From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio.

PBS Kansas presents Kansas Week on this edition of Kansas Week.

Another rate hike is on the table for Evergy customers.

We'll tell you about the new settlement that could raise your bill by nearly 10%.

Also, a major court ruling on advance voting ballots in Kansas.

A federal judge strikes down a state law calling it an unconstitutional attempt to suppress free speech.

But first, the field becomes more crowded this week in the race for Kansas governor, with nearly a dozen candidates already announced.

One of the state's most powerful Republicans enters the fray, framing himself as a culture warrior and setting the stage for a contentious primary.

We'll discuss those stories and more right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

The battle to become Kansas next governor is revving up already with nearly a dozen candidates from both parties already in the race for more than a year before the election.

Among the latest to jump in is one of the state's most powerful figures.

Republican Senate President Tim Masterson.

He has launched his campaign just this week, framing himself as a culture warrior, touting his record on banning transgender athletes and fighting so-called woke ideology.

Masterson's entry shakes up a crowded Republican primary that's already filled with prominent officeholders, including former Governor Jeff Colyer.

Meanwhile, the Democratic field led by state senators Cindy Holsinger and Ethan Corson.

It's also lining up to oppose that agenda, arguing it would drag Kansas backwards.

Among our guests this week is Senator Ty Masterson, along with State Representative John Carmichael Kake, news senior political reporter Pilar Pedraza, and Wichita City Councilwoman Becky Tuttle.

And in fairness, we offer an open invitation to each of the gubernatorial candidates to appear on this show as soon as it fits into their schedules.

Welcome to all of you to this panel today.

Senator, I'll begin with you.

Since you've jumped into this governor's race.

Number one, tell me why you're running.

It's going to be a crowded field.

How do you stand out from the other Republican candidates?

Thank you for having me on.

And that's a it's a fair question.

It is.

It's a crowded field now.

Right where I think some people lose track.

This is like 2026 election.

Right.

The filing deadline formally for this is June of next year.

And the election for the primary is not until August.

So there's time to get to know the candidates.

And I think you'll see those kind of winnow out as time goes.

And and people learn who's who and who can raise money and who can connect with the people.

So I'm just I think what makes me different from from the crowd here is I'm probably unique in the sense, at least of the major candidates that I relate to the average Kansan, because I am the average Kansan.

Right?

I've I've gone through personal struggles.

I've had I've been up against hard times.

I've had bounce backs.

I've fought and won because I have a I know what people are going through.

I'm probably the only major candidate can't stroke my campaign $1 million check out of my own bank account.

What do you mean by culture warrior?

What does that mean?

So culture warrior to me, and I mean we use the word, you know, what gets thrown around?

I think woke is really it's what comes from the ideology that I see.

They use the term, I like it like it's a good thing and the diversity is a good thing.

Inclusion is a good thing, but it's become a term thrown around really, for an ideology that kind of breeds in my division.

In my mind, hatred.

I mean, we divide ourselves up by our physical characteristics and tell everybody that there's something wrong with you and that that's not a good thing.

We need to we need to love everybody in our community, no matter what they look like or what their background is.

So that's a culture war.

So that manifests itself in a way of like like you, you mentioned in the lead of keeping biological men out of my girl sports.

You I mean, it's says I have I have four daughters and they're all athletes.

And it's not just my it's, it's, that's a that's a popular issue in Kansas, a popular it's widely understood between Republicans and Democrats.

So that's not a good thing.

And so that's how it manifests itself in those.

But then honestly, the transgender surgeries for children, another thing that's in that culture war that most all people understand is probably not a good thing.

So that's probably what what I would point to the most in the culture war time.

Masterson is a Republican representative.

Carmichael, you are a Democrat.

I can only assume you may have a couple of differences.

You know, Ty and people like Ty and the Democrats like me, we've argued and beat this dog.

Their horse about won't and what is a DUI and all of these other things to death.

But we can talk about the political reality here is that there are so many good high dollar, if you will, candidates on the Republican ballot, that what we could see is a plurality nominee coming out of the Republican Party.

And I fear ty, that it might be Vicky Schmidt, because Vicky is moderate.

She's been known to be moderate.

She was in the Senate, but she's shown her capability in the insurance commissioner's office this past eight years.

And I think the rest of you all may be in trouble.

And I.

Talk about how we have so many conservatives in this race, and they could easily split the conservative vote that usually dominates in the primary.

And thus a moderate actually has a chance this time.

Times John, if he's working for Vicky's campaign.

Since you brought up Vicky representative, I'm not since you brought up Vicky.

I'm.

I'm maybe wrong here, but I don't think she toes the Republican line on the abortion issue, which is which will be big historically.

I don't think she has told the party line on abortion.

One of the questions will be whether candidates like Vicky Schmidt run to the right for a nomination and join a pack of culture warriors over on the right side of their party, or whether she stays where she's at and attempts to pull off that plurality victory.

And then she finds herself positioned as a moderate in the middle, in a red state.

And it could be a path to victory.

I mean, we know historically, my party's helped Cedar Crest for the past eight years, and it's like three different.

Thank you.

I mean, sometimes I do, sometimes I sometimes I feel like I'm not the only Democrat who hasn't ran for governor.

And let me move over to City Councilwoman Becky Tuttle.

How does the governor's race, what does the governor's race mean to a city council?

Sure.

And especially the largest city in the state of Kansas.

Right.

And so we have been blessed that we have the Senate president and also the speaker of the House from our own community.

I think that's very helpful.

It helps us in Topeka with our legislative agenda that we have that we do jointly with the county and the Greater Wichita Partnership in the chamber.

So it's certainly something that I'm keen of.

There's eight Republicans, three Democrats already.

We still have a long way to go, as you mentioned, not till June of 2026 for the filing deadline.

So we will be keeping our eye on it.

And, you know, just trying to make sure that we're aware of candidates forums and, you know, with their platforms.

But I do want to say as an elected myself and to tie in to Mr. Carmichael, thank you for your service.

And and I applaud anyone who's willing to run.

Right.

Public service is not easy.

We know that, it campaigning is excruciating and hard.

But then once you get and are in the role and you really serve, that's when it gets even harder.

So anybody who's willing to serve our great state, I'm quite proud of the law.

Within about a minute, you're the you're the senior political reporter at channel ten from from an overall standpoint, what is this governor's race shaping up to be?

It really is shaping up right now on the Republican side to be who's going to stand out that battle to stand out?

And right now, having sat down with a majority of the candidates, Ty obviously just announced I have not done my one on one with him yet.

And there are a couple, others from eastern Kansas that I haven't yet.

But having sat down with the majority of them and talked with them one on one, the only thing that really stood out so far was Vicky Schmidt.

Every other candidate that I have sat down with on the Republican side, the word conservative has come up from the candidate half dozen times minimum in the ten minute interview that we do Vicky Schmidt, not once.

It was mentioned three times in her interview by me.

She did not use the word once.

So that really so far is the only thing that has stood out.

I guarantee you.

As I said, we've got a year to go.

Other things will come up.

We will find out, other ways that people stand out.

And it's going to be those things are that are going to make the difference.

Because for the most part, you know, as Republicans and on the Democratic side, as Democrats in general, they have a lot of the same basic beliefs.

There's not a whole lot of difference between them.

It's finding those points that separate them from the crowd.

Yeah.

We should also remember, we may not have seen all of the candidates right before.

They're more serious candidates on the Republican side who were looking at this.

And I think once Dave Toland didn't run that, we may see more Democrats interested in that.

There's 11 so far.

So I find it very fascinating that Laura Kelly, tweeted out from her personal cat, Laura Kelly case, in support of Ethan Corson.

She has not.

I was surprised as well.

Yeah.

Now our next story.

A federal judge has permanently blocked a 2021 Kansas law that banned voting rights groups from mailing.

Prefer advance ballot applications to voters.

In a sharp rebuke, U.S. District Judge Katherine Ratzel wrote that the law was likely passed not to prevent fraud but to unconstitutionally suppress free speech.

Voting rights groups are calling it a major victory for the First Amendment.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab's office maintains the law was needed to reduce voter confusion, but the ruling now clears the way for the groups to resume their outreach.

You know, this is an interesting one, too.

Is this suppressing free speech?

Representative Carmichael, I'll give you the floor first.

I'll try to do this pretty quick.

A lot of the origin of this came from Tabitha Layman, when she was the election officer in Sedgwick County, and we mailed out to every registered voter at county expense, an application for an advance ballot.

And the end result was a lot more advance ballots came in.

A lot less people showed up at the polls, shorter lines, less expense.

It made sense to do.

But some people started looking at the results and said, oh, this is may have increased Democratic turnout, and maybe that's why we lost some races that year as Republicans.

So the county decided, no, we can't afford to have that advance registration sent out to everyone.

And so private groups moved into and filled that gap.

My Republican colleagues didn't like that, so they made that against the law.

It ended up in front of Judge Rattle, a very conservative Republican judge appointed by Bush.

The first, as I recall, married at one time to John Bradley, in the Kansas Senate.

And she said now twice that this is not constitutional.

It's a restriction on your freedom of speech.

So go ahead.

The law put in their eye when we're talking about those third party, sending applications, ballot applications to folks.

I actually did a series of investigative pieces because I had voters coming to me confused when they were getting them, and there were a lot of errors that were going on because of that.

There were errors in the return addresses.

And so when they would fill them out and send them in, they weren't going to the election office.

They were going someplace else.

And so they thought they had requested a ballot, never got one because they hadn't actually officially requested the ballot.

You know, there were people who were freaking out because it came in from some folks partially filled in, and they're like, who's got my private information?

Well, it's not actually private information.

It's public information.

People don't understand that.

But there's just so many questions about that.

And so that was part of what led to that legislation.

Certainly.

And yes, certainly, there was the change in how many people were voting by mail in that one.

Just rattled says in her opinion, the secretary of state, Scott Schwab, said we had safe and secure elections.

And then in the next breath he says, oops, but we shouldn't allow these advance ballot applications.

Senator, the judge claimed that the defendants did not provide any proof that the law would minimize voter confusion or streamline efficiency.

Do you agree that it might not surprise you that I don't disagree with either John or the judge, and especially with his characterization of her as a conservative judge?

John Bradley, who I knew personally was probably one of the most liberal members of the Kansas Senate that we've ever seen.

So, you know, it's no surprise that you have a judge intervening.

We're seeing that a lot now, right?

Federal judges intervening in a whole bunch of there's they don't live together anymore.

I'd say your characterizations, mischaracterization and end of the issue.

And what Paula brought out is what we were seeing when you have those pre-filled out, there was no question you had a high error percentage of what the information, because you see that you get magazines at your house or something that have the wrong address that was happening on a ballot.

I mean, this is this is your vote.

And there was a lot of confusion.

There were people upset by it.

And it does go to the point we want the most, fair election that we can get with those.

And for any anybody that takes advantage of that, if you have any, even a single fraudulent vote disenfranchizes a eligible voter.

Yeah.

I didn't click like about efficiency was when I was doing those stories, about those third parties sending out these ballot applications.

Part of the problem, too, was people were getting it from two or 3 or 4 different third party organizations.

So they talked about that duplicate.

Exactly.

And then the and wasting the time of the folks in the election office having to deal with the paperwork over and over and over again for somebody who had already requested it, about 14,000 duplicate ballots statewide, which in a 3 million population, in a lot of ways isn't that high.

And error rate, it's probably pretty typical that I know you're all coming to the Sedgwick County, because most of those are coming to Sedgwick County, because they were aimed at groups that traditionally don't vote as frequently, and those are more within the urban area.

I gotta move on.

I'm sorry, state regulators.

I know it's like, wait, wait, wait.

Voters putting Evergy officials in the hot seat this week over a proposed rate hike that would raise the average bill by about nine bucks a month.

The Kansas Corporation Commission, honing in on why the utility agreed to a $128 million increase when it initially asked for nearly 200 million.

Evergreen's vice president testified that the company agreed to lower its proposed profit for investors from 10.5%, down to 9.7%.

A major part of that compromise involves expected revenue from the new Panasonic battery plant in the Kansas City area.

Commissioners are stressing their job is to balance company profits with customer affordability, and they will make a final ruling on the rate increase this September.

It all we you know, for 20 years, Evergy has raised rates nearly every year, sometimes twice a year.

This is year we talk about Evergy raising rates and property taxes.

It hurts local property taxpayers even though this isn't a taxpayer issue, it's an evergy rate increase.

How does it affect your constituents?

Sure.

And $9 a month for some people may not be a lot, but for her, for others it may be, especially those on fixed incomes.

The other thing that I think about is the economic development impact.

We know that if business and industry is thinking of coming to a community, the two things that they look at first is the infrastructure in the utilities, and then they look at workforce and all the other the amenities.

And so, one of the things that, you know, we we are striving at the city of Wichita to make sure that we keep our water rates low for that very reason for our residents, obviously, but also for economic development impact.

So, I mean, it's a much bigger issue than even just our neighbors.

It's also the economic development part of it.

Senator, how how can the state step in if you want to be governor?

What are you going to do to help?

Well, you have it.

You have a complex issue.

That's why you have these governor appointed KCC to mow through that, because it isn't just I've never been in favor of a rate increase because affordability is a big issue, especially on top of inflation and all these things.

But you have to remember, some of this has been pushed with the green movement.

It is pushed our energy to be more expensive to get a particular result.

So that adds to all that.

You put a requirement on somebody and then you're upset when they have to go, look, I pay for it.

I'm not going to defend Entergy average because I don't know what the details were.

But that's the point.

I can't tell you, but there is a balance between cost and and now evermore.

So reliability.

We haven't built a baseload plant in three decades in this state.

And that reliability, you'll see what you had in Texas when you had the Uri storm.

You had too much renewables in the in the generation mix, and it put the whole place down.

We had massive problems.

And you have demand coming from, you know, data centers.

I and the consumers are demanding that service.

And so that's putting a huge load on Representative Carmichael.

They're on the energy Committee 13 years.

Things are the worst today that they have ever been.

As far as electric rates in Kansas and averages seemingly and say, insatiable desire for new rate cases as quickly as possible.

It's great for their shareholders.

The company is doing very well.

It's terrible for their customers.

We pay at this point 12.5% more on a residential bill than it.

Evergy customer in Johnson County.

Now we're going to add another 9.3%.

So it will cost you 21%, 25% more on your electric bill to be an average customer in Wichita than it does in Johnson County.

And why is that?

To equalize?

Why was that?

Never heard.

All of us want to know.

Well, a lot of it is a legacy between the various mergers of the companies over the years, and we could go back to couple test territory with AKG and E test territory.

Wichita got the bad end, the stick, the merger that Evergy had to create Evergy as well as their Western resources star.

We always end up getting the bad and just can't drive for all the green energy, and that's the really result of all that you have.

All that cost has exploded and people like Joe Biden, I will honestly tell you that I don't think that's the problem because it's in the record.

If you don't mind, some of the least expensive energy that we obtain in Kansas is number one, Wolf Creek and number two, wind.

And I was nuclear.

And we won't build a plant.

And when we talk, we're going to talk a little bit about wind here in just a second.

But go ahead.

Quick point about all of this though is you're talking about the cost to consumers and what most people forget is that as Kansans, we actually pay for it twice.

First, we pay for the electricity for our house.

That's having the 9% increase.

And then every time you go to the store, you're going to pay for it again, because the stores have to pay more as well for their electricity and the restaurants and any places that you're going to be spending your money.

And guess what?

They're going to pass that on to them.

And we haven't even talked about transmission delivery charge, which happens automatically.

That's true.

And it's driven by the ESP and the desire to build new power lines all over the Midwest, including in Wyoming, and want us to pay 17% of the bill.

So let's move on to the next story.

A massive energy project planned for over a decade is now hitting a major federal roadblock.

The Trump administration announcing Wednesday it's canceling a nearly $5 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, the project designated to build a nearly 600 mile high voltage transmission line that would carry renewable energy from Kansas wind and solar farms eastward.

Supporters say it's critical for strengthening the power grid by connecting three separate regional energy networks.

But the Department of Energy now says the project's finances are too risky, canceling a commitment made by the previous administration, the Biden administration, and casting uncertainty on the future of this long planned project.

So I guess, and forgive.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but forgive my ignorance.

Why can't evergy buy this electricity that we're talking about shipping to Columbia, Missouri?

Because Evergy already has plenty of energy in Kansas.

Kansas is a net exporter of electricity.

The grain belt line, just like the Mulberry Line down in southeast Kansas, is not really to bring electricity from Chicago to Wichita or to Ford County.

It's to take electricity from Ford County and Dodge City area and send it to Chicago.

But here we're talking about raising averages rates.

It's it's hard to tell but have actually found something.

John.

Go ahead here because it was a here we are I don't want I don't want Kansas to be a power plant for Chicago.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean if we we need to as we talk about our increasing demand for energy, we need our energy here.

And there were all kinds of questions around eminent domain power.

Plunger in Texas a few years ago, their power went down, they sucked ours out, and we started having rolling brownout.

I think it's a great example of a green project that has been adding cost to the people up in the Kansas City market.

Evergy had a surplus of power.

They were selling it, but because of the way the ESP worked, they still had rolling blackouts in Evergy territory when it was exporting power to support Chicago and the rest of the country.

So how do we solve the problem?

Is one, because every anomaly and we deal with the ESP, the SBP has got way too big for its collective britches, and we need to be willing to do what some other states are beginning to say is why are we in it?

The cost?

We're a factor where it's at 17%, but that ESP determines how much Kansas pays for some of this transmission.

It also it also determines what should called the peak reserve margin is.

And they've been increasing it dramatically.

And that's why one of the reasons averages say we need to build new generating plants at your expense.

Mr. and Mrs. ratepayer Becky tuttle anything to add on this one here.

This is not my area.

Yeah I certainly happy to learn.

I was not aware that how much more we pay in Wichita for.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

That was was a really interesting thing.

I'd like to at one point I would do when we dealt with that polar plunge and we were having those rolling brownouts and rolling blackouts.

It's more than just losing electricity because it also affects, especially in your small towns that are part of this SPC as well, even if they've got a little local municipal utility set up, it still affects them as well.

And we had one town, the town of Attica.

I actually right after that happened, I copied emails from the KCC and through those found that the town of Attica, they actually had a power loss in their natural gas lines because of these rolling brownouts with no warning.

They had no warning that it was coming, and they came this close to a massive explosion.

And then that town, because of that sudden power loss.

So similar events occur again in the Coffeyville area in southeast Kansas as well.

They were getting gas hammer.

That's what was happening in our power plants.

Nearly back to reliability though.

Yeah.

Recent rains have Chile Reservoir nearly full now.

But don't expect your water restrictions to disappear any time soon.

Citing lessons learned from past droughts, city officials in Wichita are proposing a plan to make some water restrictions permanent, even after the current drought is over.

The new rules would focus on outdoor irrigation, limiting watering to just three days a week and banning it altogether on Sundays, mayor Lily Wu says the goal is to be proactive to ensure water for future generations.

The Wichita City Council will consider this formal proposal next month.

Becky Tuttle I'll start with you on this.

Thank you.

How are we?

How do we get it?

We got here because of the drought.

Obviously, the city council dealing with.

And I talk about drought every single day.

And it's hard to talk about drought with residents and especially the water restrictions.

It's even harder to talk about drought when you have flooding.

Right.

But to make sure that people remain vigilant, I say all the time, the most expensive water is the water.

You don't conserve, conserve.

So going back again to the economic development impact, if we are in drought and we have business and industry from across the country or the world, and they're looking at Wichita, Kansas, and they see that we're in drought and we are not aggressively addressing it.

They are going to be less hesitant to come here because they're afraid we're going to have water rate increases.

Right.

And so we need to just make sure that we're staying vigilant and continuing to conserve water, so it will protect it into the future.

You know, the other thing is, if we were going into the two hottest months and that's where we're going to see the most evaporation and Cheyney.

And so if we tell our residents, okay, we're in drought now, we're now in drought, then we go back to drought.

And so there's a lot of research that says that getting people to conserve water, one of the best ways is to remain consistent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it and also I think it's just good stewardship of our most precious natural resource pillar.

That's something that I'm hearing from a lot of our candidates for governor that they say they're hearing from voters, is that water remains a major concern for them.

It one thing to think about is because of that flooding, that's not water, that's going into the equity fence, that's not water that's going into the Oglala aquifer.

That's water that's going to keep on going downstream.

We're not going to be able to hold on to it.

So just because we're having flooding now does not mean that our water shortages are gone.

Exactly right.

Water that's cut, water that comes through the lakes and rivers is temporal.

It comes and goes with the seasons.

And the second you start to have a dry season, it's gone again for good.

There's no way to preserve it, really, other than simply not using it.

And if we don't refill the aquifer and keep those aqua fed charged, we are in deep trouble because we rely on those not just for agriculture, which is the biggest user of them, but simply to have drinking water for every day.

And if we don't have drinking water, we don't survive.

Senator Masterson in about 30s.

Oh, I don't have my role in that decision, is I'm a Wichita water user.

I might be okay and the neighbors know that.

But, you know, that's that's the balance they're going to have to cut right between preservation of a natural resource and availability to everybody and you and then people's individual rights and property rights.

I mean, that's that's a balance.

They they're gonna have to strike.

But, not my decision to make represented if suffice to say, it's a problem that will not be solved overnight.

It's a long term plan.

As the population continues to grow, demand for water will continue to grow.

And at this point, we are pretty well at the extent of our current resources.

Cities.

Looking at taking your sewer pipe, filtering it and running it back into your water plant.

And that will gain us about 20 million gallons.

I think it is a day.

Becky 25.

No, that's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Ty Masterson, John Carmichael, Fuller Pedroza and Becky Tuttle for being here.

And thank you for watching.

We'll see you next week.