Statehouse scraps: Kansas may lean Republican, but it’s not conservative. Medicaid and weed.

One of the most counterintuitive facts about Kansas politics was hidden in plain sight this week. While the Sunflower State might be deeply Republican, it’s not particularly conservative.

The evidence this time round could be seen in former president Donald Trump’s performance in the Kansas presidential preference primary. About a quarter of Republicans — one in four — cast a ballot for someone other than Trump. You can see the full breakdown at the secretary of state’s website. Of the 871,136 registered Republicans in the state, only 71,077 voted for Trump.

One might be tempted to write that margin off as an isolated protest. But you can look back at the overwhelming vote to protect abortion rights, Gov. Laura Kelly’s two terms in office, and the continued power of moderates to shape the political debate as strong evidence of the state’s moderation.

We’ve heard it repeatedly when taking Kansas Reflector on the road. Republicans pack our audiences. They bemoan the current state of the party (ahem, beating Biden effigies) and hope for something better.

At the Statehouse, this translates to a curious paralysis.

Wide majorities of Kansans want Medicaid expansion and legal cannabis. Many lawmakers want to vote for those policies as well, but far-right leaders have gone out of their way to prevent such bills from even being voted on. Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins do this for a simple reason: They know the bills would pass if they did.

Republicans will pay the price in November. I predict they lose their supermajorities.

Keep an eye on Dan

I sure hope you read Kansas Reflector editor in chief Sherman Smith’s Thursday story headlined: “Bill protecting Kansans veterans from ‘claim sharks’ vaporized after flat tax failed.”

If you haven’t, please go read it now. This column can wait.

OK, now that we’re on the same page, can we all agree this doesn’t look great for Hawkins? Surely the speaker wouldn’t kill a bill helping veterans because one representative didn’t support a misguided tax plan. Surely. Legislative tracking suggests House Bill 2761 vanished from the calendar because action hadn’t been taken on it by Feb. 23. Leaders can “bless” bills to keep them alive, though, and they didn’t bless this one.

We can’t say for certain why these important protections, supported by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, fell by the wayside. But a political tit-for-tat certainly fits the pattern we’ve seen before.

Expansion note

Stay tuned for a longer column about the travesty we witnessed this week around Medicaid expansion. As I suggested in my last roundup column, Republican leadership showed its magnanimity by holding hearings — and doing absolutely nothing else.

But beware of stories or analysis calling expansion dead. I wouldn’t call its chances good, but you never know until lawmakers gavel out for the session. The obvious deal on the table has always been the exchange of a flat tax plan for Medicaid expansion. The governor and legislative leaders have never shown any public interest in such a deal, but that doesn’t make it any less appealing in sheer political terms.

Democrats and Republicans would each score political wins, and everyone could joyfully head off to the campaign trail.

Medical marijuana

The Topeka Capital-Journal’s Jack Harvel (new to the session this year, so be nice to him, everybody) offered a great primer on the medical cannabis program that dropped in the Senate this week.

In short, Senate Bill 555 won’t light anyone’s hair on fire. Or anyone’s marijuana, either. Harvel writes: “It won’t allow people to consume cannabis through smoking, vaping or flavored edibles but will allow people to purchase cannabis flower, pills, tinctures, patches and ointments. Pharmacies, not dispensaries, will be the way that cannabis flower is distributed in the state.”

What’s more, cannabis can only be prescribed for 16 “qualified medical conditions” defined in the bill’s text.

They are (deep breath): AIDS, ALS, autism, cancer, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy or another seizure disorder, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, PTSD, sickle cell anemia, spinal cord disease or injury, traumatic brain injury, ulcerative colitis, or pain that is either chronic and severe or intractable.

Child care

So much happens at the Statehouse each week that no Kansas news media outlet can cover it all. We try our best, but please grant us a modicum of mercy.

Kansas Action for Children, my former employer and gray eminence of child advocacy organizations, highlighted an important committee vote in its weekly newsletter.

Take it away, KAC: On Thursday, the House Commerce Committee “worked House Sub. for SB 96 and made the dangerous bill even worse by, among other things, increasing child-to-staff ratios; taking away KDHE’s authority over regulations and cementing questionable standards into law; and placing the Governor’s proposed Office of Early Childhood under the Department of Commerce, treating Kansas kids like business commodities. That bill got sent out to the full House for a probable vote next week.”

Let’s keep an eye on this one, folks.

Whither Haley

State Sen. David Haley, who I noted last week was the sole Democrat to join with Republicans in voting for a flat tax plan, now says that he didn’t vote for the bill after all.

Credit here to the Kansas City Star’s Katie Bernard and Sunflower State Journal’s Brad Cooper, both of whom spoke to the Kansas City, Kansas, legislator. Haley claimed that his vote was recorded incorrectly, but he’s also waiting to see what a final tax proposal looks like. Let’s just say that the gentleman doth protest too much for my tastes.

Here’s what he told Bernard: “I’ve learned a valuable lesson. Speak clearly into the microphone when you really want to, when you really need to be heard.”

Good advice for all of us, I expect.

Quote of the week

Smith’s social media post from March 21 underlines legislators’ routine abuse of process.

This is the part of the session where calendars are filled with references to "possible action on bills previously heard," by which they mean, "definite action on specific bills we don't want the public to know about in advance" #ksleg

— Sherman Smith (@sherman_news) March 21, 2024

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.