It was a popularity contest of sorts on Monday at the Capitol when Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature decided who will be their leaders when the session starts next month.
This means a couple of things for Kansans. They’ll keep seeing some familiar names in the news, for example. Ron Ryckman, the Republican from Olathe, will still be Speaker of the House, and Dan Hawkins, the Republican from Wichita, will still be House Majority Leader.
But some things will be different. No longer will the words “Senate President Susan Wagle” appear in Statehouse news stories. Instead, Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, will be filling those big shoes.
Let the record show that everyone in the Republican leadership group is a white man.
Among Democrats, Dinah Sykes of Lenexa replaces long-serving Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka, who was ousted in a November surprise. Let the record show that Sykes was originally a Republican. The Democrats’ slate was diverse in other ways as well.
My Kansas Reflector colleague Tim Carpenter did a good job summarizing why these leadership positions matter: “Republicans holding positions of House speaker and Senate president control committee appointments, assignment of bills to committees, the calendar of legislation debated on the floor and have a larger platform to advance a legislative agenda.”
Most Kansans favor legalizing recreational marijuana. Good luck even getting a hearing, even if some brave soul introduces such fantasy legislation. Long-suffering advocates of Medicaid expansion can offer a shoulder to cry on.
But besides the winners of Monday’s mini-elections, there are two even more important names each Kansan should know: their own senator and representative.
I’d lay down money that most Kansans don’t know those names.
It pains me to say that. It’s my job to try to make the machinations of state government interesting, after all — and sometimes the drama really does approach popcorn-worthy junior high soap opera levels.
Politigeek entertainment aside, the stakes are high. Decisions made by state representatives and senators arguably touch more people’s lives on a daily basis than those made by presidents and mayors.
I have no data to back up my sad theory and would be happy if someone proved me wrong. But I’m betting I could walk around any town in one of the state’s 105 counties asking people over 18 who represents them in the Kansas Legislature and more than half would not know.
I already did that once this year, in Wyandotte County, where most people on the street stared blankly or apologized for not being familiar with the names Stan Frownfelter and Aaron Coleman, despite heavy local and even national news coverage of the same two candidates running for the same office twice, including one who’d been there for more than a decade.
Let’s back up for a moment and consider some math.
Each member of the Kansas House represents roughly 22,000 people; senators represent around 71,000 (not all of these constituents are of voting age).
