- Coming up next on IGI, the 2021 Kansas Legislative Session is over and our political advisors are back to analyze and discuss the decisions made and how they will impact the citizens of Kansas.

Stay with us.

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(bright upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to IGI.

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

In case you are wondering why things look a little different, we are located on the set of our new series "Inspire".

And sitting next to me is one of our hosts for "Inspire", Amber Dickinson.

Be sure to tune in Thursdays at 8:00 PM on KTWU starting tonight.

Well, we have experienced quite a year with Corona virus, election drama, civil unrest, and now wrap it up with the conclusion of a legislative session that included culture war battles, proposed legislation on gun control, abortion, election laws.

Joining me now to discuss the results of the 2021 Legislative Session and how the impending changes will impact Kansans, are Dr. Amber Dickinson, Washburn University assistant professor of political science, Abigail Censky, the Lead Political Reporter for the Kansas News Service, and Dr. Michael Smith, Emporia State University professor of political science.

Thank you all for joining me.

And I was thinking earlier that there are some sessions where there's two or three big topics that occur at legislative sessions, and looking over this most recent legislative session, I was almost shocked by the number of things that appeared, and not just bills that were passed, but those that weren't passed or were passed and vetoed.

And it really was amazing, because what I was thinking was... oh, and also there was a pandemic occurring.

And it sort of was unexpected that in the midst of a pandemic, the legislature would be so active.

So that seems like a good place to start.

Abigail, what sort of laws or action came up regarding COVID and the Governor and the powers of the Governor?

- Yeah, one of the most interesting things to me was the passage of Senate Bill 40 which greatly limited Governor Kelly's pandemic powers in the Kansas Emergency Management Act.

And that was so interesting to me coming from Michigan, also a state with a Democratic governor, because the Michigan Governor's powers are still very much intact, where Governor Kelly's pandemic powers were weakened quite a bit.

Counties were given the opportunity to opt out of mask mandates.

And then with the passage of Senate Bill 40, you saw the Legislative Coordinating Council, excuse me, this group of eight lawmakers, essentially able to give permission whether the State can remain in a state of emergency, which is something that is going to be impacted very soon coming up, and also things like rescinding her executive orders.

Just a week ago, we saw an executive order on the foreclosure and eviction moratorium just rescinded that day.

So that took away a lot of the Governor's ability to respond to the pandemic kind of unilaterally.

- Now, Michael and Amber, sometimes it's really hard to unpack the politics of these sorts of things, you know, to what Abigail mentioned, in terms of with a Democratic Governor, a Republican legislature.

We know many Republicans say, "Oh, we don't want the Governor to have too much power," but how much do you think it is, start with Michael, having somebody from a different party in the governor's seat?

I don't know, I know it's hard to guess, but would this all happen if it had been a Republican governor?

- I think that's an excellent question.

In a lot of states, Missouri comes to mind, Republican Governors were pretty wary of tough statewide restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic, but there are a few exceptions.

Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio comes to mind.

He was very aggressive and continues to be in combating the pandemic, but he's kind of an outlier among Republicans.

So I think definitely there was a partisan issue, but the culture war seems to define almost everything, even things you wouldn't think that it would these days.

And so a lot of it is the values underlying the two political parties these days.

And then one more piece, Bob, as you know, is the word primary is now a verb, as in to primary someone, and many of these Republicans have got to look out that if they support the Governor or any kind of mandates for COVID, they very well could get primaried.

- And I should add that at least in Kansas we had two candidates already declare for governor, and they were the earliest declarations I had seen.

So during the session, the Governor was dealing with two candidates who were actually actively running against her.

But I wanna move topics, Dr. Dickinson, to even before the session started, abortion came up, a lot of legislators saying, "We're gonna tackle this abortion idea."

Tell us what happened a little bit about the amendment and then what they ended up doing.

- So this was a direct response to the Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 saying that abortion is a constitutional right according to the Kansas State Constitution.

And so what's happening now is that there has been a proposal that went through the legislature to allow people that are registered to vote in the State of Kansas in August of 2022 can vote on an amendment that would essentially say, not essentially, it would just absolutely say that you do not have a constitutional right to an abortion in the State of Kansas.

And I think people really need to pay attention to what this is actually saying, because as written, it's basically saying, look, even in the case of rape, incest, or threat to the health of the mother, we are potentially looking at not having access to healthy safe abortions for women that are put in really tough situations.

And I think, not to be indelicate, but I think people really need to listen to what that means.

And this is saying, if you are a rape victim, including by a member of your own family, this could force you to have that baby, and I think that people need to pay attention to that kind of language.

- And in terms of pure politics, Michael, why did they pick August to primary instead of 2022 to have the vote versus November the general election?

'Cause November would have more voters.

- It would, exactly, and good question, Bob.

A couple of reasons.

The first is what I just said, the primary.

This brings out voters that vote on that primary ballot.

We know primaries tend to pull a lower turnout.

That is a big factor.

The Republicans have a very exciting primary coming up, they wanna get more voters out, and that will help certain Republicans and hurt others.

But the other issue is that there is some concern that the general electorate in November may not pass it.

Of course, generally Democrats support abortion rights, especially these days it's become much more polarized, but also there might be some libertarian leaning Republicans that could form a coalition.

They're a little wary.

Now with the Republicans having competitive primaries which the Democrats rarely do, they expect a really strong Republican turnout for the primary, they're betting on August as the best way to get that amendment passed.

- Now there's some issues that seem to be all over the place nationally, and we'll get to a couple of them, one involved transgender athletes, Abigail, tell us about that.

- Yeah, so there was a bill in the Kansas Legislature, the session, Fairness and Women's Sports Act proponents called it, and it would have banned transgender athletes from playing on women's and girls' sports teams.

And that very narrowly failed an override attempt.

Governor Kelly did veto the measure.

She called it a job killer and said, not only was this bullying towards transgender people and kids, but also that it would, you know, make the business community stray away from bringing businesses to Kansas and larger corporations, that kind of thing.

And it was a very narrow failure for the override attempt in the Senate, and it was actually a Democratic Senator from the Kansas City area, David Haley, who they kind of forced his hand to vote and held open the vote, and that's how the bill failed.

But it was part of this kind of arc of bills that was going on nationally, and this legislation was introduced, very similar legislation was introduced in 33 different states.

- And that's a real, I should say, threat, is there have been cases in professional sports to college sports in the last few years where legislatures have passed bills, and companies or sporting organizations have pulled out events.

So, you know, I would say I don't think governor Kelly is wrong in saying there could be an impact, right?

- No, in fact we've heard a national organization specifically say, "We're not going to go to events where people are not creating a safe environment that's free from discrimination."

- And we saw that play out with the nicknames, I should say, you know, of a mascot, which has largely played out, but a lot of that was started when the NCAA started pulling tournaments.

But Dr. Smith, you get this tug of war between these cultural issues, but then also many Republicans who are very sort of pro-business who say, "Can we stay away from that a little bit," because this actually may not be good for business, right?

- You know, it brings to mind the late 1990s early 2000s with the move to de-emphasize evolution and state science standards, and Governor Graves, a Republican was very vocal in opposition.

He made exactly the argument that both of you just made, this hurts business.

There's an idea out there, it's called human capital or creative class, that college educated people generally expect tolerance, and you want them settling in your state so that the employers that hire them will come to your state.

If you can't get the high-skill workers to live there, you can't get the employers that hire them.

And that's part of this whole debate.

It's complicated, but it's basically an argument that these things are not just cultural, they have economic consequences.

- I think in addition to the economic consequences, we also have to really focus on this as a mental health issue, that if you are sending people a message that they are not allowed to participate in something, what is that doing to them from a mental health perspective?

So I think in addition to the economic focus, you have to think of it from that human level as well.

- And there were some very sort of emotional stories around that.

- If I could add something that I was thinking about in your response, it's not only the business community for some business minded Republicans, it was also Republicans who are a small government, and said the Kansas High School Athletic Association already has a policy, local school boards can decide this.

And they said, you know, this flies in the face of basic democratic principles, and it didn't only fail because the Republicans didn't get enough people to vote for the override attempt, it also failed because some moderate Republicans joined the Democrats and voted to sustain the Governor's veto.

- Yeah, and we've seen this play out, we're seeing it playing out in the United States with the Trump faction of the Republican Party, the more traditional Republicans, and I think we're gonna continue to see it played out, which brings us to elections.

Now, I should state, and all three of you I'm sure will wanna comment on this, that as far as I can tell, Kansas which has a Republican Secretary of State has had very clean elections, has not had a lot of problems, and gets through any sort of tie votes or whatever very easily, there just hasn't been a lot of election scandals.

Nationally, a lot of legislatures took up this problem that many other proclaimed with the American election system.

So I did think, you know, well it actually might be difficult to find something to fix in Kansas and they did seem to find a few things.

So I'll start with Dr. Dickinson, what did they find to fix?

- Well, they're trying to address this issue of voter fraud, but I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that there is not a lot of evidence to support that this is this huge rampant problem in Kansas, right?

In fact, we see that the Heritage Foundation who is a conservative think tank, is tracking this, and since 2005, there've been 14 confirmed cases of voter fraud.

Most recently a Republican Congressional member, Steve Watkins, right?

And so I think the first thing to focus on is that these attempts to solve this problem of voter fraud that doesn't seem to actually be a problem, what's really happening is that it's damaging this basic democratic principle which is the right to vote.

Because they're doing things like saying, all right, well, if you sign your ballot and it doesn't exactly match your registration, then this is going to be null, but I don't see much information about how we're training people to look for that kind of thing.

Or they're talking about limiting organization's ability to educate people about issues, and in particular, they're limiting how many ballots that an individual can deliver on behalf of other people, they're limiting it to 10, which is really, really detrimental, especially to people like our elderly population who really relies on someone getting their ballot in for them, or you're disabled population.

This is particularly going to be problematic for students or minorities as well.

We see a disproportionate impact on those groups and it's really damaging.

- And Abigail?

- Yeah, like Professor Dickinson said, I think that the notion that this is a rampant problem in Kansas was, you know, kind of contradicted by Republican floor speeches when they were talking about this legislation, because they said, you know, there really wasn't a lot of problems in the 2020 election specifically.

But as you mentioned, this is part of this nationwide push to tighten access to voting after the 2020 election.

And the Brennan Center for Justice has found that 14 different states have enacted policies similar to these policies in Kansas.

And I think we're starting to see kind of the response to that because we have one statewide lawsuit for advocacy organizations who are saying you know, this inability for people to return more than 10 ballots on behalf of other voters, that violates the Kansas State Constitution.

And then we also have a federal lawsuit as well.

So whether this actually remains in place I think is also an important question, because groups are challenging this in Kansas and all over the country.

- And to add to that, I wanna say that, to go back to our discussion about the Abortion Amendment, I think there's a direct connection between limiting the amount of ballots that you can deliver on behalf of a group in the amendment.

Because the idea is that you want to limit the ability for people to collect ballots that may be not in favor of this amendment.

- I'm gonna get to Michael, Michael has written a lot about voting issues, but what I'm a little bit concerned about is one of the facets of the new law was to make it a harsher penalty, for quote, unquote, "Impersonating an election official."

Now on the surface of that, we may think, "Well, that's good.

Yes, we should have her throw people in jail if they're pretending to be election officials."

But I visited a number of countries, that let's just say they're more authoritarian than not, and it this idea of threatening people.

So you could see now, you know, threatening someone who's out there handing out leaflets or encouraging people to vote, or having a booth, a sign up booth, and saying, "Well, it looks like you're trying to pretend to be an election official, you know that's a felony, right?"

So I just wanted to point that out that the surface is, "Oh, this might be a really good law," but there's also this intimidation factor.

But Dr. Smith, you've done a lot of research, and a lot of people argue, this is a Republican State, that Republicans might be shooting themselves in the foot.

That actually in many high turnout elections, not all, but in many high turnout elections in Kansas, like in 2020, Republicans do very well.

So any possibility of suppressing the vote may not be good for them.

You know, what do you think?

- I think that's well said.

We've seen that in North Carolina as well, which is a much closer state for party breakdown, that a higher turnout does not necessarily benefit Democrats, that's the conventional wisdom.

And with many laws that do appear to suppress voters, photo ID is a good example, they suppress just as many Republican as they do Democratic voters.

One concern about this vote, which I wouldn't have said if it hadn't been for the events of this year, particularly January 6th, but that these laws may undermine American's faith in the electoral college, I'm sorry, the electoral system itself and in democracy itself, and again, January 6th would be a case in point.

I do wanna stress, I do study this, that there was no widespread voter fraud in the other states either.

There wasn't any widespread voter fraud in any state, period.

And that is, we have enough data to say that conclusively.

- So even if it's just passing two laws, I think in the Kansas Legislature, are you sort of implying there's an element of, well, our system doesn't work very well, our election system, even though actually it has been doing pretty well and that undermines democracy?

- Well, the argument I think is rather odd, because what the legislators said is there's no problem in Kansas so let's pass laws to fix it.

Which I'm not seeing the logical continuity.

Their concern is clearly with absentee and mail-in ballots, their concern is clearly with outside groups, but it seems to be part of a narrative that suggests that any ballot not counted in-person on election day is suspect.

In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with voting in-person on election day, in some ways early voting is overrated, but the problem is when you get into long lines, which haven't historically been a problem in Kansas but it is a possibility in places like Wyandotte, Shawnee and Sedgwick County.

- I have listed here, the topic of healthcare and then I ended up all these topics under healthcare and several of them didn't happen, but they're interesting why they didn't happen.

So Abigail, of the healthcare issues which one would you wanna start with?

(Abigail chuckles) - Well, I guess the healthcare issue that didn't happen was Medicaid expansion.

Governor Kelly is certainly sorry about that.

And I think that conversation was really over before it started because the leadership pretty much quashed that more quickly than they have in previous sessions in Kansas.

Another one though that almost did happen was inability for short-term insurance plans to be extended, and the governor vetoed that plan.

And that was one of Governor Kelly's really few victories during this veto session, she didn't have very many.

But they didn't have enough legislators there on the last day of veto session to override that.

So Kansas short-term insurance plans cannot be extended more than two years at this point, and that's called junk insurance by many advocates, because it doesn't cover as much as regular insurance plans.

- [Amber] Including preexisting conditions.

- [Abigail] Yes.

- Why are those called junk insurance plans, Amber?

I mean, is that the main reason they don't cover- - Yeah, I mean, the idea is that you might be in a situation where you have a gap in your policy, maybe you've left a job and you're waiting to start a new job and so you may have to have some kind of short-term insurance plan, which sounds all well and good, except for the fact that this short term insurance doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, which for many, many, many people in this state is a huge problem.

And the concern that Governor Kelly kept talking about was this idea that we're gonna force people into bankruptcy with this kind of policy and it's very, very problematic.

- One more thing on mental health, Michael, you wanted to talk about something that was passed that you said was a very good thing.

- Yes, Representative Landwehr was a big proponent of it, it makes it much easier to establish and license and operate community mental health centers.

And I personally think that's a really, really good thing.

I think mental health is one of those greatly under-covered and underfunded issues that underlies a lot of other social problems.

And this bill will remove a lot of obstacles to setting up these community mental health centers in places where if it is successful people may feel more comfortable reaching out for mental health care, because there's not only a shortage of opportunities, there's also a lot of stigma.

- Now, we mentioned some issues where Kansas sorta jumped a little bit on board with some national trends, many states have passed at least medical marijuana, but Kansas just does not want to do it and they didn't do it again.

I read an article where a Republican leader said, "Well, we're getting there."

You know, very quickly what is the reticence with medical...

I'm not talking, you know, everyone out there having fun on the street corner, on the Colorado border, just medical marijuana.

Did you get into that when you were there at the end of the session?

- Yeah, I think there's a real split between some Republicans, almost between millennial Republicans and older Republicans in many ways, that some believe that medical marijuana is absolutely necessary.

And you trial for people who have any number of medical conditions where it can help their treatment, and they would be using medical marijuana with very strict provisions in Kansas if the version that actually passed the House were to pass the Senate and be enacted into law, you would have to have a relationship with your provider for six months before you are able to get that recommendation, and counties would be able to opt out of actually growing or dispensing marijuana.

So I think there are just still a lot of traditional conservative Republicans who think this is absolutely a gateway to recreational and we've seen it in lots of other states.

They have Colorado close by, and many people look at how it's advertised in a state like Oklahoma and they say, "This is a cautionary tale, we don't want this," which leaves Kansas as one of, I believe three states, that doesn't have medical marijuana now.

- Yeah, it's remarkable.

- To tag onto this or the specifics of that bill, they've gotten really specific in terms of what will even qualify you for medical marijuana.

So for example, it listed things like multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's, or things where people are really suffering with their symptoms.

And then they've also said that no home growing, you wouldn't be allowed to grow it at home.

And so I think that the language in the bill is really responsible and is really looking at this from a perspective of we understand there are reservations and we're trying to address that.

- And if I could jump in Bob, you know I studied the Missouri-Kansas border, which is where the population of Kansas is massed, a lot of it.

Missouri has medical marijuana and it is being sold, it is being done.

This is a huge issue with so many Kansans living close to a border with a state where it is legal.

Technically it would be illegal to fill a prescription in Missouri and bring it back to Kansas, which could ironically mean that people use it prior to driving home.

We used to call that blood borders with regards to alcohol use, and so I think this is a border issue.

- Well, we have literally less than one minute, but I did ask you is there an issue and you just tell me the issue, we don't have to discuss it, that we haven't talked about, that you found interesting in this session.

We have 30 seconds, so you got five seconds, Michael.

- Kris Kobach is back, he wants to be your attorney general.

- All right, Abigail.

- I think that these culture war issues are really kind of primary insurance for Republicans as well in addition to just what Governor Kelly can kind of stand up against, and I thought that was an interesting dynamic this session.

- I'm always going to be interested in gun control issues.

- All right.

Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for our future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org, if you'd 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, thanks for watching.

(bright upbeat music) - [Announcer] KNEA, empowering educators so that educators can empower Kansas students.

- [Announcer] This program is brought to you with support from The Louis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust, and from The Friends of KTWU.