The 2024 election is nearly upon us in less than three weeks. If the counting goes well, that's a big if Kansas and the United States will know who prevailed in hard fought elections. I'm Kansas reflector, reporter Tim Carpenter, and today we are in Democratic governor Laura Kelly's office at the capitol to consider implications of the November voting. Governor, thank you for your time and your insights.
Delighted to be here,
Governor Kelly, you flexed your muscle in state legislative races with your middle of the road political action committee in terms of the legislature in this election. What do you think is at stake?
I think there's a whole lot at stake. You know, as I look back on the first five and a half years of my administration, it's sort of amazing how much we've been able to get done. You know, we've been able to balance the budget, create the largest budget surplus in history, more economic development, nearly $20 billion of new capital investment, fully fund our schools, close the bank at kdoc. We've really been able to get a whole lot of things done, but there are other things that we've got to get done if Kansas is going to continue to move forward, and that's why I need to break this super majority, because if we don't break the super majority, Then the legislature is going to continue to pass bad bills that impact our ability in Kansas to really prosper and grow. And I'm particularly thinking in terms of workforce. You know, when we have all of those, the anti gay stuff, the anti women things, these, those are the kinds of vetoes that they've been over riding on me. I need Democrats in those seats now to help sustain vetoes on bad legislation like that. That way we were more attractive for our own people to stay here, our young people to stay here instead of leaving the state, and much more attractive to businesses coming in and them being able to enlist a
workforce, just for people who forget their civics. Republicans do hold two thirds majorities, sometimes called the super majority in the Kansas house and the Kansas Senate. That means Republicans numerically, if there aren't defectors, there's a lot of arm twisting that goes on there on both chambers. If there's no defectors, the Republicans can overrule any of your vetoes by summoning the required two thirds majority for an override. So that's the that's the super majority. So when you check your pulse on this election cycle, what's your sense of how this effort to break the super majority in legislature is appears to be shaking out?
Well, we won't know until November 5, November 6, but you know, I do know that we have a really superb candidates running in a lot of our targeted races. Many of them are based in Johnson County, and I think the road to breaking the super majority will go through Johnson County. We'll work very hard to maintain seats outside of Johnson County, focus like a laser on picking up the three seats in the Senate that we need and the two in the house that we
need. And of course, Senate President time Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, both Republicans, have been working overtime to project this super majority and perhaps build on it. I've it's my understanding that their their point of emphasis and their motivation is to get more conservatives so they can override all of your vetoes.
I think that is exactly what they want to do. And I think in some ways, if we're not able to flip these seats, they're going to get their wish, because a number of the Republicans who were willing to occasionally, depending upon the issue, come over and sustain my vetoes, have opted not to run again, and I don't think those situations will be filled by moderate Republicans, so we need to do what we can to get them filled with Democrats.
Do you think this GOP grip on legislation tends to make their work product more conservative than the state population is, and overall. Another way to put it would be, does the supermajority lend itself to more ideological policies that don't mirror what Kansans generally believe?
Well, I think you can just go back to August 2022 when the abortion amendment was on the primary ballot, and even during the primary, 60% of Kansans came and said, No, you know, we don't want this restrictive abortion bill to pass. So. So I think that was clear indicator of what I've always, sort of in my gut, known, or just because of my time in the legislature, known, that Kansans really are middle of the road. Common sense. There they, you know, they're concerned about the kinds of things that everybody's concerned about. They're concerned about their taxes, they're concerned about their schools, they're concerned about the roads. What they don't want is a lot of attention time wasted on issues that are discriminatory or hurtful.
You touched on abortion rights. Good segue there, because I want to take a look at just a handful of issues as to how the supermajority actually plays out. So you mentioned the constitutional amendment that the whole idea with that was to rebuke the Kansas Supreme Court that said that women had bodily autonomy and the right to abortion existed in Kansas, even though Roe v Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court, and about two thirds, maybe a little bit more, two thirds of voters statewide said that amendment to the constant Constitution on that was a bad idea. So, but there's other bills, UV total bill, I think it was overridden. Was it the one in which abortion providers and doctors had to ask a bunch of intrusive questions of women who are getting abortion questions that didn't have anything to do with a medical procedure, but really was trying to mine information from these people's private views about their lives. So, so, so that would be an example of legislation beyond the constitutional amendment, and all that that that affects the supermajority has an effect on right
and that's what that's what I was talking about before, is that it's these kinds of issues where, if we don't break the supermajority, they will continue to push for more restrictions on abortion, they will probably attack the LGBTQ community again. You know, obviously, taxes are another big issue that I'm very concerned about because you I had to fight them off.
You vetoed a lot of mega tax bills, yeah. And we ended up in a special legislative session in 2024 in which everybody kind of came together on something that maybe nobody liked every element of it, but they passed the bill, and you signed it, and it's now law,
yeah, but we know that they are talking now behind closed doors, but got out that they're looking at zeroing out the corporate tax rate, that will absolutely threat send us back into the Brownback days.
Yeah, let's just go off script a little bit there for people who weren't around in 2012 governor, Brownback Republican signed a pretty significant tax bill that really wiped out taxes paid by business people, the business community, and it cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year, way more than what anybody thought initially. And so it took five years before the Republicans voted to repeal that because it just ran the state budget into the ditch. So now there's a it's come to light through reporting that house, at least the House Republican leadership, is interested in taking the corporate income tax to zero, as if I don't know, companies shouldn't have to pay taxes. That does sound a lot like an adrenaline shot to the heart to the state budget,
correct? Well, it'd be more toxic than that. Yeah, it does exactly what the Brownback tax experiment does. Maybe even worse, it's it would be at least a $750 million hit to the budget every year, every year, and could be as high as a billion. So, yeah, it's, it's, would be, it would it really would Tailspin us right back into the Brownback days. You know, we'd be underfunding our schools again. We'd stop building and repairing our roads and bridges, all of those kinds of
to borrow a bunch of money that you ordinarily wouldn't have to borrow, because you're not working on cash as much, and that just raises a cost of every dollar you spend.
Yes, it's very concerning. So I'm, I'm, you know, putting the word out there to our state agencies in particular that you know, when they're preparing their budgets this year, I want them to be very conservative. We need to wait until at least the spring of 2026, to have an idea of the full impact of the tax cuts that we did you
just passed, and just signing the law. And are not necessarily fully fledged yet they're not,
and so we need to let that get a. Built in, and then we can decide if we've got, if we've got the funding and the revenues coming in that would allow us to do more tax cuts. You mentioned
LGBTQ bills and transgender sports bills, so you've vetoed some of that. You've also vetoed some election bills that that just, I have to think it just making it a hell of a lot harder for people to go vote. So you vetoed some of that. I think they probably overrode you some. But do we're just because we're right near the election? Where do you think? Where do you think we're at in terms of election security? Do you think it's there the election is going to be fair? And oh, absolutely counted.
Yeah, I do think that you get your seal of approval. I have a lot of confidence in the election system as it's run here in the state of Kansas. I'm not, not the least bit concerned that there will be any Hanky Panky ban on
the two thirds majority issue also comes into play beyond vetoes to just your general legislative agenda. So there's things that if you had a few more Democrat votes, a few more moderates, if those exist anymore in the legislature, you could do things like things that are actually quite popular with voters, like expansion of eligibility for Medicaid. You could do that. There's a lot of enthusiasm, actually, for medicinal marijuana, I think even recreational marijuana. If you're in eastern Kansas, you just see the sucking sound of people driving into Missouri and then driving back into Kansas to go visit dispensaries and say, spend hundreds of millions of dollars over there. So this would actually part of this would be helping your agenda going forward, the next couple of years. Well, I
think if we break the supermajority, then it will require leadership in both the House and the Senate to work with us and with the Democrat caucus in their respective chambers. So yeah, because when
the Democrat numbers are so small in the writing of bills, if you have the numbers that you can basically the Republicans do anything they want if they're unified. That cuts down on communication and the massaging of bills that maybe will put this little clause in their half out add that sentence that just doesn't happen.
No, you know, I actually lived through those days when I was in the State Senate and you had Republican House, Republican Senate, and a Republican in the governor's office. So there was no backstop and there was no communication back and forth. There was no there was no negotiation, there was no discussion about the content of bills whatsoever or budgets.
Yeah, yeah. And that's a shame we need a little bit more bipartisanship. There. People need to get along. So in the Kansas house, there's 85 Republicans and 40 Democrats. My quick math. Says two seats.
Need two seats in the House, assuming we hold on to all correct, and then we need
three seats. And you said Johnson County seems to be where you could maybe mine a couple more seats, if, again, you hold on to the others. You think, do you think just two? Or you think you're thinking about the minimum, or is there I just don't know the politics of Johnson County. Are there a handful over there that are ripe for the picking? Well,
there are a number. We've got our eyes on several of those races in Johnson County and other places. I do think that we will get the two seats that we need in the house and the 3c that we need in the Senate. Would I like more? Sure, yeah,
and that's interesting, because I've always thought the house, you have 100 and, you know, your 125 members, and there's just a lot more opportunities there than in the Senate, you have 40 senators, bigger districts, easier to gerrymander, gerrymander, group of conservatives into 40 districts to make it harder for Democrats to win than is maybe to deal with 125 so I just thought the that you could probably get your your your two in the house, but that the the Senate would be A Bridge Too Far. But you think both?
I'm optimistic that we will do both. All right, optimistic, we're going
to pencil you in. Optimistic is, yes, that kind of deals with the Kansas legislative races and what this election cycle means. But I wondered if you just for a few minutes, could look at the national election, the presidential campaign. We have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump running. They have their VP candidates as well. So what do you think is at stake there, and what's the importance of it?
I am actually very excited about this race. There's an opportunity. If Kamala Harris is elected, we will then have a governor. Her vice president is currently the governor of the state of Minnesota. We would have. Governor, somebody who's been a governor in the White House, and what that would mean for relationships with the states is, is huge, you know, it's, it's has been an issue. You know, through both administrations that I've served under, whether, whether it was the Republican administration or democratic administration, there's sometimes a lack of there's a disconnect between the federal and the states, and by having somebody like Tim Walz in the White House, he could bridge that gap, because he knows how valuable the states can be as partners in doing the work of government, but he also understands their needs, so that, you know, should we have something like a pandemic again? You know, having somebody like that there to lead, you know, the relationships with the states would be huge.
There's the in the US House, in the US Senate, the margin is very close. We'll see how that all turns out. I mean, the whole thing could turn upside down on election day. That could be either cause for alarm or joy, depending on where you stand. But my final question really here is about and it relates to Kansas and Washington. Do you think there's benefit? Is there merit to divided government, I'll call it when the legislative and executive branches aren't controlled by the same political party. I think back to times when a house and senate and the executive in Kansas was all Republican, all conservative Republican, and that tended to have a certain kind of legislation come forward. So do you think there's there's some benefit to that tension.
I do think that there is benefit to having both parties represented in the legislative arena or legislative executive arena. I do think that there's benefit because it should force conversation. Part of what we've had, though, particularly in Washington, has been an unwillingness of the other party to even have discussions or negotiations with the other side of the aisle. So I think what we need there is really to elect people you know, who are there to govern? Are you there to to legislate, rather than there to create a sideshow, get
on Fox, on Fox TV the
most, or to be obstructionist? So I'm hoping that that's what we see. You know, again, I don't really care which party somebody is, what I want them to be is moderate, thoughtful, common sense and willing to work together. And
the final, final question is, make your pitch for Kansans to go out and vote. Why should people get off the couch in November. Well, as
we've been talking about, there is a lot at stake. You know, here in the state of Kansas, breaking that supermajority is very important and be very beneficial to the people of Kansas. Kansas would be more like they want it to be, and be more like their values if we're able to break that super majority. And then obviously there's a lot at stake nationally, so I would hope that they would get get up and vote for president, vote for Congress, vote all the way down. All right, so
everybody you heard it, go vote. I want to thank Laura Kelly, Governor Laura Kelly for joining us today on the podcast, and thanks for listening. Bye.
