By Martin Hawver
OK, not all the primary election votes are counted yet, and there may be a surprise or two by the time everything is final, but the name that wasn’t on your ballot has clearly lost.
That name?
Gov. Laura Kelly, the Democrat who is mid-term and has two years of living in public housing at Cedar Crest, a nice home to be driven to by security agents every night after wrestling or at least negotiating with members of the Kansas Senate, which took a hard right turn based on yet uncertain primary votes.
What’s the deal? Well, it appears that at the primary election the State Senate is going from a 29-vote majority by party label to an actual 27-plus votes to override Kelly vetoes of bills.
That’s going from a theoretical “veto-proof” majority to an actual, read the votes, veto proof majority.
A handful of moderate Republicans lost their primary elections, and if their defeaters manage to make it through the general election, Kelly likely won’t see her vetoes sustained.
Kelly wasn’t overridden during the 2020 session—when she vetoed two tax-cut bills. She was overridden just once during the 2019 session, her first year in office after moving from the Senate to the governorship—a line-item veto that included $50 million to repay the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System money that was borrowed from it during the cash-crunched former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback administration.
At least three, maybe four or more relatively moderate Republicans have been defeated by more conservative candidates for the upcoming general election, which unless Democrats can pick up a significant number of seats above their current 11, the Senate will be veto-proof.
The House? It appears to be growing a little more conservative, but it is the Senate where the real partisan scrapping has been occurring in the past two years, which has been the “ground zero” for battles with the governor over such issues as expansion of Medicaid to more than 100,000 Kansans and paring the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision that abortion is a constitutionally protected right.
And the budget? That’s where the real fights are likely, and where the final veto-proof majority comes into play on less sensational issues for most Kansans.
Have you seen the campaign brochure touting hiring more public health nurses by the state? Didn’t think so. Or…do most voters base their decisions on small spending issues like staffing for the Department of Administration? Didn’t think so, either.
It appears no candidates are campaigning on the budget except the generic “conservative spending” or “downsize government.” Nobody talks “downsizing” to explain why you spend more time waiting for a driver’s license renewal, or trying to get through on the phone to the Labor department to check on unemployment insurance checks…
Of course, we’re not going to know until about 2 p.m. Jan. 11, when the 2021 legislative session officially opens—and when the first bills are introduced—just where the session is going to go with the confidence on the 3rd floor of the Statehouse that nearly anything it can pass can’t be vetoed by the 2nd floor.
And, how do Democrats campaign on the issue that the state’s elected governor will lose most of her authority to direct the state if voters in generally Republican Senate districts vote for whomever has the “R” behind their name on the ballot?
Yes, we’re wondering just what that brochure or 30-second TV ad is going to look like when it focuses on preserving the leadership authority of a governor who has a “D” behind her name?
Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver's Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com