PARSONS Southeast Kansass GOP faithful poured into the Parsons Municipal Auditorium on Saturday for a forum featuring four of the top Republican candidates for governor.
Current front-runners, incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, appeared alongside former state Sen. Jim Barnett and Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer.
Johnson County-based minister-salesman, Patrick Kucera, who calls himself the Entrepreneurial Evangelist and who says he wants to put God back into the equation of making money, was slated to participate but never appeared.
In a two-hour event that touched on highways, taxes, school funding, abortion, unemployment, Medicaid expansion, gun laws, agriculture, and immigration, the primary differences among the four candidates had less to do with policy and were more about temper.
Barnett and Selzer went some way toward emphasizing old-fashioned values like unity (Barnett) and inclusiveness (Selzer).
Kobach, on the other hand, positioned himself as the only alpha candidate in the race, a full-throttled conservative who isnt afraid to take on liberals, the media, snowflakes, the ACLU, the Kansas Supreme Court, illegal immigrants, and anyone else who would seek to challenge the rising tide of the new conservative movement. Channeling his inner Johnny Cochran, Kobach offered this self-summary: When the lefties attack, he hits right back.
Colyer, rhetorically, seemed stranded somewhere in the middle, offering watery phrases in favor of cooperation while every once in a while extending a bloodless parry in Kobachs direction.
As it was, the fiercest disagreement on the night came when these two frontrunners got tangled up in an extremely parochial debate concerning an excise tax Kobach voted for nearly 20 years ago while he was a city councilman in Overland Park, a vote which resulted in a devastating minor up-charge for Colyer and the other residents in his plush suburban neighborhood.
Judged in terms of audience applause, however, Kobach was the clear crowd favorite on Saturday , and the only candidate to comprehend the importance of the trenchant phrase.
For instance, when asked about improving the unemployment figures in the state, the secretary said that after cutting taxes so as not to discourage businesses from settling here Kansas must put an immediate stop to illegal immigration. If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, said Kobach, then deport an illegal alien today. This line received the nights lustiest applause.
Kobach beat the same drum when the topic was healthcare. Late last year Gov. Colyer proposed implementing a work requirement rule for individuals enrolled in KanCare, the states privatized Medicaid program.
Kobach, on Saturday, did the governor one better. We need to have not only work requirements, said the secretary, we need to have drug testing and we need to have a strict prohibition on illegal aliens receiving any benefits under the system.
OF THE candidates on stage Saturday, only Barnett, a doctor from Emporia, favors expanding Medicaid.
Aside from the basic humanitarian principle at stake, said Barnett, expansion makes sound economic sense. Firstly, a healthier population creates a more productive workforce. Secondly, he continued, the failure to take advantage of Medicaid dollars threatens the viability of rural hospitals. Barnett cited the 2015 closure of Mercy Hospital in Independence as a local example, and pointed out that the financial books at more than 80 Kansas hospitals are currently in the red and that 30 rural hospitals are on the critical list of those as risk of closing.
If you want to hurt rural Kansas, said Barnett, then continue on down this path where youre not expanding Medicaid.
Barnett remains the only avowed moderate Republican in the race, and the most consistent opponent of Gov. Brownbacks dramatic 2012 income tax cuts.
