MORAN — Second District State Representative Adam Lusker addressed the Allen County Democratic Party Tuesday evening at the Community Center in Moran. Lusker’s district includes most of Crawford County, though not Pittsburg; parts of Neosho and Bourbon counties; and the eastern third of Allen County.
Having survived the lengthy legislative session with his good humor intact, the straight-talking second-term representative — a bricklayer turned businessman from Frontenac — stood before the group in a plaid shirt, jeans and a pair of polished cowboy boots, and delivered a talk made up of two halves.
In the first part, Lusker offered the group of about 15 fellow Democrats a brief postmortem on the record-breaking 113-day session, which ended last week when the governor applied his signature to a tax package intended to close the state’s projected $400 million budget gap. (The governor is still foraging for another roughly $50 million in savings, a condition imposed on him by the new plan.)
The plan, which includes upping the state sales tax from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent and raising cigarette taxes by 50 cents per pack, received zero Democratic support.
“We stood solid,” Lusker says of his colleagues’ party-line rejection. But he had high praise for a handful of moderates across the aisle, too.
“I’m really proud of Kent Thompson (R-Iola), who finally told the [right wing of his party] ‘Hey, I’m not voting with you guys.’ And he didn’t. He voted with us on the budget and the tax plan. And the leadership has put a lot of pressure on him. He said, ‘I vote conservative a lot of times. However, I find myself with the moderates more and more.’”
Lusker has a view on why so many more Republican lawmakers with otherwise moderate political inclinations, when it’s time to cast their vote, end up “caving to the ultra-right.” It has to do with clout.
“There are some people who are right-of-center that get drawn into that [far-right] group. They’re not necessarily bad folks but if they want to keep their committee or keep their chairmanship of a committee, they have to vote leadership, and that leadership pushes down hard.”
Lusker’s advice, discussion of which occupied the second half of the representative’s address Tuesday evening, was for Democratic organizers to immediately begin raising money and coordinating efforts to knock off vulnerable Republican legislators running for the 2016 elections.
Electing Democrats and moderates in numbers sufficiently capable of reaching majorities in the House or Senate would have the added benefit, Lusker believes, of providing cover for those closeted moderates currently sheltering under the protective wing of the “ultra-right” to return to their natural home in the center.
“We used to have 33 [Democrats in the House]. If we got back to 33 and 30 [moderates], we’d have 63,” and enough for a majority vote in the House. “That’s influence. And if we can have influence, those people at the fringes will start to come back to the middle.”
Lusker’s enthusiasm for reform doesn’t stop at the House. “Your own senator, Caryn Tyson (R-Parker),” he said, “she should be able to be beat.” Many in the room mumbled noises of assent. “She’s out of touch with her voters. … The Kansas Senate needs to be taken back. That’s important.
“There are only 40 senators. We have eight Democrats and about three or four moderates.” It’s because of that lopsidedness, argued Lusker, that the 2012 tax plan exempting 330,000 business owners from income tax was pushed through, which created the conditions for underfunding that persist today.
“That’s the money that pays for my roads,” said Lusker. “It clears my streets, offers me protection at night, it offers my kids education. That’s what your taxes do.
“Really, I think the biggest problem is that people don’t vote anymore. They’re not concerned, and they won’t be until their kid’s school closes down or they’re in a classroom of 40 kids.
“If you don’t think your vote counts, that’s just not correct. You can go from having a really good person in office, then you don’t go out and vote and you get some schlep like Forrest Knox in there, and next thing you know it’s crazyville.” Knox is the Republican state senator from Altoona.
“People move to your state, not because of low income taxes,” said Lusker, “but because you have a great infrastructure. We had the best roads in the country and a great educational system. And great higher ed.”
And while it doesn’t have to be the permanent fate of Kansas, warned Lusker, “until we change who’s in the capital, it’s not going to get better.”
Lusker visits local Dems
