The Star’s endorsement for Kansas House District 35 representing Wyandotte County | Opinion

In the race to represent Kansas House District 35, which is northeastern KCK, there are four Democrats and three good candidates, the best of whom is Wanda Brownlee Paige, a current school board member who taught social studies in Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools for more than 30 years.

She’ll be a passionate advocate for her district, and wants to change the fact that “our kids are leaving here,” in part because developers and politicians “built up Western Wyandotte County and it didn’t trickle down” as promised. It never does, and “not enough people are speaking up” for her community, she told the editorial board. That’s not going to be a problem for Paige.

She wants to see public schools strengthened and to impose some regulations on home schools. Paige says she’ll fight for both tax relief and for an earner’s tax, because “if you make money here, then you should pay something back,” even if you live elsewhere.

The first-term Democratic incumbent, state Rep. Marvin Robinson II, wasn’t well enough to meet with the editorial board. A Navy veteran who worked for decades to develop the Quindaro Townsite, which was a stop along the Underground Railroad, he clearly cares about his community.

But for whatever reason, Robinson has often gone against their interests as a lawmaker, particularly in voting to make it harder to get food assistance and to once again block the Medicaid expansion that’s desperately needed in a district where about 19% of families live below the federal poverty line and 1 in 5 adults has no health insurance.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation, founded by Wichita billionaires Charles and David Koch, gave Robinson an award. But Democrats accused him of voting with Republicans in return for some funding to develop the Quindaro Ruins, which Gov. Laura Kelly then vetoed.

“Anything we could do differently than what is being done and has been done seems to be the right course of action,” Robinson told The Star. Only, he consistently voted to stay on the same GOP track that’s harmed his constituents, and continues to do so. Robinson succeeded his cousin, state Rep. Broderick Henderson, in office after Henderson had served for 27 years.

Another of Robinson’s challengers, Kimberly DeWitt, a business consultant who ran for the seat in 2016, says Wyandotte County is all too accepting of nepotism, with the result that when you do finally leave elected office, “you pass it to your cousin.”

DeWitt will study law at Washburn University in the fall, not so she can take the bar but “to understand contracts in Tanzania,” as she hopes to expand her consulting business internationally.

She’s an impressive person, and says she’s running to “take control and take ownership” of what’s going on in the community where she’s lived all of her life because “I choose to be here.”

What she calls her “ease the pain initiative” would focus on health care, taxes, infrastructure and economic development. She also wants to take on her own party, though not in the way that Robinson has: “I love my Democratic Party, but I believe they’ve been negligent in our district.” And she’s right about that.

Another impressive contender is Michelle Watley, founder of Shirley’s Kitchen Cabinet, an advocacy and education nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of Black women. She is probably best known for lobbying for the CROWN Act, intended to end workplace racial discrimination that’s based on hairstyle but goes well beyond that. Watley is a member of The Star’s Black Community Advisory Board.

She lived in the Juniper Gardens public housing project for a time as a child, and says she has outworked everyone else in the race, knocking on 4,000 doors in the heat and the rain. Unlike other candidates, she says, she would if elected give her constituents her undivided attention. But she only moved back to the district “very recently,” as in “this year.”

It’s Wanda Brownlee Paige who we believe would best represent the community where she’s lived for 67 years. She has spent those years helping anyone she knew who needed it, and that’s a lot of people. She’d serve her neighbors well in Topeka, too.

This story was originally published July 30, 2024 at 10:26 AM.