Category: Kansas Legislature

Kansas Senate overrides the governor’s veto of Republican redistricting plan

The Senate override advances the map to the House. An override in that chamber would put the controversial redistricting plan into state law.

by Stephen Koranda, Kansas News Service and KCUR

A last-ditch effort to override the governor’s veto of a controversial congressional redistricting plan succeeded in the Kansas Senate Tuesday, setting up a high-stakes vote in the House to put the map into law.

The Senate voted to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a redistricting plan that critics have said is gerrymandered to hurt Democrats and defeat U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the state’s only Democratic member of Congress.

The Senate vote came after the initial vote fell short Monday. Republicans used a procedural move to give them another day and another chance to pressure lawmakers to support the plan.

The 27-11 vote fell along party lines and was the bare minimum needed for an override in the Senate. The override initially failed Monday with 24 votes in favor. Two Republican lawmakers did not vote for or against the bill during the final override effort.

Republican Sen. Alicia Straub from Ellinwood was one of the lawmakers who faced pressure over the last day to switch from opposing to supporting an override. She switched her vote Tuesday.

“This is not about standing with the governor,” Straub said. “This is about standing for freedom.”

Another senator who switched his vote, Republican Mark Steffen from Hutchinson, supported the override while at the same time criticizing the plan because it puts Lawrence in the vast, conservative 1st District of western Kansas.

“They are dumping the Lawrence liberals in our lap,” Steffen said after voting to support an override. “Insidious redistricting will kill off the true conservative character of my beloved Big 1st.”

Steffens’ vote switched just hours after a bill he supported was advanced in the Legislature. A committee voted to support a bill that would limit investigations of physicians who prescribe unproven COVID-19 treatments. It would also allow parents to claim religious exemptions to any vaccine requirement at schools and daycares.

Steffen, a physician, has said in the past that he is under investigation by the state’s regulatory board, the Board of Healing Arts.

“We see what happens when you get 24 hours and you get to make some backroom deals to get your way,” Senate Democratic Leader Dinah Sykes, from Lenexa, said during the vote. “I am disappointed in this chamber.”

Democrats continued to criticize the map Tuesday for the way it divides the state’s congressional districts and splits the racially diverse Democratic stronghold of Wyandotte County.

“This map is a travesty,” Overland Park Democratic Sen. Cindy Holscher said. “When we do things like this, democracy dies a little bit.”

The state Republican Party wasted no time after the initial vote failed Monday, sending out an email alert urging people to call Republican senators who hadn’t supported the override.

“We cannot have Kansas Republicans voting to support Laura Kelly’s agenda,” the email read.

Kelly vetoed the bill because she said it violated redistricting rules by diluting minority votes and breaking apart communities.

“(The map) does not follow these guidelines and provides no justification for deviation from those guidelines,” Kelly said in her veto message last week.

Republicans have argued the changes are needed because of population shifts in the state.

If the House also votes to override the veto, the plan will likely still face a legal challenge.

The proposal draws districts for the state’s four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kansas lawmakers must draw a new map every 10 years to account for population shifts documented in the U.S. Census.

Democrats have blasted the plan because they say it’s aimed at diluting the votes of left-leaning communities and people of color in an effort to defeat the state’s lone Democratic member of Congress.

Rep. Davids, a Democrat, holds the 3rd District seat in the Kansas City area. The plan would split part of Wyandotte County out of the 3rd District and replace it with Republican-leaning rural counties southwest of the Kansas City area.

The map would also move the left-leaning community of Lawrence from the 2nd District into the large, conservative 1st District that stretches west to the Colorado border.

Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service contributed to this report.
Stephen Koranda is the news editor for the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @Stephen_Koranda or email him at stephenkoranda (at) kcur (dot) org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-02-08/kansas-senate-overrides-the-governors-veto-of-republican-redistricting-plan

Kansas Senate fails to override governor’s veto of GOP-drawn congressional map

A map produced by Republicans in the House and Senate would place Lawrence in the 1st District, which stretches to the Colorado border, and split Wyandotte County between 2nd and 3rd districts. (Submitted)

by Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Senate President Ty Masterson found inspiration in the 1987 movie “Princess Bride” on Monday as he urged senators to override the governor’s veto of a GOP-drawn congressional map.

Then, something inconceivable happened.

Despite their GOP supermajority, Republicans failed to gather the 27 votes necessary to override the veto. They deployed a procedural maneuver to hold the chamber under lockdown for hours and force two absent senators to show up and vote. The pressure tactic failed with a 24-15 final tally.

Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, avoided the chamber for three hours before showing up to vote in favor of the override. Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat who would have supported the governor, was at a doctor’s appointment. Four Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the override: Dennis Pyle, R-Hiawatha; John Doll, R-Garden City; Alicia Straub, R-Ellinwood; and Mark Steffen, R-Hutchinson.

Masterson joined the opposition at the last moment in a procedural move that will allow him to make a motion to reconsider the override at a later date.

For now, the Senate vote kills the fast-tracked attempt to weaken Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids’ chances for reelection by dividing the Kansas City metro between two congressional districts. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly used her veto authority last week to block the effort.

Democrats in the Senate renewed their assault on the map, which is known as Ad Astra 2, calling it an obvious attempt to gerrymander districts in a way that benefits Republicans and saying it dilutes the voting power of a majority-minority community in Wyandotte County.

Masterson, an Andover Republican, dismissed those concerns: “We heard words like ‘disenfranchisement,’ ‘gerrymandering.’ I think what comes to mind actually is a quote from ‘Princess Bride’ and Inigo Montoya: You keep using those words, and I don’t think they mean what you think they mean.”

The quote refers to the 35-year-old movie and its hero’s response to a character who keeps describing developments as “inconceivable.”

Throughout the months-long redistricting process, Democrats have urged Republicans to forge a bipartisan compromise. For Democrats, the failure to override the governor’s veto was like a fairytale come true, with four Republican senators saying, effectively, “As you wish.”

Davids, the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, represents the Kansas City area’s 3rd District. The GOP-drawn map would have split Wyandotte County along Interstate 70, replacing the Democratic stronghold to the north with a swath of Republican voters in Anderson, Franklin and Miami counties.

The northern half of Wyandotte County would move into the 2nd District. That addition would be offset by carving heavily Democratic Lawrence out of Douglas County and placing it in the 1st district, which stretches to the Colorado border.

Republican leadership introduced the map early in the session and held hearings two days later, where lawmakers heard overwhelming opposition from residents in Wyandotte County and Lawrence. The Legislature sent the map to the governor in less than a week on party-line votes.

“The truth is, we did not adhere to our guidelines. We did not listen to the testimony. We did not do our best work,” said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa. “And the truth is that we can work together to pass a map that is good for all Kansans.”

Three Republicans, Doll, Steffen and Straub, flipped their votes from Jan. 21, when the Senate passed the Ad Astra 2 map on 26-9 vote. Thompson also voted in favor of the map at that time.

The Senate session ended Monday in a hostile exchange between Sykes and Masterson over the maneuver to adjourn.

GOP leadership rushed to adjourn in an attempt to avoid a motion by Democrats to reconsider the override — a second vote would permanently kill the legislation containing the Ad Astra 2 map.
“You have failed Kansans today by stopping the vote and conversation on this matter, and I am appalled,” Sykes said.

A defiant Masterson said he couldn’t “let those accusations stand.”

“I understand the games that are being played,” he said.

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/2022/02/07/kansas-senate-fails-to-override-governors-veto-of-gop-drawn-congressional-map-redistricting/.

Local officials oppose gerrymandered redistricting map

Window
Opinion column

by Mary Rupert

Wyandotte Countians came together last Friday to support Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a gerrymandered redistricting map that would split Wyandotte County.

The effort last Friday saw support from Mayor Tyrone Garner and other officials for keeping Wyandotte County together in the 3rd Congressional District, and not splitting it between the 2nd and 3rd districts, as proposed by the map that initially was rushed through the GOP-controlled Kansas Legislature.

Connie Brown-Collins, of the Voter Rights Network of Wyandotte County, commented after the meeting that they are hoping the House will sustain the governor’s veto, although they’re not as hopeful about support in the Senate.

If they can’t override the veto, legislators will go back to the drawing board to redraw the maps again, she said.

The earlier testimony from Wyandotte County residents at redistricting hearings hugely supported keeping Wyandotte County together in the same district and not splitting it. The proposed map that passed the Legislature earlier split Wyandotte County along I-70. It looked absurd to longtime Wyandotte County residents, because it took the highly urbanized north side of Wyandotte County away from the 3rd District, generally the Kansas City area, and put it into the 2nd District, away from the rest of the Kansas City area.

Brown-Collins, who is in the Welborn area of Kansas City, Kansas, said she heard legislators were moving fast to try an override this week, to try to rush it through as they did the original bill.


“We would love for the Legislature to slow the process down,” she said. “We had been told they would allow testimony after they drew the maps and before they voted. That did not happen.”

The Voter Rights Network worked with the League of Women Voters all summer and fall to come up with what they thought were fair and viable maps for Wyandotte and Johnson counties, Brown-Collins said.

They came up with a plan to keep Wyandotte County whole, keep the core of Johnson County whole but to carve off some southern portions of Johnson County, and a little on the far west, that tend to be pretty rural, she said. The League of Women Voters submitted maps to the Legislature under the Blue Stem Congress title, she said.

The Voting Rights Network is against moving all of Wyandotte County to the 2nd District, she said, even though it would be kept whole that way, because “we don’t have a community of interest with Topeka and Lawrence,” Brown-Collins said.

Generally, Wyandotte County doesn’t share a lot of communication with Topeka and Lawrence, does not share that much employment with them, and often do not share the same concerns, according to Brown-Collins.

“Our communities of interest are across county lines of the Greater Kansas City Metro area,” she said. “Those are where we share resources that are critical to all the counties.”

During the public listening tours on redistricting, it was stated that this whole redistricting issue could wind up in court again, like it did 10 years ago. The finding then was that Wyandotte County should be kept together in the 3rd District.

“If we can keep from having it to g to court, that would be wonderful,” Brown-Collins said, “if the Legislature would draw maps that are fair. Wyandotte County in terms of land mass is small, why split us up? The population is large, but we are probably the smallest county in the state. We need to stay together. Our communities are diverse and we care about each other.”

Neighbors run the gamut of nationalities and ethnicities on her block alone, she said, including Black, white and Hispanic.

“We like it like that,” she said. “We care about our neighbors. Most of our community are that way. We don’t want to be broken up and opposing each other, one on one side of I-70 and the other on the other. It’s something we will continue to fight against, and we don’t want to be in the 2nd.”

It would be a long shot that a Democrat could get elected in the 2nd District, she believes, and it’s short-sighted, also.

“Let’s look at the long-term welfare of Wyandotte,” she said. “We’re just fine where we are in the 3rd, and connected to the metro area.”

Brown-Collins says I-635 runs from Wyandotte County through Metcalf in Johnson County, and she travels it several times a week. “It does not make sense to chop us up the way we’re trying to do it,” she said.

It’s clearly common sense to leave Wyandotte County together in the 3rd District, as part of the Kansas City Metro area, which it so clearly is. Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County has common interests of the urban community, and shares road projects, convenes together with other KC area communities to fight COVID, and works on other problems together with Johnson County quite frequently. It stands to reason to include Wyandotte County together with the 3rd District, not split it off into part of another district.

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].