From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week.

A new survey reveals a major contradiction in Kansas politics.

Why do voters say they want progressive policies but keep electing conservatives?

But first, a political power play in Topeka.

The Republican push to redraw congressional maps is being stalled by fellow Republicans.

We'll break down the high stakes fight over a special session.

On this edition of Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jared Cirillo, a Republican led push to redraw Kansas congressional maps mid-decade, is hitting an unexpected roadblock now from fellow Republicans.

Senate President Tim Masterson announced this week that he has the Senate votes for a special session, but the House, that's another matter.

The goal is to redraw the third Congressional District to put more GOP voters in it.

And that could result in the defeat of the state's only Democratic congressional member and further strengthen the Republican majority in the US House.

But some Republicans in the state House of Representatives are refusing to sign on.

Representative Marc Schreiber is calling the move a political tool.

He is arguing that maps should only be drawn once, a decade after the census.

Masterson defends the push.

He says the maps should reflect the state's Republican majority.

For the special session to happen, though, the House must still secure 80 signatures.

That's a two thirds majority, and it's not clear if they have the votes here to discuss this.

And some of the week's other news is state Republican Representative Cindy Howerton, Democratic State Representative Tom Sawyer and Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell.

Thank you to all three of you for joining us today.

I'll start with you, Tom, Representative Sawyer.

This is an interesting deal.

You're a Democrat, so I think you're going to disagree with what's going on here.

Do you think this will happen?

It seems like it may not.

I hope it doesn't, actually, I disagree.

Regardless of which party is doing it, I think it's wrong to just try to draw the lines whenever you want to.

You know, once every ten years we have to as population changes.

So we're required.

When the new census comes out, you got to redraw the districts.

They stay about the same size.

And every ten years we fight this idea of gerrymandering because you know that some of it goes on for the most part in Kansas over the years.

If you look at our redistricting, for the most part we've avoided it.

That was last this last, cycle in 2022.

I think the House and Senate maps are maps overall, pretty fair, but we did.

There was some gerrymandering done on the congressional, that still won, but they did try, the NATO district got more Republican trying to get rid of.

And it didn't didn't work.

But I have to say, it's wrong for any state, in my opinion, to try to do extra redistricting that's not based on the new census is it's clearly political gerrymandering.

And I don't think it's right with Republicans or Democrats.

So, Representative Howerton, I'll move on to you.

He brought up Sharice Davids.

She's the the Democrat candidate in northeast Kent or incumbent in northeast Kansas.

There is some talk out there that if this happens, they if they do push her out, she may get in the governor's race.

And that may make Republicans even more.

What happens then?

You know, I don't know.

I think it's very interesting, the whole redistricting concept.

And just to kind of counter that, I looked at the numbers today on population on district three, and they've actually grown by like 14.22% since 2020 census.

So if if redistricting is truly based on population, maybe that is something we need to consider.

It's hard.

It's a hard decision.

It's ever been done in Kansas, right?

And so we have to really weigh that.

I've got friends on both sides of the issue.

And something we have to take to heart.

And this kind of snowballed.

You know, weeks, months ago, I remember this was one state that was talking about doing this.

And now California Governor Gavin Newsom got mad and he tried he's gerrymandering the other way.

And now we have more and more states jumping into this.

Jim, how you're you're a local guy.

You're a Sedgwick County commissioner rather than a state representative.

But what do you have to say here?

You know, I was, I got to experience redistricting in 2012.

It was a great experience, actually.

In fact, in fact, we, we had our maps challenged in our Kansas courts, in the courts eventually.

And it had drawn the maps for us because we couldn't get it done.

It was a great experience.

I kind of agree with Tom here.

I think that the idea that we're we're going to do this basically just to help one party is really not a good reason to do this if it's population.

I'm all for it.

But that's only that was that's not been argued yet.

I don't think that's what's been discussed.

It's really all about Sharice Davids and I. By the way, it's 84.

In the house is what you need is 88 Republicans.

I've heard that she may run against Roger Marshall in the Senate.

That's that's the that's the rumors I'm hearing.

So if it makes it so that she could not get reelected in district three, she'll probably run for a Senate seat in 2026.

I would I would suppose, by the way, they did redistricting in 2022.

And I know they did everything they could to make that hard for her to win.

And she won by more than she still won.

That's right.

So again, I think right now you could draw the lines any way you want.

As long as she stays in her district and you draw the lines any way you want, I think.

I think she'll still in district three no matter what happened.

Let me ask.

Let me ask all of you this time.

Masterson, seat three is leading the charge here.

Ty Masterson is in the governor's race.

Is he maybe kowtowing to the Trump line to get this done?

Is he just trying to get some score, some political points here?

I don't know, but you know, everybody everybody in that Republican primary, I think wants Trump's endorsement.

And maybe he sees this as one way to get it.

I don't know.

But I think it would be a big mistake and it sets a bad precedent.

I don't want future legislatures coming every two years and decided to redraw the districts.

If it comes a point where the politicians are choosing their voters rather than the voters choosing the politicians, and that just, yeah, that's a bad system.

I don't want to go there.

Yeah, I agree, you know, I think this survey shows a major contradiction between what Kansans say they want and how they vote.

The annual Kansas Speaks survey from Fort Hays State University finds a majority of Kansans support Medicaid expansion, legalizing cannabis and protecting abortion rights.

However, the same electorate continues to vote for a Republican supermajority in Topeka that actively opposes all of those policies.

An analysis from the Kansas Reflector, citing political scientists, says Kansans deep or keep voting rather for politicians that they disagree with, largely due to deep party loyalty and the fact that moderate Republicans are often defeated in primaries.

Interesting here, Jim Howell, what do you have to say about this one?

You know, I actually think the Kansas Speech Surveys is such a liberal attempt to try to characterize the average Kansan.

It's not even close to being legitimate.

I think I talk to people all the time on both sides of the aisle.

And I think he Kansas surveys is is far from realistic on what the Kansans really believe.

It's a it's a it's a messed up survey.

In my personal opinion.

I would not give it much credit, but to the idea, you know, people vote for the candidates who run and usually have a choice and a general, someone who's maybe far left and someone who's far right.

And in the, in the primary elections, we see people climbing over each other to get to the ends of the political political spectrum.

So what you'll see in the governor's race, for example, you'll see, you know, all the various, all the various candidates making arguments, who's the most conservative.

And they'll file one of those is going to win.

Probably the most conservative is my guess.

Then we have a problem in the general.

And so the people then have a choice between kind of a far right and a far left candidate.

And we see that, they are maybe more extreme than the average Kansan.

That is probably true.

There's always been, a vast difference, though, between, like Wichita, the urban populations and the rural population.

There's always been a vast difference that have kind of always been out there at each other's throats.

You know, Western Kansas, very rural, is very conservative.

But you have all of the the urban populations that become more purple, I guess you could say, you know, so they're always clashing with each other.

Yep.

I live in one of those districts that's you and I both actually are.

I'm a state rep.

So it's one of those things where I've always campaigned on conversations like, let's talk about it.

I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, let's come together and have a conversation.

And I'm happy to have those conversations.

And we've lost that, which is what's really concerning to me about our future.

Kansas.

Whether it's you know, federal or state, we need to have those conversations again.

And we we had one yesterday, got everybody at the table.

It was great.

And I'm working, you know, really hard to do that.

So I think that's what's important that they're willing to have the conversations.

You can maybe have a far right person representing you if they'll talk to you and be common sense about it, is that possible?

Tom Sawyer, which I have a feeling.

Is that possible?

Actually, I think that happens a lot.

I think, you know, voters vote for somebody they like who they can relate to.

They you know, they don't always have to agree with them on everything.

But if they feel like they're, they're representing them or trying to represent them or working for them in Topeka, solving their problems, you know, making their life better, you know, the the surveys, regardless if it's this 1 or 2 others, you know, they've just picked out certain issues.

So, for example, I think Medicaid expansion is very popular, but that that's not the only issue people vote on.

It's not the reason that.

So they vote for somebody.

If somebody comes to our door and they have a good conversation and they think they're going to be a good rep, they vote for maybe even they disagree on that particular issue.

So I think that's the disconnect there is.

They're talking about a few key issues, but there's a lot more that it's a lot broader.

And people vote on as as Jim said, they vote on actual people and personalities.

And and I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah.

I guess you could say, like Medicaid expansion is a great example.

If you ask someone, you know, should we provide some type of medical care coverage for someone who who needs it?

They're they're very poor.

They need some help.

The answer is yes.

But then you start talking about the details of what that actually means.

These are able bodied adults without dependents, and they could get a job, earn more money.

They could get a program on the exchange right now.

But they don't do that.

For some reason.

They start understanding, well, maybe there's more to this than they thought, but the survey doesn't give that detail.

It just simply ask them about an entitlement.

It sounds great when you start talking about the tax liability and the the cost of Kansans have to pay more taxes to provide that.

They don't support that as much.

And their problem with the survey is it doesn't give that type of detail.

But that's one of all surveys.

When you're dealing with issues, you'll ask somebody, you know, what they favor with the death penalty now, or they or, you know, it's always a just a straight.

But the as we all know for legislators, the devil's in the details.

And details do make a big difference.

I think that's kind of true on all issues that when you get down to the details, that's what the difference is.

And I you know, there's there's been representatives and senators in Kansas who have been Democratic but have supported the death penalty or or have been Republican, but have had a totally not the Republican line on abortion.

So all those things like city council pilot, how does like city council politics?

Because they're nonpartisan, supposed to be nonpartisan.

So, you know, how does a city council race your daughters running for a city council race that's that's technically nonpartisan.

And they try to take party politics out of that.

But, it doesn't seem like that always happens.

And that's both sides of the aisle, right?

It's Democrats and Republicans are both doing that.

So I think you just have the conversations.

And I know they're both out there talking to as many people as they can.

And that's ultimately the end of it, the connections that they can make to the people.

Yeah, I think my daughter's a great person.

Representative Sawyer Jim Howell said that the Kansas Speak survey is a kind of a skewed liberal.

Do you agree with that?

No, I don't think so.

I think they do it.

It's you know, it's Fort Hays, the state university.

It does it I think it they do just like other survey you know, they survey Kansans and they have you if you ever read that survey, it's like 5060 questions.

It's like it's a huge one.

But again, I do agree with them on the fact that I don't think it's necessarily like it's skewed one way or another.

But again, they asked very broad questions and they're and don't get into the details.

And you know you have to dig deeper.

The results of the results have been very consistent over the years.

Know we continue to elect lots of Republicans to the state.

Tells you that the the the people get elected.

It's to the right.

If without a survey that says if you actually read the survey, they don't say that it's it's the the press's interpretation of that survey that says that the survey itself doesn't talk anything about Kansans not voting the way.

Yeah.

So I would just add, I looked at like, that's something they taught us when we became legislators.

Don't just, you know, agree with surveys or disagree with surveys.

Look at the facts.

They only surveyed 526 people.

That's not representative of Kansas.

You cannot get good numbers.

And then the questions are widely and this is also an opinion editor.

This is his opinion.

And and not necessarily maybe the article get that that was that guy's opinion of in that survey interpreting the results the results of the survey.

He's making the point.

People want progressives and vote for Republicans.

But what really I'm not sure I agree with that.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The surveys says deals with issues.

But it is a it's gotta be a tough survey dude because it is so long and detailed.

I don't know how you can get even 500 people to sit down and answer all these questions.

Right?

It's it's how long has this survey been around?

It's been a long time.

Be like for years they've been doing it.

I don't know when it started, but at least.

Yeah, at least a decade.

Yeah, yeah.

Fucking institute okay.

Right I believe.

All right.

Yeah.

Our next story, a stark reminder tonight of the challenges facing rural Kansas schools as Burton High School has canceled its entire boys and girls basketball seasons.

The superintendent says the decision was made due to low student participation, the same reason the school already canceled its football and volleyball seasons.

The move highlights a critical enrollment struggle as the Kansas State High School Activities Association reports that Burton High School, the entire high school, only has 21 students in grades nine through 12.

Officials say their main focus right now is providing a positive experience.

They are encouraging the community to cheer on its middle school teams right now, who they hope will soon be able to field a much more positive high school roster.

Of what?

State lawmakers.

What is this?

You know, are we is are we talking about school district combining here at the state level?

Cindy go ahead.

I mean possibly like that's one option they have.

I did read in the article that it was students decision.

So they actually decided that I and I went to their website.

They do have band and choir and they have some other electives that they do participate.

So maybe it's just the nature of the student.

I was shocked I did not realize that Burton High School had only 21 students the entire high school.

And if it's like that in western Harvey County, how is it in Jett, Moore and Dighton in Garden City?

You know, what are those schools dealing with?

Yeah, that shocked me more because I would the school, like Burton would only have 21.

And it's going to be expensive just to run that high school run facility for 21 students in to try to provide band and all these sports and stuff.

So it's to be a tough decision all the time.

I think it's something the community has to look at, whether to try to consolidate school districts or at least consolidate on their sports teams or something.

If they provide stuff for the kids.

Look, you guys should look at what's going on in Vermont right now.

I, I work for a client.

I have a client in Vermont.

And, the state of Vermont right now is working to consolidate 116 school districts down to five.

And so if they're facing the same problems with rural areas that only have very few students.

So it might be something for state lawmakers to look in Kansas, we have a lot of school districts, your Sedgwick County, more people realize there are 20 school districts in Sedgwick County.

There's ten that were the home base, but there are ten more that come in like, you know, for like Towanda and stuff that come into the district.

So the county.

So that's a lot of school districts.

When you start talking about rural Kansas, that's that's some of them are the number one employers.

The school system is for those counties.

And so you have to kind of way that when you talk about school consolidation.

Yeah, it's typically schools.

Public schools really across the state of Kansas have had declining enrollment everywhere.

Yes.

The the birth rate, the the birth rates right now of just gone down in America.

If it wasn't for immigration, we probably would see a reduction in population in the state of Kansas where, you know, Wichita public Schools, I think had close to 51,000 students before the pandemic.

Now we're down to 47,000 students.

That's a huge loss.

I think it's that said, you know, 10% of their entire school district has gone away.

That is huge.

And it's not just in Wichita.

It's it's really crossing the entire country right now.

There are a few schools that are growing, but very few because they're really good.

Most schools are not.

And so we have an old system that needs to be modernized.

It's all over efficient to have a school system with just 21 students.

You can't do that.

And not only do are these schools declining.

Many in rural areas, but these schools continue to ask for more and more bond issues.

It seems like it is the norm these days for school districts to ask for bond issues, and it shouldn't be.

It does.

It seems to me like it shouldn't be that way.

We should be able to fund our schools enough that they don't have to ask for more money every five years or whatever it is.

I think the biggest question at the state and we get this every year, it's never enough.

It doesn't matter if we increase funding, it's never enough.

And so that conversation has to happen because at some point we have to draw a line that says, this is what we can fund.

We can't continue with some declining enrollment and increasing costs, funding.

That's not going to it's not going to weigh out.

Bond issues are a little different because they're capital expenditures, sure.

But still, again, building is needed to build it.

Right?

It's building construction.

So it's not their everyday expenses.

But but again, we don't talk about 21 kids.

I don't how you build a building or if you ever have a bond issue.

So we'll move on to our last story.

Now, Wichita's aviation industry could be in for a boost, as Textron Aviation announced this week that it plans to build a new military jet here in the air capital.

The company is vying for a lucrative U.S.

Navy contract to build its next generation jet trainer, proposing that Beechcraft in 346 M to replace the Navy's aging 1045 goshawk fleet.

If Textron beats out its competitors, the contract would bring about 100 new manufacturing jobs and more than $38 million in facility upgrades to Wichita.

Company leaders are urging local politicians to help secure the deal, with the Navy expected to announce its decision in January of 2027.

Well, we have three local politicians here.

Have you heard about this before?

Yeah, I just enjoyed a trip with some of the local delegate that local leaders went to Detroit, and I got to sit next to some people, people who work on this exact airplane.

It is a, what I'm hearing about this.

This is an amazing plane.

It's, proven.

It's not.

Even though it's new to Beechcraft, it's new.

The manufacturing is kind of a new idea here.

What?

You talk Kansas.

The plane itself is not new.

It's a proven airplane.

But they're going to make an American built aircraft.

They'll do the assembly here.

It'll be supported through American companies.

And, this is a really a very high contender.

The pilots are saying it's extremely maneuverable.

Thrust to weight ratio is extremely high.

It is a really nice plane.

So I think that, Textron Aviation and Beechcraft is a really great contender for this.

I worked on the, Scorpion program, back in 2014, and I love their plane that they were able to find a customer.

This one is already proven.

So I think this is a much more likely, win for Kansas and for Textron and for Beechcraft.

I really think this is a super smart move for the community here.

And if this community can rally behind this plane and give it some political support, we are absolutely going to do that.

Representative Sawyer, what are what are you doing as a state lawmaker to help us, help us get this contract?

I'll tell you that we need it.

Any, any time we can get something like this.

It's good for you to talk.

And, I think this is the.

These are the kind of issues where our delegation, but certainly our local delegation come together and and do what we can to help, in a bipartisan way, because these things mean good paying jobs for Wichita, and it's good for our city.

It's good for our economy.

And, you know, Beechcraft, has been here a long time, been a good, good asset in our community.

You know, a good partner in our community.

And, this just something like this just helps ensure their future in that.

And, when you do everything we can to help get it.

Yeah.

Cindy Howerton, I think it's exciting.

Like, there's jobs in the economy, so it's going to take, I think housing will be something that we really have to look at when we create all these jobs.

So I'm looking forward the conversation they haven't had.

I don't know of a specific ask from the legislature, but we're happy to help in any way.

We can.

I think, you know, it is.

This is great news.

I don't mean to put a damper on on this, but the Textron did also just announced this week that they are actually closing a division.

They were they were going to close their E aviation division, basically the electronic aviation division citing shifting priority.

So we're shifting a little bit.

This is great news for sure.

But at the same time Textron is closing a portion of their business as well.

But anyway, it's been around what a long time that that's that's the thing with the aircraft industry.

Things shift and change.

And that's the good part about this new this new plane helps replace because you're always going to lose stuff.

You know, stuff changes over time and you need the new ones to come and replace them.

Or, you know, I just sort of say people might be working on both programs anyway.

Yeah.

Especially if they land this new, wonderful contract.

They're going to invest in Wichita.

And these people have great skill set.

They're going to be, brought into that, I'm sure.

So the product line at Cessna Textron is a great example.

They usually have, you know, ten different models are produced at any given moment, and they're always updating what they do.

So, they're smart and how they do things.

And I trust that if they're making that decision it has to make sense.

Yeah.

You know she brings Representative Howerton brings up an interesting point that, you know, we add we want to add these jobs, but we need to look at affordable housing too.

You know, Wichita isn't the only community in lots of communities in the country are struggling with providing affordable housing.

I know it's a different topic, but still, you know, what can we do to make sure that we're boosting our housing stock that conversation is what the conversation is.

One of the top five issues of Sedgwick County right now is affordable housing.

We have a lot of people working together to find solutions to that problem.

I think you're going to see a lot of really good things coming up in the next year, from, regulations and the, comprehensive plan and how how these homes are built.

First time home buyer incentive programs, builder incentives for the builders to, to want to build the type of housing that we need.

This is a lot of conversations happening right now.

In fact, I was at a, a meeting of with the Wichita Chamber just a couple of days ago where the main speaker there is, is innovation is to bring in a, basically it's a modular type of home built out of state.

They're going to going to ship those in here.

It's going to be a regular home.

But, they're, they're leaning on technology and shipping to bring in the parts and much larger scale, if you will.

This is happening.

So there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff going on.

Yeah.

Affordable housing.

Talk a little bit more about affordable housing from the state level.

So representative how representative how high Commissioner.

Yeah.

And I are working on some legislation that, for evictions.

Did you know that in Kansas, if you get an eviction just filed against you, it is on your record forever.

And so we are looking on some eviction, expungement and sealing options.

That was in that's in House judiciary right now.

We'll see that again looking at some regulations similar to what the city looked at by the city and dealing with the different and so giving them hopefully some options where they can rely on the state for that.

Yeah.

The city's been talking more about bad landlords and bad tenants whatever.

And, you know, that's a different argument.

But, let me move over to you, Representative Sawyer, from the state level.

What's what are we doing with affordable housing?

Affordable housing is a tough issue.

And, you know, it's sad when the some of the older places closed that are more affordable, it's very difficult for people to find a new place to live.

You know, for example, the one the common law closed in Wichita.

You know, the rent there was much cheaper.

You try to find somewhere else in town, some more rent.

You can't work.

I sure compared to those are two really good examples.

And that's really scary.

And I think those kind of when you're at that level, that's why we throw them out of the street.

And those are the people, you know.

So most people that become homeless, they don't have they don't have options.

So it's an issue we have to deal with.

We we've tried at the state level.

We have tax credits, we have the different programs we've tried to push, but they generally be more to deal with building homes, you know, and but they do to me, a lot of what we've dealt with hasn't dealt with that group of people to people kind of at the bottom that were staying at places like the mayor and Commodore.

I mean, we talked about affordable housing.

It's really hard to come up with new housing that they can afford.

And some of those people, I think it would be hard to deny that some of those people that were pushed out of those two buildings alone are now on the streets.

Some of them are.

We've had two apartment complexes condemned in Kansas this year, one in Johnson County and one in Shawnee County.

And so that's that's kind of what's prompted this, because there's 300 units, people are on the streets and there's no housing available.

But the corporate owners, and it's not the landlords here in Kansas.

It's not Kansas.

People know all these are corporate owners that are coming in, buying up the stock and then letting them run down.

And so we've got to figure out what to do with that.

And, do we know who bought the Sherman Strickler building downtown?

I don't know, but they're not.

It's still all boarded up.

I mean, nothing's happened to it.

And, you know, since it's closed down, I think I've heard a name, but I don't want to bring up that name if I don't have the positive proof.

But I've.

I did hear a name.

And there has been an argument that it's a very, very wealthy person.

And the goal was to push out poor people.

And, you know, that's what the claim is anyway.

But nobody ever wants to see that.

Jim Howell anything else to say here with.

No, I think I heard you talking about 30 minutes is probably probably true.

I'll just say this the conversation on affordable housing is a great conversation.

There are some fantastic ideas.

If I if I had time, I would.

I would love to walk you through the process for about 30 minutes of explaining some of the things that are going on.

It is great.

The state's got light tech, which I don't really support, the light tech program.

I do support RH ID that's used correctly.

That's a that's a great incentive program.

But there's a lot more to it.

There's so many things we can do to to incentivize the building of the right size housing and, help people get into those homes.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Cindy Howerton, Tom Sawyer, and Jim Howell for being here today.

Thanks also to cake and CSN for sharing their video with us.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

We'll see you next week.

You.