TOPEKA, Kansas — Control of the Kansas Legislature could turn on dozens of down-ballot races in the Aug. 4 primary election, in which many of the contests, particularly for the Kansas Senate, pit conservative Republicans against moderate incumbents.
In Republican Senate primaries, moderates facing their first re-election test since 2016 can no longer use former Gov. Sam Brownback as a foil. And while taxes remain an issue, two perhaps counterintuitive issues are at the core of this year’s legislative contests: Medicaid expansion and abortion.
“Medicaid expansion definitely hinges on this election and there’s no doubt that women’s reproductive rights also hinge on this election,” said Michael Poppa, executive director of the Mainstream Coaltion, a Johnson County group formed in the 1990s to counter “extremism” in politics
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and a majority of lawmakers support expanding Medicaid health care coverage to hundreds of thousands of low-income Kansans. But conservative Republicans refused to bring the issue to a vote in the 2020 legislative session because lawmakers didn’t agree to put a proposed constitutional amendment on abortion before Kansas voters.
The amendment was a priority for anti-abortion groups seeking to counter a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that said abortion is a protected right under the Kansas Constitution.
And the proposed amendment’s defeat is at the heart of Republican primary battles across the state.
The Senate and the chamber
The race between Sen. John Skubal and conservative challenger Rep. Kellie Warren is among the most closely watched in the primary.
Skubal, a moderate from Overland Park, defeated conservative Jeff Melcher in 2016 by calling for the repeal of tax cuts that triggered a budget crisis under Brownback.
The Mainstream Coalition, the Kansas National Education Association and Stand Up Blue Valley are backing Skubal’s bid for re-election.
Warren, in addition to the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, has the support of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, a powerful group that includes Koch Industries among its most influential members.
For the chamber, though, taxes and regulations, not abortion, are most important. President Alan Cobb said in a recent column published in the Topeka Capital-Journal that the organization is backing conservative challengers because current members of the legislature have not reduced taxes on some companies doing business in Kansas.
“We need legislative champions who understand the fundamental role that business plays in the economic health of Kansas,” Cobb wrote.
Recent changes in federal tax laws, Cobb said, raised state taxes for some individuals and companies by a combined total of more than $1 billion. Kelly vetoed attempts to roll back some of those increases, and Republican leaders could not muster the votes to override her.
“These actions are not reflective of what most Kansans want from their state elected leaders,” Cobb wrote.
The chamber and other conservative groups are most active in state senate races because it is their first opportunity to retake seats lost to moderates in the “anti-Brownback election” of 2016, University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller said.
“Conservatives are very much on the offensive,” Miller said, adding that it’s an open question whether moderates can withstand the challenge “without the boogeyman of Sam Brownback to run against.”
