It's no small task to write a book on 60 years of Kansas political history. The political dynamics are complex and the choice is difficult through the administrations of Robert Bennett, John Carlin, Mike Hayden, Joan Finney, Bill graves, Kathleen Sebelius, Mark Parkinson, and most controversially, Sam Brownback and then Laura Kelly, five political science scholars inspired by the late University of Kansas Professor Burdette Loomis have done it. They've published reform and reaction the arc of Kansas politics. The principal authors, Emporia State University Professor Michael Smith and Wichita State professor emeritus Ed flingy, are with Kansas reflector to explore what it's meant to be around Kansas politics over the since the 1960s so welcome to you both. Appreciate you guys doing this. Thank you, Michael. Let's start with you and answer the why question. Why is it important to write a book like this with Ed and Chapman Rockaway and and Patrick Miller? Well,
I'll tell you, Tim, it's really remarkable how few books there are on modern Kansas political history. Now there is one exception. I have to give a shout out to my colleague Ed flinch and his co author, Joe Astrup. They did do a book a few years ago that put Kansas politics in a bigger frame, that went all the way back to the state's founding. And that is the exception. That is a relatively recent book about Kansas political history. Aside from that book, and what we're doing with this book is a little bit different, because it doesn't our current book doesn't start till 1960 and it goes later, including later than than the flinching a strip book was published even all the way to 2018 but aside from flinchie and a strip, the other books are quite dated. In fact, probably the most common, what you might call a textbook on that was last revised in, I believe, 1991 and that just isn't keeping up with all the changes that have happened in Kansas politics, plus, I think our dear friend the late bird Loomis, saw the opportunity to assemble a sort of Dream Team of Kansas political analysts about 10 years ago when this project started, and get the different perspectives of the folks that had been working together on the Insight Kansas newspaper columns. So you have Ed flangie, who's actually worked in Kansas government as an as an expert in Kansas administration and all the different reforms that occurred in the late 20th century. You have chap Rockaway, who's an expert on Kansas campaigns and elections, and Patrick Miller, who is very knowledgeable about the same, and so on and so forth. So bird saw an opportunity, and he took it.
Ed your thoughts on the same before we get to the nitty gritty of the Kansas political history, if you want to speak about Professor Loomis, he passed away in 2021 well,
Burdette bird Loomis framed this book amazing, as Michael said 10 years ago, and he recruited a publisher. He outlined the chapters. We didn't stick with them completely, but then we we kept adding new elections as we went along. And so it expanded. And actually it went went backwards some period of time too. So Burdett really was our our leader initially, and with his passing, Michael and I kind of moved in to bring the project to closure. We had folks that opted in and opted out over time. So it when you have five authors at one time, we probably had a couple more than that. And so that was burdened special
role you both went. When I think about a project like this, I think it's really quite useful, because as as a reporter who's covered the State House, and you'll write this little story today, that little story next week, and with a book like this, you can kind of pull these threads together and kind of summarize them and put them in the context of other things that happened before and after. Do you think that? Am I making sense there?
Well, when I first saw the title that Burdette suggested reform and reaction, I probably didn't have a good fix on what he was what he had in mind. But. As I think about what eventually came together, the reform era ended about 30 years ago, in a sense, in the early 90s, mid 90s, and it had two components. One was institutional reform. Kansas entered the its centennial, its 100 year birthday, with political institutions designed 100 years ago, so the legislature, the governor and the judiciary were operating with institutions that were designed in the 19th century, and the first real initiative was the rewriting of the Kansas constitution, with respect to these political institutions, literally brought them into the 20th century, and that institutional reform then fostered A period of policy activism, as we describe in the book, and that involves Robert Bennett, John Carlin, Mike Hayden, and in the absence of a vacuum, or with a vacuum in the Finney years, Marvin Barkers and Fred Kerr stepped in as well. So, so about a 20 year period of institutional reform, followed by roughly 20 years of activism in public policy, we then get to the reaction, I think the 94 election is kind of a real turning point
there. I agree, Michael, going back over the list of Kansas governors, thinking about from around 1960 or thereabouts to 2018 which this book covers, I was struck by the idea that for the most part, Republican or Democrat, they could be viewed today as centrists. There is one exception to that rule. But could you just talk about these governors who came from different places at different times, and Kansas electing what I view personally could be wrong as centrist?
I completely agree with you that when you look at, say, the dockings or John Carlin, they were Democrats, or you look at a mike Hayden or a bill graves Republicans, it's really hard to see any ideological gap. Now, they had different leadership styles, for sure. For example, when John Carlin defeated Robert Bennett in 78 and Ed can speak to that, but it wasn't really an ideological gap. I wouldn't call any of them particularly liberal or conservative. And in fact, one of the governor's docking coined a phrase, Kansas government should be austere but adequate. And in the and the introduction to the book, we make the argument that that really frames Kansas government for generations is the idea of austere but adequate. Now we start moving into the 1990s and early 21st century, we had Joan Finney, who was not really liberal or conservative, but she was very much her own person. I call her quirky. I think Ed likes a more professional term. To me, she was quirky. And then, of course, we have the brown back years, which were a major shift? Yeah,
we'll get to that. So this, this group of centrists will say they kind of focus on bread and butter, agriculture, utility costs, roads, education, and they appeared, to some degree, to load, to dive into the culture wars, which, which kind of came later, thinking about abortion rights there taking center stage in the Republican Party. All right, so we've touched upon this. But in the 1960s Kansas had to undergo a court ordered reapportionment of the boundaries of legislators. They had this weird system, I guess, that every county got a state rep, and then there were 20 other folks and something like that, and we just tossed them around the most populous counties, that's not one person, one vote no
and and that was a major stimulus. And Burdett pulled together the chapter on the impact and the leadership required to change and you. Reapportion a mal apportioned legislature, and that was a part of the stimulus for institutional reform that got the legislature and it brought a whole raft of new folks and new faces, younger folks into the legislature in the late 60s,
you think in the 70s, both of you, there was more of a focus then on things like 70s and 80s, like taxes and economic development, infrastructure, schools and those kind of things.
I think what you had were folks who took public policy making very seriously, and they were willing to put careers on the line, be the first to stick their head out over the mountain and take on difficult issues. So it was a different time. It's certainly a different time that I experienced, and what I tried to do with Bennett, Carlin, Hayden and during the Finney administration is focus on those public policy issues that are foundational. That set a pattern for the future, whether that was economic development, infrastructure, school finance, what was done in the 80s and early 90s stands yet today, as we still argue over the edges of it, but the foundation was laid foundation and public policy was laid in those 80s and 90s, early 90s, Michael,
I noticed that Carlin and Hayden, I think they were a rural Western Kansas farmer guys and and they were house speakers, and they became governor. Is there any, any link there to to maybe even talk about the rural urban divide that that existed back then, maybe became accentuated and exists today.
I think there is Tim. Rural politics were very different a generation or two ago today. You know, there are counties in western Kansas that voted for Donald Trump, but 90% of the vote Now, granted, that's on a very small population, but still, that's pretty lopsided, and the culture war is alive and well in rural Kansas. In previous generations, agricultural politics in particular, were about as non ideological as you could get. What mattered was if you supported the farm bills and the water bills, and unfortunately, Kansas isn't doing so well on water, but there was at least an attempt to have the water flowing and the farms, farmers farming. It didn't really matter if you were a Democrat or Republican, and I think your comparison of Carlin and Hayden is spot on. Again, there were some differences in the personalities of the individuals and the times in which they served were separated by about a decade, but they came from this very non ideological rural tradition where, like it or not, government is heavily involved in farming. We do not have a free market in agriculture in this country. We haven't since the 1930s and if the farmers are going to farm, they need to make sure that government policy aligns with their needs in terms of getting crops to market, in terms of price stability, water is massive in western Kansas, as we know well, there's not a massive amount of water In western Kansas, that's the problem. It's a massive issue, and so they didn't really go down that culture war road. Hayden, for example, was a Republican. He was pro choice, but he didn't run on that. That's not what government was about for him. Property taxes are another big issue, because agricultural property is taxed differently than residential or commercial property. We call them bread and butter issues. They it doesn't matter your party or your ideology. This was what supported Kansas for a long time, and even as recently as when Roger Marshall defeated Tim Huelskamp in the 2010s it's because you will camp got kicked off the Agriculture Committee, and when you're from the big first district of Kansas, that's not acceptable. I don't care what your party is, although it's probably Republican. And so that was sort of swan song for that era when farming was not a partisan or an agriculture. Or, I'm sorry, farming was not a partisan or a a an ideological issue. You
mentioned that Governor Hayden was an abortion rights advocate. He was he served one term, and then Joan Finney was elected, and she also served one term, but she was an anti abortion Democrat. So it's just really kind of the dynamics there are kind of interesting. So I always viewed Joan Finney as kind of a populist. I think there were things of consequence in her administration, but she was as quirky, okay? She was a different character. You know? I think she had been state treasurer for many years, and so people were familiar with her. So let's Ed. You want to talk about Bill graves? Bill graves comes along, and, you know, I think he, he, he bristled a little bit when dealing with the super conservative members of his own Republican Party. Well,
Bill grave had to deal with the 74 election. He was elected in 74 and but his house Grace
was elected governor, wasn't it, the mid 90s.
I mean, 94 I'm sorry, 94 and he had a house majority, Republican majority, that dumped a speaker, a moderate speaker from the earlier years, and it really changed. It bifurcated the Republican Party. We talked about three party government for so long, and Michael, you
got the Democrats and then the Republicans were fractured in two. So we ended up for many years with what you could call a three party system. Yeah,
right. We
said the Democrats the moderates and the conservatives, and oftentimes the moderates and the conservatives fought with each other more than either of them fought with the Democrats, and the Democrats could sometimes gain power by being the tie breakers.
Yeah, it's crazy. So graves had to deal with more, a greater influence of conservative Republicans who wanted to talk about guns and abortion and so on. And I think taxes, big cuts in taxes. I remember having conversation with Bill graves, and he said he regretted being so aggressive in in cutting revenue. All right, so Graves is does two terms, and then Kansas elected Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat who, in my book, and she didn't quite serve all of her second turn, she turned it over to Mark Parker center, lieutenant governor when she went to work for Barack Obama, but you had about 16 years there, which I would consider pretty steady gubernatorial management from people who probably got along pretty well. That is being Bill graves and Kathleen Sebelius.
I happen to write those chapters in the book. That was actually my contribution. So I'd love to speak to that. I think you're absolutely right, the graves era, and yes, he was elected in 94 was an interesting time period, because graves was very moderate. He was pro choice. He said he would have a moratorium on regulations, and then he put a loophole in there that he personally could override it. So it was only a moratorium on regulations unless he approved the override of the moratorium. He did cut taxes, and as you mentioned, has expressed some regret, but he was also pretty committed to funding that school based funding formula, which was brand new, and that's an interesting part of the story Tim because that passed during the Finney administration. And finney's governorship is often regarded as chaotic and unproductive, and she wasn't a major mover of the bill. It was really the legislature, including Kathleen Sebelius, who was in the legislature at the time, but that passed during her administration, and graves, yeah, he wanted to cut taxes, but he wanted to fully fund that formula that was a priority. So you have this very moderate leadership of a Republican governor, but yet you have this conservative rebellion going on. That was also the time period when Sam Brownback got elected to the Senate that was 96 and he organized home schoolers, he organized evangelical churches and so forth, church congregations, and beat the governor, Sheila from who was endorsed by the lieutenant governor. Pardon me, Sheila from was endorsed by graves, and Brownback beat her, and then two years later, the voters turn around and re elect graves in one of the largest landslides in Kansas history against the Democratic opponent who graves personally liked and thought was a good person. Tom Sawyer of. And but at the same time you have Brownback, you have David Miller resigning from the chair of the Republican Party to run against incumbent governor from his own party. That was unthinkable before then, unimaginable. You know, it shattered the Reagan Doctrine, Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. And so graves, personally was very popular, and he had allies in the legislature, but you have this conservative would be revolution going on too that got Brownback elected to the Senate. We
should, we should touch real quickly that during this era there was a big anti abortion activism in the Wichita era. It kind of elevated the political role of evangelical Christians. You've both touched upon. I think brown back, and he was elected in 2010 and by some accounts, the most conservative governor in recent Kansas history. I can't go too far back in time, but how did his election come about? Well, I
can jump in. Ed did a chapter on the Brownback governorship too, about the policy changes, and we want to make time for that too, I think. But in terms of the politics of it, you know what a lot of it was, Tim is that Mark Parkinson didn't run for another term as governor, and he was actually heavily criticized for that by editorialists, because Mark Parkinson was an ex moderate Republican. He switched to Democrat, and as you know, in Kansas, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor run on the same ticket. So he ran on a ticket with Kathleen Sebelius. She took a job in the Obama administration. He became governor, and he, I mean, that was a terrible time to be governor. That was the housing collapse, 2008 2009 and then he brokered this deal on, you know, clean energy credits, in exchange for a new coal plant, which was never built. And he was pretty popular for a governor serving during a terrible time to be governor, and then he announced he wasn't running for a full term, and editorialists were furious. It was well known that Brownback wanted to come back to Kansas and run for the Senate, and editorialists essentially argued, you just handed the governorship to Sam Brownback, we
think that Brownback made the worst mistake of his political career in quitting the United States Senate, where he's going to be re elected in perpetuity, and became governor, a job that I believe is harder than being a United States Senator, much harder. So do you think it was a mistake for Brownback in terms of his political legacy to come back and be governor?
I don't think Sam knew a lot about state government or state politics. Even with his time in office, he was an ag, Secretary, Congressman, Senator, and that's not a good background for learning about the intricacies of state government, whether it's infrastructure, roads or schools or you name it,
to both of you here, Brownback attempted To turn back the clock on some of these progressive developments. I remember an interview one time he told me the New Deal was a bunch of bunk, and he wanted to get away from that in Kansas, and so he did a lot of policy adjustments there in terms of the welfare state, but he famously tried to repeal completely the state income tax, and that really they passed some legislation 2012 2013 that was very substantial. He tinkered with the selection process of our Kansas judges and partially got rid of the merit system there, just so he could appoint people he wanted. So on tax policy, it took five years. The tax policy just about bankrupted state government. But in 2017 a bipartisan centrist movement of Republicans and Democrats in the legislature repealed largely brownbacks tax program. How significant was that, in in the history of what we're talking about here, that
was a citizen uprising, the the elimination of the income tax, which Brownback had endorsed and the Republican majority and how in the legislature had endorsed, had caused an amazing array of problems, debt, new tax new sales tax increases, declining balances and voters ultimately just had enough of that. Brownbacks, favorability ratings were in the toilet and in. And so you had a crop of legislators step forward, and moderate Republicans and Democrats and a coalition came together to amazingly override the governor's veto.
Brownback eventually left and went to work in in the Trump administration, Michael, we're going to run out, run out the clock here. But I wondered, before we go, if you could just touch upon how Governor Laura Kelly, Democrat fits into this. Governor
Lauren Kelly, I think, is a throwback to the moderate tradition. It's well known that she's strongly supported by former governor Sebelius, who I believe was instrumental in urging Kelly to run. Kelly wasn't originally planning to run for governor. She was going to retire from the State Senate, and Sebelius was instrumental. Sibelius is also very good at raising money, and that's the mother's milk of politics, and that has helped Kelly. Kelly is, in my opinion, very shrewd. She is very careful on culture war issues, for example, with immigration, she has said, that's a federal issue, that's a federal issue. I'm not going to touch that. And trans athletes and things like that. She's very, very cautious. She pivots to the moderate issues, and for her, that has meant two things, one of which she's done very successfully, and one of which she has not she's been very successful at restoring the state budget, for example, the stable tax system, and just this past session, she fought off tax cuts that she thought were excessive and got the legislature into special session to replace them with a scaled down bill and also closing the so called bank of k dot taking money from the Highway Trust Fund she's very proud of that mentions it at every state of the state address. She wants that to be part of her legacy, and also funding that school based funding formula, which is, after all these years, not that different than the one that passed in 1990 under the Finney governorship, which Sebelius helped to write. The other piece of her legacy is not completed, and that's that she wants Kansas to no longer be one of the 10 remaining states that haven't passed Medicaid expansion. The legislature is pretty dug in. Well, the leaders, I should say, not, the rank and file, the leaders of the legislature are pretty dug in on that, and it isn't clear that she will get that done. Ed,
do you want to take a crack at where you see Kansas politics generally going just kind of crystal ball this a few years, couple years ahead.
Well, if reform and reaction is the arc of Kansas politics, there's a reform era coming up somewhere in the future, and it'll be based on what, what folks have figured out before taking public policy seriously, putting bipartisan coalitions together, and we'll see if that indeed is the case.
All right, before we go, Michael, could you tell people how to get a copy of this book?
I'd be honored. It is published by the University Press of Kansas. Note the name. It's a consortium of all the Board of Regents schools in Kansas, not just KU and University Press of Kansas. You can buy it right from them. You can buy it from their website. It is available as an e book all your favorite online retailers. I'm not going to give them any free advertising, but you know, the ones for profit or non profit, they certainly are stocking it. And it's also available at local bookstores. And in fact, Ed and I have a presentation coming up next week at the middle ground books in Emporia, so you can buy it from your local independent bookstore also. And of course, libraries are an option as well. I'm very pleased that it's available in ebook and paperback, because Tim, as you know, academic books tend to be very overpriced, but if you there are ways you can get your hands on this book at an affordable price, even if you wish to purchase it,
I'm gonna have to sign off before this our time here expires. I want to thank Ed flingy, professor emeritus, Wichita State and Michael Smith, Emporia State University Professor, thank you for your book and thank you for your time. You
