They dueled with pens and camera-ready events. The two men split over what could become a defining issue in their battle to win this years governors race, and over whether Kansas needs to spend more to fix its public schools.
Gov. Jeff Colyer went to a Topeka high school early Tuesday a performance he planned to repeat later in the day in Wichita to sign into law a plan to balloon the money sent to local districts by $500 million-plus over the next half-decade.
Education is one of the most important things that we do in Kansas, Colyer said. Our future is right here, and we have an exciting future ahead of us.
Across town about an hour later, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach signed his own document a campaign pledge not to raise taxes. He called Colyers signing of the education funding bill a mistake, accusing the current governor of caving into judicial and political pressure for spending on schools Kobach contended was simply not needed.
He should not have signed it, Kobach told reporters at his press conference. (Colyer) should not have encouraged the Legislature to pass such a huge spending hike.
So on a weekday morning more than three months before a primary election, two of the leading Republican candidates for governor sought to draw as much attention as they could to their differing views on education funding and government more broadly.
Colyers day cast him as the man at the helm, guiding a troubled state through the stormy waters of school finance. Kobach tacked to the right and insisted that Kansas government is fundamentally broken, needing not so much a steady hand at the rudder as a dramatic change in course.
The split comes over some of the most critical issues of state government, schools and the taxes that pay for them.
Lawmakers passed an eleventh-hour school funding bill earlier this month in the face of a Kansas Supreme Court order. They were racing toward an April 30 deadline, when legal briefs are due spelling out what action the state had taken in response to the courts ruling in October.
Colyer, who took over the governorship from Sam Brownback in late January, had urged passage of the bill. That aligned him with Republican moderates and Democrats and against the most conservative elements in his party.
It also led him to sign into law a measure with an $80 million shortfall that legislators will have barely a week to fix. On Tuesday at Seaman High School in Topeka, Colyer used that error to make his bill signing part celebration and part civics lesson.
Legislators, he told students and school board members positioned around him, are working on a trailer bill to fix the funding error. Then Colyer walked a lap around the gym high-fiving students.
Last Friday, Colyer passed on a chance to respond to Kobachs attacks at a Republican governors candidate forum. On Tuesday, he said the people of Kansas have a very clear choice in the primary.
As governor, what you do is you make solutions. You work with people, Colyer said. Were actually getting things done, and (the bill signing) is an excellent example of actual accomplishment.
He noted his different style from the more cable channel-ready Kobach.
