Did Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly get illicit haircut before speech? She reveals her stylist
I watched Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s ‘back-to-work’ speech on her Facebook page, so was also treated to the cavalcade of comments, a cleaned-up version of which went something like this:
“We need to get back to work, Komrade Kelly!”
“Hey no fair, you got your hair cut!”
“It is way too soon to open back up safely!”
“Holy double standards; you got your hair cut!”
Naturally, Republicans were delighted, I mean outraged, by the hypocrisy of our Democratic governor’s apparent violation of her own stay-at-home order.
Had she gone rogue like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was called out after she put out a PSA that said, “Getting your roots done is not essential,” and then got her own hair cut? (“I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously,” Lightfoot said when busted. “As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?” Of course they did.)
Or maybe this was one of those full-blown “hairgate” opportunities. You know, like the May 14, 1993, page one story about President Bill Clinton selfishly tying up air and ground traffic while getting a $200 haircut on a runway at LAX. (He did get a cut, and it was from Cristophe, but he did not tie up traffic — at all, as it turned out. Neither did he pay $200, but details, details.)
Then there was John Edwards’ high-dollar ‘do, expensed to his 2008 presidential campaign, which as we later learned was the least of his self-indulgences. What is it with Democrats and their hair?
No wonder Republicans thought they smelled peroxide and smiled.
State Rep. Cheryl Helmer put out this statement: “I am respectfully requesting the name and Kansas license No. of the hairdresser who has touched, colored, cut, performed any service on or with Governor Laura Kelly’s hair since March 12.”
But alas, the stylist in question was … Kelly’s husband, Dr. Ted Daughety, a Topeka pulmonologist who treats sleep disorders.
Kelly told the The Topeka Capital-Journal that “she made the decision 37 years ago to marry an Eagle Scout who happened to be good with his hands. Reluctantly, she allowed her husband to give her a trim.”
“It scared the bejesus out of me when I first let him do that, but I had no choice,” Kelly told the paper’s editorial board. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m also not stupid. Do I really not think if I went to my hairdresser or I had my hairdresser come over to my house that that wouldn’t get out there? I mean, politically, that’s not something I would do, but I’m also not one of those ‘do as I say, not as I do’ types.”
Good role-modeling, Governor.
This coronavirus has all of us wasting less and DIYing more. But rare is the woman who would let her husband near her hair. Or for that matter, the husband who would dare to try. Now we can get back to arguing over what should open up when.
This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 1:31 PM.
