, which includes most of Shawnee, parts of Lenexa, Olathe, Lake Quivira and Bonner Springs, will test whether Johnson County voters feel one of the state’s leading social conservatives still represents their values.
In 2020, when Thompson defeated Democrat Lindsey Constance by less than 4 percentage points, Johnson County favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump for president 53% to 45%.
When Thompson championed a proposal in 2022 that would have given state lawmakers the power to restrict or ban abortion, 69% of Johnson County voters rejected it.
“He can be very charming but he is incredibly extreme. He is far more extreme than people give him credit for,” former Democratic Shawnee City Council member Lisa Larson-Bunnell said of Thompson. “He has spent a lot of time bashing our local schools, saying incorrect, bad information about them out in the public about performance standards.”
In his first full term, Thompson hand-picked election fraud conspiracy theorists to address lawmakers, pushed for new restrictions on renewable energy developments that would have made it harder for property owners to participate in projects, and introduced a bill that would have made it a crime to perform in drag in front of children.
“He’s very pro-family traditional values,” said Megan Warner, a commercial real estate appraiser from Shawnee who’s supporting Thompson. “He will work to protect my daughters from competing in sports against biological males, so I really like that.”
Thompson also drafted a bill vetoed by Kelly that would have banned gender-affirming care for Kansas teens and adults between the ages of 18 and 21.
The affable 67-year-old describes himself as an “independent voice” in the Legislature. Some of his supporters like that he’s willing to challenge experts on issues like the reality of man-made climate change — Thompson disputes that an excess of carbon dioxide is bad for the environment — and other topics of broad scientific consensus, including the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and masking.
“I do my own research. I always have,” said Thompson, who has no background in medicine or public health.
He studied meteorology while serving in the U.S. Navy, but his climate denialism is in direct opposition to the official position of the American Meteorological Society and the vast majority of climate scientists.
“It’s just truly irresponsible for somebody who clearly has a science background to misrepresent the science in that way,” said Keith Seitter, chief policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society.
Education
Thompson’s opponent, Mall, said he’s running because he senses a disconnect between his neighbors and their state senator.
“He’s done everything he can well he’s been in office to take away rights, whether it be women’s reproductive rights or voting rights,” said Mall, 47. “It just seems like he’s more focused on restricting us than protecting us.”
Mall also pushes back against Thompson’s assertion that the Legislature is now fully funding public schools because the Kansas Supreme Court relinquished oversight of the school finance plan earlier this year.
As a realtor, Mall said the number one thing he hears from families considering putting down roots in Johnson County is their desire for strong public schools. According to the U.S. News & World Report, Johnson County has seven of the top eight high schools in terms of college readiness, test scores, curriculum breadth and graduation rate.
“He can claim he fully funded public education, but the problem is they always leave a gap in special education. And it’s a shell game,” Mall said. “What happens is, those districts have to fill that gap on the special education side. And so where do they pull it? From the general education side.”
He said Thompson has “consistently chipped away at the strength of our public schools” and inched Kansas closer to a school choice voucher system.
At a candidate forum hosted by The Johnson County Post earlier this month, Thompson drew laughter from the audience when he explained that private schools serve as safe havens for parents who want to “keep their kids out of some of the woke agendas at these public schools.”
Last session, Thompson co-sponsored a bill that would have established an income tax credit for parents who choose to homeschool their children or send them to private or parochial schools. But he said after speaking with private school parents and principals, he’s hesitant to revisit that idea.
“If you attach public funds, eventually the requirements will follow into these private schools, and so you’re going to change the nature of the private schools — including homeschools,” said Thompson, whose own school-age grandchildren and great-grandchildren attend out-of-state schools.
Tax cuts and the economy
The Republican incumbent says when he knocks on doors across his district, what residents say they want most are lower property taxes and relief from inflation.
“This is back to the old Clinton era. It’s the economy, stupid,” Thompson said. “And anybody ignoring that is ignoring the pain that people are going through.”
At the candidate forum, Thompson ripped Gov. Kelly for vetoing Republicans’ efforts to institute a flat income tax on Kansans across all income brackets. He said seeing the flat tax reform through will be one of his top priorities if voters send him back to Topeka.
“In Johnson County, we’re losing a lot of the high-end earners because they had the wherewithal to move out and get away from this high-tax structure and move to another state that’s more friendly to them — places like Tennessee or Texas or Florida,” Thompson said at the candidate forum.
He said the fiscal notes for tax bills never include one key piece of information.
“We always look at how much is it going to cost the government to do this tax, OK. We never look at the economic benefits of allowing people to keep more of their own money,” Thompson said. “They can’t calculate that. The more they do that, the more it expands the economy.”
Mall says Thompson’s favored tax proposal is unfair to working-class Kansans and reminiscent of the Brownback-era tax cuts that wreaked havoc on the state’s budget and were ultimately repealed by bipartisan supermajorities in the House and Senate.
“Regardless of him trying to currently rewrite history, he has been anti-growth,” Mall said, pointing to Thompson’s vote against the Panasonic battery plant in De Soto, the largest economic development project in state history.
Thompson said he voted against the Panasonic megaproject in part because he doesn’t believe electric vehicles are popular enough to justify the battery plant. He’s also skeptical of the state commerce department’s economic incentive programs in general, arguing that they pick winners and losers and fail to pay for themselves.
MaKenzi Smith, an attorney based in Olathe, said the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that Thompson champions does nothing but discourage companies from relocating to Kansas.
“When we put this type of legislation in place, we are telling those companies you are not welcome here. Your policies are not welcome here. Your employees are not welcome here,” said Smith, a Republican.
What’s at stake?
The Senate District 10 race is one of 10 contests across Kansas that the national Democratic Party is targeting to dismantle Republican supermajorities in the Legislature.
Democrats are aiming to pick up at least two seats in the House and three in the Senate. Achieving either would eliminate Republicans’ veto-proof supermajorities and strengthen Kelly’s hand as she negotiates on key policy priorities including Medicaid expansion, which Mall supports and Thompson says would be “a very bad thing for the state.”
It will be up to an increasingly moderate Johnson County electorate to decide what they want in their next state senator.
Ben Terrill, a retired Shawnee resident who volunteered on Thompson’s campaign in 2020 and is doing so again this year, praised the former weather forecaster’s honesty and integrity.
“Mike is articulate without being abrasive. He is enthusiastic about what he’s working towards without being divisive,” Terrill said.
“What wins hearts and minds is, do I trust this person? Do I find grounds for agreement and do I want this person representing me? I like him. I trust him, and I think he’s furthering good things.”
Dawn Tubbesing, who identifies as a moderate Republican, voted against Thompson in 2020 after he began posting COVID-19 misinformation on social media. She plans to vote against him again next month.
“I think all voters want somebody who represents them and the wellbeing of their communities. And I don’t believe we’ve been getting that,” said Tubbesing, who owns a commercial real estate company with her husband in Shawnee and said Thompson spends too much time practicing “fear politics.”
“He does everything in his power to push his personal beliefs into bills that lead to government intrusion into our bedrooms, into our doctor’s offices and into our private property. That’s not Republican in any definition.”
