Supermajorities don’t help Kansans. Johnson County voters could end one | Opinion

It’s because Republicans have veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers in Kansas that there’s been no Medicaid expansion, which is still desperately needed. That’s also why there’s so little compromise in Topeka, and constant attempts to undermine public education.

Flipping even two seats in the state House or three in the Senate would change that. How could that happen?

Take a look at a couple of the state’s most extreme incumbents: state Sen. Mike Thompson, the former TV meteorologist known for spreading disinformation about climate change, COVID-19 and election integrity, and state Sen. Kellie Warren, an extremist running as a moderate.

One of Warren’s ads actually suggests that she works with Gov. Laura Kelly, which is only true in the sense that they both have offices in the same building.

“I know education is an investment in the future of Kansas,” Warren says in the ad. “That’s why I worked with Gov. Kelly to end the school finance lawsuits. … As your senator and a mom, I’ll keep investing in our teachers, our students and our future.”

Gov. Kelly is popular in Johnson County, but this ad is misleading.

Warren not only did nothing in particular to end the lawsuits over underfunded schools, but she has repeatedly supported various versions of the voucher plans that would effectively take money away from public schools and make it harder for Kansas to meet its constitutionally required levels of funding.

A mailer in support of Warren, a former real estate attorney from Leawood, says hers is “a life centered on public education.” But Stand Up Blue Valley and Education First Shawnee Mission, all-volunteer parent organizations in Warren’s district, have both endorsed her opponent in Senate District 11, attorney Karen Thurlow.

“People before politics,” Warren’s campaign website says, suggesting that she’s not very partisan, though according to KanFocus, she votes with her party’s leadership 98.42% of the time.

In another of her ads, Warren says she’s been “working with both parties to get results, because that’s how we do things here.” No, she hasn’t, and no, it hasn’t been, unfortunately.

Medicaid expansion, flat tax, abortion

Here are just a few of the extreme positions that both Warren and Thompson have taken:

This year, both opposed Medicaid expansion and supported flat tax proposals that favor top earners.

They have also supported attempts to limit or even do away with ballot drop boxes.

Last year, speaking in favor of a bill that would have also curtailed mail-in voting in the state, Thompson said voting was a privilege, not a right.

In 2022, both Thompson and Warren voted to lower the age for conceal and carry from 21 to 18.

During Warren’s unsuccessful 2022 run for attorney general, she said her top priority if elected would be “to restore every single one of the pro-life laws struck down under the Hodes decision.” That’s the 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision that said the state constitution does protect the right to an abortion.

Asked then whether she would seek the means to prosecute any future criminal restrictions on abortion, she said this: “We have laws for a reason — to ensure they are followed. Allowing individuals to avoid prosecution for their crimes is inexcusable.” She also said, “I would work to ensure that each of our existing laws related to abortion is prosecuted.”

What she says now is that the voters have spoken — they overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have made an abortion ban possible — and that she does “support exceptions to accommodate heartbreaking and difficult situations such as rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother.” Thurlow, her opponent, is running in part to protect reproductive rights.

After Kansas voters rejected the amendment that would have made an abortion ban by state lawmakers possible, Thompson wrote on his public Facebook page that he hoped that happened only because voters misunderstood the ballot language: “I hope that they were all mislead (sic) by these things, because the other alternatives are disturbing and unthinkable.”

“One alternative is that they are okay with a fully formed infant, capable of feeling pain, and moments from birth, being torn apart limb by limb, extracted from the womb in chunks and allowed to bleed to death on the abortion table. That is called dismemberment abortion and it is now totally unregulated here.”

“Another alternative is that they are fine with Kansas being the equivalent of New York, California, and Illinois…states so insane that people are leaving in droves due to horrible decisions like this one. … Another alternative is that they don’t mind Kansas becoming an even bigger destination site for abortion tourism. That means your tax dollars will increasingly be spent on paying for uninsured, out of state women who show up at our hospital ERs with complications from an abortion performed here.”

Abortion did not, as Thompson said, become “totally unregulated” in Kansas after the vote in 2022. Except in extreme circumstances, the procedure is only legal in the state until the 20th week after fertilization, which is not “moments from birth.”

In Senate District 10, Democrat Andrew Mall, a former president of the Kansas Association of Realtors, is running against Thompson. Both the incumbent and his challenger live in Shawnee.