Laura Kelly, Kansas Governor
Landon Lecture
Feb. 16, 2024
For a Healthier Kansas, We Need a Healthier Political Discourse
Good morning, everybody and thank you President Linton for that introduction and for inviting me here today. I’m delighted to be with all of you, especially on Founder’s Day. Before I begin, I do need to acknowledge the tragedy that took place just two days ago in Kansas City. This senseless violence took a Kansan’s life, upwards of a dozen children were injured, and countless thousands more were scarred and horrified. The prevalence of gun violence has invaded our schools, our campuses, our entertainment venues, our workplaces, and our homes. I look forward to the day when we can have open, honest discussions about the causes and work towards a safer society for all of us.
I am humbled today to join the ranks of esteemed public servants who have participated in this series over the years, and honored to be the first sitting Kansas governor to present a Landon Lecture since Alf Landon himself did so in 1966. I’m also honored to be the first ever sitting female governor to do so, and I know I won’t be the last. Everyone who has stood on this stage owes a debt of gratitude to former K-State president James McCain, who initiated this series as a tribute to Governor Landon. We also owe a debt of gratitude to his daughter, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, who dedicated her career to serving the people of Kansas, and who has been a great role model for me and for so many others. For those who may not know Nancy Landon Kassebaum, she became the first woman to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate when she was elected in 1978, and the first woman ever to be elected whose husband had not previously served in government. She was also the only woman in the Senate at that time. In fact, early in her first term, Senator Kassebaum had to wait in line with the tourists at the Capitol to use a bathroom, while the male Senators had exclusive use of a private lounge. And while her father, Alf Landon, did many great things for our state and our country, he made at least one serious miscalculation: he discouraged his daughter from running for the Senate seat in 1978 because, he said, Kansas wasn’t ready to elect a woman. Fortunately for Kansas, Nancy ignored him. Though Senator Kassebaum was, and still is, a proud Republican, she became known for working across the aisle with her colleagues, like when she teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass a landmark healthcare privacy bill. A few years ago, Senator Kassebaum told me she was convinced she could not be elected today precisely because of her willingness to work with the other party.
It deeply concerns me that the brand of bipartisan politics practiced by Senator Kassebaum has eroded. And it should concern you too, because these types of unlikely partnerships are essential in government to truly make a difference in people’s lives. Here at K-State I know all of you have a new initiative to make this campus healthier, just as at the state level we’re focused on making our communities healthier by investing in things like mental health, water quality, and safer roads. But the longer I’m in this job the more I’ve come to believe that if we truly want to build a healthier future for Kansas, we need to start by making our political discourse healthier. Or at the very least less toxic. Let’s do a little pop quiz here: by a show of hands over the past few years how many of you have seen friendships go by the wayside because of political disagreements? Okay, there’s no right or wrong answer here. Now how many of you have had a Thanksgiving dinner ruined by heated arguments? And now be honest with yourselves, how many of you feel that someone’s political views reflect whether they’re a good or a bad person? Yeah. Our politics today is tearing us apart. Our friendships, our families, our communities, and our nation. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We expect disagreement in politics – that’s a good thing. But the idea was that people with differing beliefs would come together to find shared values, common priorities, and the greater good. But that’s obviously not happening much anymore.
So, what on earth happened? And more importantly, how do we dig our way back to a healthier politics? That’s what I’m going to be speaking about here today. That was not an applause line. I first ran for public office in 2004, 20 years ago. In politics that’s an entire lifetime and I suspect that for many of you students here that’s literally a lifetime ago. So, for those of you who weren’t around then, here’s what the world looked like in 2004. The social network that was then known as The Facebook was still available only on college campuses. Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok did not exist. Local reporters covered the state house, city halls, and school board meetings. When I was in the state Senate a slew of reporters camped out at the Capitol, ready with eyes, ears, and notebooks opened, ready to tell their readers and viewers what was going on. Now with their ranks thinned significantly, much of what happens goes unreported.
In 2004 there were 21 governors who represented states that voted for the other party for President – 13 Democratic governors in red states, 8 Republican governors in blue states. But in 2022, just 18 years later, there was only one Democratic governor who won a state that went for Donald Trump in the previous election, and you are looking at her. Over the past 20 years our politics has become not just polarized but nationalized. Now you see campaigns for state representative or city council being focused on the same issues you see on national cable news, issues that have little or nothing to do with the constituents they’ll actually be serving. We saw it recently in school board races across our state, with some candidates using national talking points to attack our teachers, our librarians, our administrators, instead of discussing the issues actually impacting our classrooms in Kansas, like special education funding, mental health resources, and school safety. The same thing happened in my campaigns. Both of my opponents in 2018 and again in 2022 didn’t attack me based on my record or really anything happening in Kansas. Instead, they ran ad after ad trying to convince Kansas that I’m actually Bernie Sanders in a wig, or Joe Biden in heels. I ran my campaign on issues the Governor of Kansas actually has to deal with: balancing the budget, tax cuts, higher education, fixing the foster care system. It was as if my opponents and I were running for two very different offices.
It’s a strategy we’re seeing more and more now. The campaign debates that voters hear are starting to sound the same race after race, election after election, whether it’s on the local, state, or federal level. These are the same issues they hear on cable news, on radio talk shows, and see on their social media. You know former Speaker of the House from Massachusetts, Tip O’Neill, used to say, “All politics is local.” And while that’s the way it should be, I’m not sure that it is that way anymore. This nationalizing of local politics carries real and serious consequences. First and foremost, voters don’t hear healthy, spirited debates about the issues that their local elected officials will actually be responsible for in office. Second, when candidates aren’t taking positions on those local issues, the public is then unable to hold those officials accountable once they are in office. And third, if campaigns become void of policy and substance then the only thing voters can choose on is party and ideology. Voters get backed into partisan camps, which is of course why political parties often champion this strategy. The result is more and more Americans are simply voting the party line up and down the ticket. Very few voters across the country choose a candidate of one party for President, and another for Senate or Governor. Ticket splitters are becoming an endangered species. But that’s not the reality everywhere.
When Americans vote for a party regardless of who the candidate is, it makes it that much easier for parties to win with extreme candidates. They no longer need to appeal to voters in the middle. Even worse, you’re seeing political parties proactively purge themselves of their moderate elected officials, the types who don’t always vote the party line, who may actually reach across the aisle to get something done. We saw that happen here in Kansas under one of my predecessors. In 2012 there was an active campaign waged within the Kansas Republican party to defeat the more moderate Republicans in the legislature. It was successful for all of the reasons I’ve discussed here today, and it’s done great harm to our ability to govern for Kansans.
Just look at Medicaid expansion. If legislatures would expand Medicaid, 150,000 more Kansas would have access to health insurance and we could lower healthcare costs for everyone else, all at no additional expense to taxpayers. In 40 other states, including many red states, this is no longer a partisan issue. These states have gone ahead and expanded Medicaid. But in Kansas it remains an ideological battle, in part because legislative leadership doesn’t want to see a Democratic governor get a win. You know I want to say to leadership, “Look guys, I’m not running again. You can pass Medicaid expansion. You can do all the press conferences. You can take all of the credit. I’ll stay behind the scenes if you’d like.” But the idea that people aren’t getting the healthcare that they need because of petty, partisan politics is just shameful. It’s an example of how polarization is crushing our ability to get things done for Kansas.
Imagine for a moment a football field, maybe like the one at Bill Snyder stadium, or the one in Orlando. Now the season is over, the celebrations have ended, and all you see is a green field with yard markers. Now most Americans, most Kansans, are ideologically positioned somewhere between the 40-yard lines. They’re either a little to the left on an issue, or a little to the right on an issue. And some are smack dab in the middle. However, so many of their elected officials seem to live between the 10-yard line and the end zone on the extreme sides of the field. And unless you’re Will Howard, it’s very hard to get from one end zone all the way to the other. So those politicians just stay in their own end zones. They can barely see the middle of the field, let alone get there. As a result, they refuse to even discuss, much less find solutions to many of the key issues that really matter to Kansans. And not just Medicaid expansion, but on jobs, education, childcare, mental health. The inability or unwillingness to build consensus, to find common ground, prevents progress on just about everything.
Now I’m not saying that we haven’t been able to get anything done here in Kansas, of course we have. But I’ll tell you it’s not because of the people who are standing in the end zones. It’s because of the people who were willing to come to the middle of the field. An example of that is what happened in the fall of 2021. I was headed into an election year and was regularly being called all sorts of names by my opponents. My personal favorite was Lying Laura. Republicans were dead set on stopping me from winning that next November. But then we were approached by a company who wanted to invest $4 billion in Kansas. It would be the largest capital investment in the history of our state. It would create 4,000 jobs and put Kansas on the global map as one of the best places in the world to do business. In essence a huge win for Kansas. But perhaps it would also be a huge win for me politically at a time when the Republicans were desperate to reclaim the Governor’s office. Now to get this company – and yes it was Panasonic Energy – to come to Kansas we would need to pass legislation that updated our economic development tools and make the state a more appealing place to invest in. At first it looked nearly impossible – working together, quickly, in an election year? Forget about it. But because the economy tends not to be an ideological issue, my Republican colleagues came to the table to close the deal. The Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and I and my Lieutenant Governor had many, many meetings, many late night phone calls. We even took a field trip together. For those moments we weren’t a Democratic Governor and Republican leaders, we were Kansas elected officials doing right by the people we were elected to serve.
And that’s not the only time that we have put partisan politics aside here in Kansas. We’ve now come together five years in a row to fully fund our public schools, we’ve eliminated the state sales tax on food, and we’ve balanced the budget year after year. But I wish I could say working together happened much more often than it actually does. From Medicaid expansion to passing a new round of responsible tax cuts, there’s so much more we could get done if elected officials would meet on the 50-yard-line.
But look, there’s more to why our national pollical discourse has eroded than simply how we run our campaigns or what’s happening in the Kansas legislature. In today’s world it’s easier than ever for Americans and for Kansans to live in their own bubble. Smart phones and social media make it easy to create your own personal echo chamber, to surround yourself only with those who think like you do. You know, there was a time when Americans and Kansans actually came together to consume the news as communities, as a state, as a nation. The daily paper on the doorstep, the nightly news on the television – everyone watched Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters. We watched Barbra Streisand too but not for the news. Now Americans often only follow news outlets that they find ideologically agreeable. That bubble of agreement that people have created for themselves can be comforting – their own friends, personalized news, curated social media – but in my view those bubbles we live in are not healthy for our system, nor our collective mental health.
So how do we break out of them? Well, I’ve got a plan for that – a three step program. First, admitting you have a problem. Recognize that you probably do, in fact, live in a bubble. Two, be proactive about engaging people in your life who you know live outside your bubble – some family members, some neighbors, some friends. You know a friend of mine who teaches at George Washington University told me that he recently assigned his students to interview people in their lives with whom they disagreed the most politically. He asked them to listen, to take notes, to think about how they could have civil discussions, and perhaps to find a way to meet in the middle. We need more of this kind of discourse in our schools, in our communities, and certainly in our government. We don’t always need to talk politics with people but make it a point to understand where they’re coming from, how their life experiences inform their worldview. And my last step is a call to action of sorts: ask those people in your life with whom you disagree about politics to join you in, say, a service project. Anything you want to do – volunteer together at a food bank, do a church activity, visit a senior center – whatever you want to do. We need to get back to a place where people can disagree about politics but still form a bond, still engage in community service and civic life together.
Now my three-step bubble break won’t fix all of the world’s problems, but it would be a start. And as I serve my second term as Governor, I’m committed to doing my part to bring that civility back to our politics. Some of you may recall that in my recent reelection I ran ads where I was literally standing in the middle of the road, freezing by the way, but standing right in the middle of the road making the case that meeting here, right there in the middle, is how to get things done. Since then, I’ve started a PAC called – what else – “Middle of the Road.” But unlike most PACs, which support candidates on the far left or the far right, mine is about lifting up candidates on both sides of the political aisle who are willing to put commonsense solutions above political party. For me Middle of the Road wasn’t just a campaign slogan, it is a governing philosophy.
Building on that I want to close with a message to the students who are here today. You young adults who might just be starting to iron out your own beliefs and values. Stay open – open to new ideas, open to new perspectives, open to people who grew up differently than you did. Changing your mind when presented with new information and new facts doesn’t make you inconsistent, it makes you thoughtful and reasonable. Each of you has the chance, in fact the responsibility, to improve our political discourse and it starts with how you interact with people in your life every day.
The good news is for so many of you the issues that divided your parents’ generation – LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, environmental protections – aren’t all that controversial for your generation. But new issues are arising that will confront your generation – issues about technology, America’s place in the world, about what democracy will look like right here at home, and as you’re doing here at K-State about how to make our world a healthier place. You’ll have passionate disagreements along the way with your family, your neighbors, your classmates, but also along the way let’s ensure that cooler heads always prevail, that compromise is always a possibility, and that the middle of the road is always the road most traveled.
Thank you.
Remarks as given