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Our panel of experts break down a wild 2025 that's already been full of surprises in Kansas politics.

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Hello and welcome to IGI.

I'm your host, Washburn University professor of political science, Bob Beatty.

Kansas politics is always interesting, especially during a legislative session.

But 2025, I would argue, has been especially so.

For example, not only is Kansas wooing the Kansas City Royals to move to the state, but the former Royals general manager might be running for governor.

We've also had high tension incidents in the Kansas legislature that have shocked a lot of people.

But let's get to all of this and more.

Joining me to help make some sense of all of it are two Kansas politics experts.

Bill Fiander, lecturer in the political science department at Washburn University, and doctor Michael Smith, professor of political science at Emporia State University.

And thanks so much for joining me.

And we're going to dive right in.

I have a long list of topics.

We probably won't get to all of them because there's so much going on.

And I wanted to start off with what a lot of viewers may not know about, which is the governor's race of 2026.

It's a while, off.

And we've had some.

So more traditional Republican candidates announce, Scott Schwab, that's the secretary of state has already said that he's going to be running for governor.

And there's, rumors that Vicky Schmidt, the insurance commissioner, or Jeff Colyer, the former, Kansas governor, Ty Masterson, the current Senate president, you know, traditional politicians, but a bit of a bombshell when it was reported by the Sunflower State Journal that Dayton Moore, the former Royals general manager manager, was, you know, going around talking to people, thinking of running.

And that has the potential, I think, to really blow up at least a Republican primary because he's not of course, he's not a politician.

He's never run for office before.

But he has that sports, you know, politics connection, which we've seen, Bill.

Lynn Swann ran for governor.

Is that what he's, that we've seen so often?

But also not just that he's, you know, that connection to sports, but he's ran a large organization, so I'll throw it to Michael.

What do you think of this possibility of Dayton Moore running for governor?

You've you've now been through a number of Kansas elections.

Well, folks from professional sports do run for office periodically, I think of Jim Ryun, the former congressman from this district, who held several world records for running.

That's the most prominent Kansas athlete I can think of in politics.

And we have to remember that while we appreciate our public television viewers very much, there are a lot of folks out there that don't really follow politics.

And oftentimes the name recognition from celebrity.

Think of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California or from sports can actually be a lot higher.

I mean, I imagine no disrespect to Scott Schwab at all, but I imagine, quite honestly, that a former Royals World Series winning general manager is going to have higher name recognition than the secretary of state.

And I'm sorry about that, because I like politics and I want other people to like it.

But we have to be realistic.

He comes in here with a certain amount of built in name recognition.

Yeah, that's an important point.

So name recognition and also, you know, I'm sure he was paid quite well.

But not only, you know probably does he have some some financial resources.

But being in that, you know, professional sports, you also know people who have financial resources.

So that's a double whammy.

Name recognition.

Plus you know, possibly, you know, pretty the ability to fundraise fairly quickly.

Bill.

Well I think it's intriguing.

We're a little... how far we out now.

We're about a year and a half.

August of 26 is when the primary is.

So yeah, by year and a half.

But Michael and I know it's never too early to start.

Or for fundraising right.

Hopefully we'll have, you know, his connection with the royals and whatnot.

Does this, should we read any tea leaves into whether Kansas is going to be successful with bringing the Royals, on this side of the state line?

You know, it's a he's a little too far down the road.

Maybe when that decision is going to be made.

But it could be it could it could be a campaign issue.

That drives the point home.

The sports is very political, whether it's tax abatements for sports stadiums or public, the public building, a sports stadium or whether it's, you know, like the NFL responding to the Trump presidency, sports is very political.

So there's a lot of connection between those worlds.

Yeah, I suspect that this this name recognition, that you're talking about gets his foot in the door and gets in people, gets recognized, but he's going to have to show a whole lot more than, how to run a World Series champion, ship team.

Well, I love, part, party primaries.

Because, of course, we know in the general election party identification is so important, and a lot of people do vote.

You know, I'm a Republican.

I'm a Democrat.

That's who I'm voting for.

But when a in a primary, as you're alluding to, they can't just go on their party ID so voters have to sort of check out all these different candidates and all these different factors can come into play.

So I mean I hope he joins just so we have an interesting mix of candidates, maybe some of the other candidates hoping that he doesn't join.

But for us, political analysis analyst Michael, I think that could be pretty exciting.

You know, Bob there may be a lane open for him, in his announcement.

And his announcement is that he may run, not that he is running but he did make an announcement.

He talked a lot about consensus building and so forth.

There are a lot of polls and focus groups showing that a lot of folks that that aren't super political would like to see a consensus builder.

So, the problem, as you mentioned, Bob, is getting past the party primary because the parties want a partizan.

But if he could somehow survive that, you know, there may be a lane open.

And a lot of a number of athletes have been unsuccessful, but those are athletes.

I think what he could bring to the table is, hey, I've run a big organization, you know, Herschel Walker in Georgia.

Yeah.

You know, did not did not win.

But okay, Bill, you are clearly anxious to talk about star bonds because you brought it up.

But it is the natural segway David Moore Kansas City Royals.

So the the Kansas legislature, passed a bill the governor signed to try to entice the royals and or the chiefs, to, build stadiums on the Kansas side of the border.

And now they need to reauthorize those star bonds.

So very briefly, we, you know, we could do a whole show on it, but tell us what the star bonds are that they're reauthorizing, and they want to expand it to malls as well.

And then we'll, quickly, you know, see if Michael and I have any idea if the stadium is going to happen and any new news, Well, the the quick and dirty primer is star Bonds is it's a super charged incentive because the the state will forgive or, take their sales tax portion of the sales tax, which is two thirds of when you for every dollar you spend on buying something, and you have a nine, 9% sales tax, 6%, $0.06 of that, that $0.09 is is the state.

So it's a huge deal.

It's not a local sales tax forgiveness or so that's why this is so important in many states.

Most states do not have this.

And so, this is why we get into it.

So the question will be if you if can you actually, use this in a way to, to bring a, a questionable revenue producing organization you know, a baseball team, a football team that they're, they're limited in the number of games they play and limited in the number of sales tax that the generates.

So the idea is to do a star bond district and include maybe other development around there to, to to pay off the bonds that will ultimately help build the stadiums.

And just for context, this is I think it goes up to a billion.

Okay.

They can they can do a billion of bonds, if I'm not mistaken.

And the largest one we've ever done in Kansas is like a 100,000, not a hundred A 100 million.

Excuse me.

So this is this is a massive ...which is the legends area, right?

Correct.

Yes.

Which is the.

Speedway and the legends, is the number one tourist destination.

It's done really well here in that program.

Others have not fared as well, but that is, the shining example.

And when they fail, the taxpayers are on the hook.

Somebody has to pay off those bonds.

Like with the Prairie Fire Project in Overland Park.

So it is not risk free for the taxpayer.

It's not free money.

Nope.

As I say, nope.

There's a lot of rumors.

I listen to the Kansas City sports talk radio.

You can imagine what I'm hearing.

There's a, I'll just report what I'm hearing on.

There's a bit of panic on the Kansas, the Kansas City side.

The Missouri side.

There's a bit of a panic.

They seem to think there might be some momentum on the Kansas side, largely because Missouri has not seemed to really, shown any great sense of urgency.

And whereas Kansas passed this bill in about a day.

Right.

You said, here you go.

Michael, are you hearing anything?

I know you spent a lot of time, you know, in Kansas City.

And are you hearing anything there or am I just getting that from the Kansas City radio, this panic that maybe Missouri is, is losing any momentum they might have had?

Well, I, I think your your instincts are pretty good, Bob.

I think that if one of the professional teams were to move, of course, Sporting Kansas City is already in Kansas for any of the other ones, it would be the Royals.

And the reason I say that is because, the Chiefs, we're going to pretend the worlds are the Super Bowl didn't happen this year.

The Chiefs have had a winning record.

There's a lot of support.

Football stadiums can be repurposed for things like music concerts pretty easily.

And they are.

But also money is going to be pouring into Arrowhead because of the World Cup in 2026, and it's too late to build a new stadium.

It will be at Arrowhead.

And so the Royals don't have that.

And they're also arguing that the stadium, although it was built at the same time, has more problems with the concrete.

So I do agree that if a team were to move, it'd be more likely to be the Royals.

Now, there's a little bit of a hitch on that.

The legends area is, although it's in Wyandotte County, it's pretty suburban.

It's out in western Wyandotte County.

And what the Royals have been wanting is an urban stadium where the legends isn't urban.

It's accessible only by car.

It's it's very suburban in character.

Johnson County, same thing.

And so they would have to completely switch up their game plan because what they were wanting is to be in downtown Kansas City, and the legends doesn't have that character.

So this is a story that, to be continued.

But right now, and who knows, maybe it's a smokescreen.

You know, maybe the leaking that Kansas is in the lead could just be, a smokescreen for those on the Missouri side trying to goose the Missourians...

It could be.

...to do something here.

Yeah.

Wasn't there a little little cat out of the bag and the legislature that we were?

We're close to one, if not two.

Yeah.

There was a hearing where a Kansas, Republican legislator said, no, we don't want to take we want to mess with a fund that that helps with stadiums because we're, we're very close to to getting the and that.

Got everybody in Missouri excited.

I don't know if that's.

the word, excited.

But, Yeah.

Scared.

Moving on.

You know, in the national scene, Donald Trump, is president and let's just say causing causing a lot of headlines.

And, you know, for many Democrats and others saying, oh, the vibes are not good, but maybe this has also happened at the in Kansas at the local level.

Bill, tell us about a strange sort of a scene that occurred in the Kansas legislature involving a couple legislators.

Oh, you mean the ruckus?

The ruckus.

There's, two representatives from Wichita.

Ford Carr and Nick Hoheisel That, allegedly, on the floor of the house.

Representative Hoheisel approached, Representative Carr's desk and, whether whether it's some, maybe he said horse feathers or, maybe his horse feathers.

I'm not sure if that's, We'll go with that.

the PG version of what he said.

But anyway, it was a bit incendiary and, all debate stopped, and, and there was a, a pause and all the work there on the, on the chamber, people got up and describe what happened.

They all went to their corners.

And it ended up leaking, somehow that, there was some, representative Carr believed tha the the representative Hoheisel approached, some may have been carrying some extra, weight.

Some some, what does he call it?

Equalizers.

Equalizer.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was an equalizer because, he wasn't quite the stature of representative Carr So yeah.

So there was these words and what what we're really finding out here, other than, this is representative Carr”s second, dalliance in, in the kerfuffle, the gun policy for legislators.

It is different than what you and I would experience in a public building that has security, has metal detectors like they have the state house.

If your public building has has metal detectors and security like they have there with the, Capitol Police.

You cannot conceal and carry your your weapon.

So there is it's carved out legislators can do that.

If there's any estimate that, 40 out of 165 of them might carry.

The number came from a a reporter this week.

So, people are a little unnerved.

And when I say people will be, the legislators are a little unnerved that, you know, you get into a heated argument.

Is this this kind of this divisiveness that we're in now of not just not divisiveness, but kind of acting out and, and name and, you know, almost intimidation type tactics that we see nationally, you know, came onto the floor, could some, some hotheads and that's a quote, hotheads.

Be brandishing and waving guns around on the floor.

So that's but why can so will this prompt a look into legislators gun toting policies?

I doubt it.

The first instinct, to be honest, seem to be, I see nothing.

Nothing happened here.

But, Representative Carr has filed a formal complaint, so this story is not going going away.

And, again, it's another thing we'll keep our eye on.

But we know that national politics has gotten much in general the last eight years or so, just more aggressive and coarse you know, whether you like him or not, the president, will go on or at least I've seen it going on Twitter or X or whatever we call it with swear words.

Absolutely.

It's not something that happened before, you know, it's and that's the model and, you know, and many might say it's not shocking then to see legislators, you know, say that behavior and say, well, I guess it's okay to, to bang on people's desks and with, epithets and.

Norms are really breaking down.

You know, the, historians say that in private, Dwight Eisenhower could curse up a storm, but, boy, you never saw that in public.

And it's even hard to imagine because of his public persona.

Those norms are really, really serious.

I mean, time was you could be kicked off the floor of the House or Senate if you weren't wearing a tie.

And, maybe that's going a little too far, but but those norms did serve an important purpose.

And there are certain standards of conduct I think we should have for all of our lawmakers.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I which is why I think the the legislative leaders should not just, say this is an isolated incident.

But we have to move on.

Let's quickly go to elections.

Michael.

There's all these different election bills.

Which one would you like to?

Well, let's.

We got the Supreme Court constitutional amendment possible changing that.

And then we also have another one involving filling vacant offices.

Which one would you like to address?

Oh, let's do the Supreme Court.

Just talk of direct election of Supreme Court judges.

Now, there are states that do this.

And, Ohio, for example, is one of the states that does that.

And, you have to raise a tremendous amount of money to run for judge.

Ohio's the one I'm most familiar with and not surprisingly, Democrats raise a lot of money from labor unions, and Republicans raise a lot of money from business interests, exactly as you would expect.

And I think there's some real questions about that from from both informally, my conversations with my students, because I teach a whole unit on judge selection and polls, I've seen most voters actually like, plans like merit selection, also known as the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan, because that's where it was started.

That do allow the voters to vote on retaining judges in office.

But but they also allow some distance between politics and judicial selection.

I think from what I've heard from Republicans, who are the ones pushing this, I think they they maybe they'll do it, maybe they'll pass it.

I don't think the governor will want any part of it.

But I think what they really have an issue is, is the commission, the perform produces the short list of nominees.

And I think if this goes into compromise, they might agree to keep merit selection.

But they want to modify that commission because they see that as being dominated by lawyers and other members of the public not having a voice.

You wanted to comment on?

Yeah.

He's on Michael's on the something here he ended up with.

It's dominated by lawyers.

I think it would be helpful for the public to know a little, about this, because it is.

It is the only thing like it in, in the 50 states, 21 states have partizan or nonpartisan elections.

So there's a less of a majority of states that do elections.

Most of them do this merit sort of nomination and then a retention vote.

Yeah.

Typically which Kansas has, which Kansas has.

It's the nominating this committee.

It's the only, everybody all of the states that don't do vote, elections have nominating committees.

Ours... more than half five of the nine on that committee are made up of lawyers.

And the bar association appoints those.

So this is the only one with bar assisted, if that's correct, for a bar assistant, committee, nominating committee.

And the other four are bipartisan, appointments.

And so this, tends to hopefully weed out the politics of it all.

Right.

But we are a very we are a bit of a unicorn when it comes to this.

Yeah.

Is our is this a way to get around, or having more assurance that there's some control of, of direct, either through the voter system or, because you would think in Kansas you might have more conservative, judges if it went to a statewide vote.

You might think that.

Well, I.

Think it was Attorney General Kobach that actually specifically said that he'd like to see a change because the Kansas Supreme Court is is too liberal.

And of course, he did.

And and that, you know, that happens at the national level.

It can be dependent on what the judges you get are dependent on when somebody might pass away or retires.

And who happens to be governor or president at that time.

So there is, yes, a, an element of, of partizanship to this.

Yeah.

If you really want to change the court in Kansas, you go out and and put your governor in place that you want that that's kind of right.

That's, that's how it should much like a bit at the national level, except the president doesn't get a, three candidates.

And so that there's that if that change happens, it'll have to be a constitutional amendment.

And if I'm correct, then the governor does not have anything to do with that, that.

That is.

Just have to sign that it.

Would I just the bully pulpit.

Yeah.

Would be the only thing.

So yeah.

The the bill where she would ever say there's an actual bill, Michael is a bill that would, change how, if if there's a vacant office for U.S. senate treasurer or insurance commissioner, the current system is the governor appoint somebody.

There you go.

And they fill out the term.

The bill that's being proposed would be that a there's a commission in the House, in the Senate.

And then they pick three nominees and then it goes to the governor.

But they have to be the same party as the person leaving.

So what do you think of that?

I think I kind of like it, but the problem I have is the good old commission, which is in the legislature.

And and so my question is, you know, they're all the Republicans and Democrats, whereas the unaffiliated it's I always say that, hey, where's the unaffiliated?

Well, they're not going to be on that commission.

So I know some other states have, redistricting commissions where they specifically get unaffiliated.

California.

I'll throw it to you.

Yeah, you're exactly right.

You know, this bill is is, less sweeping, you know, how often does this happen?

I'm not saying never.

They might run for another office and get elected or something like that, have a health challenge and step down.

But, this is already something that's done for in district offices.

And of course, my favorite story about that would be when, Phil Klein was defeated, by Paul Morrison for Attorney General.

Paul Morrison had switched parties.

He used to be a Republican, Johnson County DA.

He ran as a Democrat.

So the Johnson County Republican Party appointed Phil Klein to Paul Morrison's old office.

And they literally switched offices.

So it's really just kind of taking something that's already done in district and moving it up to the state level.

Yeah, much less sweeping than the judge thing.

The judge thing is something that viewers should be keeping an eye on, right?

Yes.

Well, time flies when you're having fun.

We have a few minutes left, but I want to make sure, Bill, we get to the infamous property taxes.

We got, you know, just 3 or 4 minutes.

So, sum up the bill.

You, you know, there's a new bill.

Where do you see this going in a couple of minutes, and then we'll we'll respond to that.

All right.

The horse trade.

We got a five entrants in this horse race, two this week.

And, the ones that I can just just sum it up real quick.

There's two constitutional amendments that would cap property values.

One's hard at 3%.

The other one is kind of this rolling six year average, a little softer.

If you've got a couple of mill levy reductions that have been proposed, one for the state building maintenance, mill and then, one for the school mill, which is I think, DOA at least, in my opinion, I think I think and then there's one more, which is allowing, putting, setting up a fund to give local governments a little, a little sweetener, $60 million fund, if they can keep their revenue below inflation.

The, this this is not a new concept.

It's it's a revival of an old concept.

Of those I really would be watching.

I think there might be two that come out of this.

I think there will be, support for eliminating the state off your property tax bill at all.

There's 1.5 mil on your property tax bill for state buildings.

Let's get rid of it.

Let's get rid of it.

Ty Masterson has said, why do we need to be on there?

And then the other one is one of these constitutional, I think the constitutional amendment with, with maybe the rolling average seems to, they want to smooth out those those steep spikes and shocks to people's property tax bills and that that might catch people's, interest.

Without it, it doesn't look like it has to kill local government services, either of of any.

Oh go ahead.

I was just going to mention.

We got to.

Yeah, about two minutes.

You already know this bill.

But just so our viewers know, the state share of property taxes is really quite small.

And so there could be a shock in store for Kansas voters on that, that state share piece, because even if they do away with it, it's not going to change your property tax bill.

Where we're really going to the rubber meets the road is assessments right.

It's all about how they assess your property.

We just got a little bit of time.

Is there is there an issue or something coming up.

We obviously we didn't have time for everything that you're going to keep your eye on.

I spotted something that in that it's going forward Kansas sports tourism grants.

I think it's a good idea because, you know, you get these high school tournaments and everything, but, you know, :20 Michael, you got something you're keeping your eye on, literally :20s.

There is a bill moving.

It comes out of some drama we had down at Emporia State a few years ago that would do away with tenure for, academics throughout the state of Kansas, taking a small dispute at Emporia State and making it kind of statewide.

Those of us who are academics are quite concerned about that.

Academic freedom is really a pillar of what we do.

I've been told that the bill will not be passed as written and to expect changes, but it's one that we'll be keeping an eye on.

Name the bill you got 10s.

If you go low income, low income housing tax credits at the state level are going to be eliminated.

Okay.

And that's very contrarian for affordable housing, right.

Watch it.

We'll keep our eye on that.

That's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org For IGI I'm Bob Beatty.

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Thank you.