Category: Election 2022

Kansas officials affirm Pyle’s petition for a spot on ballot as independent candidate for governor

Pyle casts GOP’s Schmidt, Democrat Kelly as ‘two peas in a pod’

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The Kansas secretary of state’s office certified Thursday that state Sen. Dennis Pyle secured more than the required 5,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify as an independent candidate for governor on the Nov. 8 election.

Potential of an insurgent campaign by Pyle, a right-wing conservative legislator from Hiawatha, generated anxiety among supporters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Derek Schmidt and optimism within ranks of loyalists for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Democrats, in fact, helped collect signatures on Pyle’s behalf.

Pyle would draw votes from Schmidt assuming no challenge of findings by county clerks reporting to Secretary of State Scott Schwab was successful in blocking his independent campaign.

“I want to use this opportunity to again thank all of my campaign volunteers and family members whose herculean effort and enthusiastic dedication to our petition drive made this day possible,” Pyle said in a statement. “I also want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving us this amazing honor and opportunity to serve our fellow Kansans and be a blessing to Him.”

Whitney Tempel, spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said Pyle’s 2,190-page nomination petition contained more than the 5,000 signatures required by law.

She said his petition documented signatures from 85 of 105 counties. Not all those counties had reported final results of the verification process, but 78 counties had adffirmed 6,234 signatures to satisfy the statute.

Pyle, who is running on a ticket with Kathleen Garrison, vowed to mount a campaign that illustrated “stark differences between our conservative beliefs and the radically liberal public policy views of our two opponents, Kelly and Schmidt.”

He said Schmidt and Kelly, who both previously served in the Kansas Senate, voted together on virtually “every liberal policy.” Schmidt was elected attorney general in 2010 after a decade in the Senate representing the Independence area. Kelly was elected governor in 2018 and served a Topeka district in the Senate since 2005.

“If either of them wins this election, Kansans are stuck with four more years of regulatory overreach and continued high taxes,” Pyle said.

Pyle said Kansans were disturbed by Kelly’s “over-the-top” mandates on COVID-19 in relation to health and education freedom. He said voters were “dumbfounded and confused” by overwhelming rejection Aug. 2 by Kansas voters of a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution that could have opened a path to a ban on abortion in the state.

In addition, he said voters had reason to be “genuinely worried about the integrity and security of Kansas elections.” He said Kansans were drawn to leaders capable of resolving problems articulated by former President Donald Trump. Schwab, the state’s top elections officer, said the election process in Kansas was void of fraud.

Emma O’Brien, spokesperson for the Kansas Democratic Party, said Pyle’s inclusion on the ballot through the petition process indicated disenchantment with Schmidt. She said Schmidt was the frontrunning Republican for more than one year, but received 80% of the primary vote despite running against a GOP candidate with an arrest record.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/08/25/kansas-officials-affirm-pyles-petition-for-a-spot-on-ballot-as-independent-candidate-for-governor/

Kansas Democrat Mark Holland not interested in being footnote to history in U.S. Senate race

Holland takes moderate message statewide in bid to unseat GOP’s Jerry Moran

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Democrat Mark Holland said he wouldn’t be deterred by political math resulting in Republicans winning every Kansas election for U.S. Senate since 1939.

Holland, former mayor of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, said a formula for success against Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran was to prevail in 10 counties holding two-thirds of the state’s vote and by respecting interests of neglected rural voters.

His U.S. Senate campaign will take him to all 105 counties for face-to-face conversations with folks deciding Nov. 8 whether to end the longest GOP winning streak in the nation.

“We have a better message on public education. We have a better message on health care. We have a better message on wages. We need to get out and share our message,” Holland said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. “And, we need to spend the time listening to the real concerns of real people.”


Kansans interested in moderate representation in Washington, D.C., shouldn’t be bound to the legacy of Democrat George McGill, who was elected to fill the unexpired term of U.S. Sen. Charles Curtis in 1930 and won a full term in 1932. He was the last Democrat from Kansas elected to the U.S. Senate.

Holland said reversing that trend required Democrats to resonate with voters in the state’s populous 10 counties and draw upon a reservoir of support in the others. A cadre of voters statewide, both urban and rural, feel abandoned by their representatives in Washington, he said.

“Everyone wants to win the big 10,” Holland said. “But we also have to respect the 95 counties that have a third of our votes. I get frustrated with Democrats nationally who complain about losing rural communities, complain about losing red states, and don’t spend a minute listening to people in these communities.”

‘Courage to stand up’

Holland, 53, grew up in Topeka and Kansas City, Kansas. His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a public school teacher. He earned a philosophy degree at Southern Methodist University, a master’s degree in divinity at Iliff School of Theology in Denver and a doctorate of ministry at St. Paul School of Theology.

He served a congregation in Denver before serving churches in Elwood and Wathena in northeast Kansas.

“I was in two towns whose combined population was smaller than the high school I attended,” he said.


“And one of the things I learned about that is we all want the same things. Right? We all want meaningful work. We all want opportunities for our kids. We all want to live in a community we’re proud of. I think Washington, D.C., could learn something that what holds us together is much greater than what pulls us apart.”

He was at Trinity Community Church in Kansas City, Kansas, from 1999 to 2018. He co-founded Mainstream UMC to advocate for inclusion of LGBTQ+ people into the Methodist church in terms of marriage and ordination.

He served six years on the city-county Unified Government before he was elected mayor and served in that post from 2013 to 2017. He lost a campaign for reelection, but learned the necessity of striving to motivate low-propensity voters rather than concentrate on people most likely to cast ballots.

In 2021, Holland announced his campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate. He prevailed in a six-candidate primary in August to earn the opportunity to challenge Moran, who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and the U.S. House in 1997. In Moran’s two Senate campaigns, he won the 2010 general election with 70% of the vote and the 2016 race with 62% of the vote.

Holland said Washington was dominated by extremist Republicans who left moderates behind on issues of abortion, guns, economic policy and other issues.

“Kansas is a pretty moderate, pretty low key plainspoken group as a whole,” Holland said. “We deserve someone who has the courage to stand up. Right now being a moderate takes courage, because the extremes want to pull you off.”

Plainspoken preacher

Holland is a proponent of expanding Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act to lower-income Kansans because it would help families in urban and rural communities. He also supported federal legislation allowing Medicare negotiate to lower medication prices for the elderly, but couldn’t understand why federal lawmakers would oppose a price cap on the monthly cost of insulin to treat diabetes.

“We’re the only developed country in the world where families are worried about health care,” he said.


“People are not able to take care of their families the way they need to because we’re not controlling costs. I will help control costs in D.C.”

Holland said U.S. senators from Kansas ought to declare in clear language President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. Holland said dozens of lawsuits were filed, but no clear evidence of election fraud has been uncovered.

“What we’re seeing right now is this long-play grief cycle that is born because the leaders in the Republican Party have refused to have the courage to look people in the eye and tell them the plain truth,” Holland said.


“I’m just a plainspoken preacher, and I’m just going to tell people the truth. We need the courage to tell people the truth, even an unpopular truth or a truth they don’t want to hear.”

Moran has said Biden won the 2020 national election and it would be wrong for Congress to not certify the Electoral College vote. He denounced the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, but opposed formation of an independent inquiry into violence precipitated by a rally led by Trump.

Holland said it was wrong for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, even to save her own life or in the aftermath of a rape. It would be appropriate for Congress to embed in federal law a right to abortion, he said.

The overwhelming defeat in the Aug. 2 primary of a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution declaring no right to bodily autonomy, including abortion, was contained in the state’s Bill of Rights provided evidence of where the state’s voters stood on the issue. He noted Moran, who endorsed reversal of Roe v. Wade, donated $50,000 to organizations supporting passage of the Kansas abortion amendment.

“The idea that women don’t have the right to make their own decisions about their body is, again, that’s looking backwards to the 1950s,” Holland said. “The majority of people in Kansas came out in force and said, not only did they vote no, they voted hell no.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/08/22/kansas-democrat-mark-holland-not-interested-in-being-footnote-to-history-in-u-s-senate-race/

Election official says recount of Kansas abortion amendment vote proves election integrity

by Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Secretary of State Scott Schwab says the result of a nine-county hand recount of ballots from the Aug. 2 election shows there is no systemic election fraud in Kansas.

The weeklong recount produced little change in vote totals showing Kansans overwhelming rejected a constitutional amendment on abortion. After exhausted election workers took a look at 556,364 ballots, the margin of rejection narrowed by 63 votes.

Colby resident Melissa Leavitt requested the recount, claiming vague problems with election integrity. She paid $119,000 toward the cost of the recount, combining money from her credit cards with an online fundraiser and support from Wichita anti-abortion activist Mark Gietzen.

The proposed constitutional amendment would have taken away the right to terminate a pregnancy in Kansas, overturning a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that protected abortion rights in Kansas after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Instead of failing by 165,389 votes, the recount showed the amendment failed by 165,326 votes.

“The results of this unprecedented recount of more than half the ballots cast in the 2022 Kansas primary election, with less than 2/100ths of a percent difference in the county canvasses and the recount process, proves once and for all that there is no systemic election fraud in our state’s election process,” Schwab said. “Kansans should be confident that these results put to rest the unfounded claims of election fraud in our state and know that our elections are secure and that their vote counted.”

Two other recounts also affirmed the results of GOP contests for state treasurer and a state House district.

Schwab’s office said hand recounts typically result in minor discrepancies. They can be the result of human error, or a ballot marked in a way that a machine couldn’t read.

Schwab praised the work of election officials and volunteers who “worked tirelessly to administer a secure election and complete the recount requests.”

“I have immense gratitude for their hard work and commitment to a safe and secure election process,” Schwab said.

Leavitt has raised $54,000 through GiveSendGo, a Christian-themed fundraising platform. More than 800 people donated, and more than 600 offered prayers, through the site.

In an interview Saturday with a GiveSendGo representative for Gab TV, Leavitt described herself as “an election integrity researcher.”

“When you’re talking about voting, you know, it’s vital that everything is fair, and free and it’s correct,” Leavitt said. “And so this is kind of a point where we can dig in, and it’s our right to ask for it.”

She also provided updates on her TikTok account while attending MyPillow mogul Mike Lindell’s “Moment of Truth Summit” in Springfield, Missouri, over the weekend.

The Secretary of State’s Office has pointed to the recount as a reason for not yet certifying a petition filed by Dennis Pyle, who hopes to get on the November ballot as an independent candidate for governor. He turned in nearly 9,000 signatures, which county election officials will have to review.

Pyle has repeatedly expressed frustration with the delay, accusing Schwab of helping Republicans who would prefer he stay off the ballot. Pyle is a conservative who is running because he thinks the Republican candidate, Derek Schmidt, is too liberal. Republicans fear his entry into the race will benefit Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

“Partisan politics is already backing up my ballot access, not to mention the campaign, and participation in events,” Pyle said. “A lot of folks in Kansas are already suspicious that Secretary Schwab is responsible for giving us dishonest elections. Keeping me off the ballot and disrupting the campaign by purposely holding up the certification of my petition has only made their suspicions stronger.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/08/22/election-official-says-recount-of-kansas-abortion-amendment-vote-proves-election-integrity/