Iolan Debbie Bearden was a candidate for the Kansas Senate for 3½ hours Monday morning.
“I withdrew when I found out that John (Coen) was going to file,” Bearden told the Register.
Coen, an Ottawa banker, was a friend of Bearden’s when they were students at Kansas State University and their paths have crossed occasionally since.
“I tried to reach John over the weekend, but his line was busy,” Bearden said.
With a keen of sense of community from her work as Allen County Farm Bureau’s county coordinator, Bearden decided to file herself.
“I wanted to make sure people in the district had a choice” at the Aug. 7 Republican primary election, she said.
Caryn Tyson, rural Parker, filed last week after new district lines were announced, foregoing a run for re-election to the Kansas House, where she is completing her first term representing District 4.
Bearden drove to Topeka early Monday morning and filed shortly after the secretary of state’s office opened at 8 a.m.
“I was just leaving Topeka when I got a call from John, saying he was on his way to Topeka and intended to file,” Bearden said.
She then went back to the Statehouse and withdrew.
Bearden said she would support Coen’s candidacy.
One Democrat, Denise Cassells, Mound City, has filed to represent District 12, which contains Allen, Anderson, Franklin and Linn counties and parts of Bourbon and Miami counties.
COEN, in a telephone interview, characterized himself as a moderate Republican, “in the vein of Bob Dole, Eisenhower and Nancy Kassebaum.”
He disdains defining politicians by social considerations, Coen said, although he wasn’t reluctant to note, “I’m a Christian and a Sunday school teacher and elder in my church,” Westminster Presbyterian in Ottawa.
Coming to a decision to file in such a short time flustered him a bit, Coen said, but running for the Legislature “is something I’ve wanted to do all my (adult) life.”
If elected, he would be familiar with the legislative process, having worked as an assistant in the Kansas Senate for Derek Schmidt, now attorney general, and Steve Morris.
