It would have taken just one state senator Tuesday to kill the most corrupt deal in modern Kansas legislative history.
One. One Republican senator with the courage to oppose the trade of Kansas kids’ health for a discriminatory congressional map.
Just one senator opposed to a brazen deal that protects a colleague from an investigation into his medical practices. One.
Tuesday, that senator was nowhere to be found. By the barest of margins, the state Senate voted to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a disastrous congressional map. The House — holding the vote open for more than hour so arms could be twisted — followed suit Wednesday.
The shame is deep. The stain will not easily wash away.
It’s easy to blame state Sen. Mark Steffen of Hutchinson, the anesthesiologist at the center of the bargain, for Tuesday’s disaster. He’s the crank pushing unproven and potentially dangerous COVID-19 medicines on the public. He’s the guy trying to evade oversight from the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts.
Monday, Steffen voted against a congressional map that splits Wyandotte County in two and puts Lawrence in the rural 1st District. It was the right thing to do.
But Steffen was utterly uninterested in fairness or transparency. Tuesday, he flipped his vote just a few hours after the Senate’s public health committee endorsed a bill loosening vaccine requirements for kids and exempting him from review for prescribing ivermectin.
Republican leadership barely tried to hide the brazen quid pro quo, claiming it reached an “agreement” with Steffen. The map passed 27-11, the barest possible margin for an override.
The House agreed to the override Wednesday despite the pleas of Lee Norman, former Kansas health secretary. “I pray that the KS House stops the Senate gerrymanderers from selling their souls to the charlatans pushing pre-vaccination Medieval veterinary medicine on them and on Kansans,” he tweeted. “It isn’t worth selling your souls for. Or for sacrificing your constituents.”
In the last 48 hours, the Kansas Legislature has done both.
Steffen could not have accomplished the trade without help. Sen. Richard Hilderbrand of Baxter Springs chairs the committee that shoved the COVID measure forward without a hearing on the vaccine requirements.
“This is something done every session,” Hilderbrand said, which, if true, is terrifying.
State Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee sits on the committee despite knowing less about public health than your average fourth grader. State Sen. Beverly Gossage, a supporter of junk health insurance, is on the committee as well.
Kansas kids never had a chance.
