Ty Masterson calls Kansas a disaster. Funny, he’s already running it | Opinion
Ty Masterson might be the most powerful elected official in Kansas.
Gov. Laura Kelly has a higher profile — both statewide and nationally — but that’s almost entirely a function of her job title.
Masterson holds the real power.
He is the president of the Kansas Senate, after all, where he leads a Republican Party with a veto-proof supermajority. Masterson’s GOP colleagues in the Kansas House also hold a veto-proof supermajority. Which means that Sunflower State Republicans can do pretty much anything they want, while Kelly can only stand by and issue mostly meaningless veto threats.
Indeed, that’s pretty much how things have worked out in recent years.
Kelly’s signature agenda item? Medicaid expansion. It never happened — despite overwhelming support from Kansas voters — because Ty Masterson and his party were standing in the way.
Masterson, though, got a whole bunch of what he wanted.
Tax policy? Masterson helped steer a revamping of state revenue collections (over Kelly’s objections) to flatten income tax rates, giving millionaires and billionaires a break while likely putting the state in a budget crisis sometime in the next few years.
Culture wars? Masterson and the GOP passed a law to ban gender-affirming care for transgender Kansas kids, no matter what their parents and doctors might have to say about the matter.
Elections? Masterson’s party overrode Kelly’s veto to pass a new law that could disenfranchise some of the thousands of Kansans who vote by mail, part of the GOP’s “election integrity” agenda that’s mostly about suppressing Democratic votes.
Masterson didn’t do all of this by himself. But he has had a significant hand in shaping Kansas government. More than Kelly, even.
So why does he think the state is in such terrible shape?
Taxes, crime, ‘radical ideology’
Masterson, you might have heard, launched his own campaign for governor this week. To hear him tell it, the state he seeks to lead is in a very, very dark place.
“We need to save Kansas from high, out-of-control property taxes, from rising crime from the prior open border,” he said in his announcement video. “We need to save Kansas from government that overreaches and overspends. And we need to save our kids from a radical ideology that has penetrated our culture and our education systems.”
Sounds bad!
From where I’m sitting, though, it sure looks like Masterson’s “Take Back Kansas” campaign is relying on voters to have a fuzzy understanding of a) how their state government works and b) just how bad things really are.
He’s offering confusion, not clarity.
For example: It’s true that Kansans are really angry about their property taxes. Have been for years. That’s why Masterson and his veto-proof GOP supermajority loudly took on the issue during this year’s legislative session — only to fail to come up with any meaningful relief.
That’s not Kelly’s fault.
As for crime in Kansas: Actually it’s dropping, not rising.
(Masterson knows this, by the way: Just a few weeks ago he praised Attorney General Kris Kobach and the state’s law enforcement agencies for “a significant decline in crime across the board” in Kansas. Oops.)
And the government that “overreaches and overspends”? That could mean anything.
So let’s just note here that Masterson and his GOP legislative colleagues this year wrested the budget process away from Gov. Kelly and put themselves almost exclusively in charge of deciding how much gets spent.
If there is an overspending problem — a big if — Masterson had a hand in creating it.
Put it all together, and the first-glance rationale for Masterson’s gubernatorial campaign is equal parts errors of fact and vague grievances, along with some actual problems that Masterson — again, already one of the most-powerful elected officials in the state — maybe could have some something about by now.
He has the power, after all.