A race in
Riley County for the Kansas Legislature features two candidates with impressive
resumes and involves key issues in contemporary Kansas politics.
Incumbent
Republican Mike Dodson is running for reelection to represent Kansas House
District 67 against Democratic challenger Kim Zito.
Both Dodson and Zito are residents of Manhattan.
District 67 includes
parts of Manhattan and Riley County.
Dodson was
first elected to represent District 67 in the Kansas Legislature in 2020.
Dodson
previously served as Manhattan Mayor,
Manhattan City Commissioner, and Chair of the Riley County Law Board, which oversees the Riley
County Police Department.
Dodson
served in the US Army for 37 years. During that time, he served as the
commanding general for Fort Riley, a US Army base near Manhattan and Junction
City.
Kim Zito is
a former journalist
who reported for the European edition of the Wall Street Journal; Dow Jones
Newswires; CNBC Europe; and WUSF, an NPR station based in Tampa, Florida.
Zito moved to
Manhattan in 2019 when her husband was sent to Fort Riley.
Zito is a
former chair
of the Riley County Democratic Party. She is also a local community activist.
Dodson was
first elected to the Kansas Legislature in 2020, when he defeated
his Democratic opponent Cheryl Arthur by a margin of 7%.
Dodson
received 54% of the vote, Arthur received 46%.
In March
2021, Zito spoke
at a community vigil
in Manhattan that sought to combat hatred towards Asian Americans following shootings
in Atlanta, Georgia, where a gunman killed eight people, six of whom were of
Asian descent.
Medicaid Expansion
Kansas is
one of only 12
states that haven’t expanded its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare.
There have
been many legislative attempts to expand Medicaid in Kansas since President
Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010.
Gov. Sam
Brownback (R) vetoed
Medicaid expansion in 2017.
The Kansas
House voted for
Medicaid expansion in 2019, but the bill died in the Kansas Senate.
This year, Gov.
Laura Kelly (D) proposed legislation that would expand Medicaid, but the bill
died in committee.
If Kansas
approved Medicaid expansion, the federal government would cover
90% of the cost of expanding the program.
A total of
145,000 additional
Kansans would be covered if the state expanded Medicaid.
That
includes 44,000 uninsured Kansans who fall into a coverage
gap because they are too poor to qualify for subsidies for private
insurance under the ACA, but are currently ineligible for Medicaid.
According to
a
poll released this month by the American Cancer Society, 72% of registered
voters in Kansas support
expanding the state’s Medicaid program.
Both Dodson
and Zito claim
to support Medicaid expansion.
But Dodson
had the opportunity to vote for Medicaid expansion in the Kansas House, and he
voted against it.
On March 22,
Rep. Henry Helgerson, a Democrat from Wichita, proposed an amendment, which would have expanded Medicaid, to an appropriations bill.
The
amendment was rejected,
by a vote of 49 to 72.
Dodson voted
against the amendment.
Dodson did
not reply to a message from Meticulous Musings, submitted through Dodson's
campaign website, regarding his vote against Helgerson’s Medicaid Expansion
amendment.
I actually
learned about Helgerson’s Medicaid expansion amendment, and Dodson’s vote
against it, from a blog
post on Zito’s campaign website.
After
looking into her claims, I determined she was correct.
On March 22,
the official twitter account of the Kansas House Republican Caucus discussed
Helgerson’s amendment and reiterated
the state party’s opposition to expanding Medicaid.
“Rep.
Helgerson has offered an amendment to add Medicaid expansion to the budget,”
the account wrote. “Spending hundreds of millions of dollars in coming years to
expand Medicaid under Obamacare is foolish. Expansion would cover thousands of
many able-bodied Kansans who choose not to work.”
Abortion Rights
Ever since
the US Supreme Court overturned the federal constitutional right to an abortion
in June, abortion rights have been a key issue throughout the country.
That has
been especially true in Kansas, where voters rejected a constitutional
amendment in August that would have limited abortion rights.
But
understanding that vote will require a bit of recent history.
In April
2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled
the Kansas Constitution protects the right to an abortion.
The court
found the right to an abortion is implicitly protected
by the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which states, “All men are
possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Pro-life
lawmakers and activists attempted to amend the Kansas Constitution to overturn
the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling that protected abortion rights.
Amending the
Kansas Constitution requires
support from two-thirds of both the Kansas House and Kansas Senate, and a
majority of voters.
In Jan. 2021,
both the Kansas House and Kansas Senate approved
a constitutional amendment that states the Kansas Constitution does not create
or secure a right to abortion.
In the
House, 86 representatives, including
Dodson, voted for the amendment.
A total of
38 voted against.
In the
Senate, 28 voted in favor of the amendment, and 11 voted against.
Supporters
referred to the amendment as the “Value Them Both” amendment, claiming the
amendment expressed Kansans’ support for both women and children.
If the
amendment had been approved, it would have given the Kansas Legislature the legal
authority to approve a highly restrictive abortion ban.
Legislatures
in Missouri
and Oklahoma
have approved highly restrictive abortion bans, neither of which contain
exceptions for rape or incest.
In the
August 2 primary election, Kansas voters decisively
rejected the amendment, 59% to 41%.
I find it
telling that more than 2/3 of the Kansas Legislature voted in favor of the
constitutional amendment, which almost 60% of voters rejected.
To me,
that’s clearly a sign that the legislature is considerably more conservative on
key issues than Kansas voters.
During a
candidate forum earlier this month, Dodson said he voted in favor of the amendment
to allow voters
to decide whether it should be adopted.
“I did it
simply because you have three choices,” he said. “you can let the courts
decide, you can let the legislature decide, or you can let the people decide.
It looks like 60-40 is a pretty definite decision.”
On her
campaign blog, Zito expressed
her opposition to the amendment on the day the primary election was held.
“Today, I
sure hope that Kansas demonstrates to our country and to the world that we
value and respect women and trust each woman to make her own decision about her
body, no matter the circumstances,” she wrote.
“Today, I
hope we tell the country that a person’s agency over their own body is as basic
a right as basic rights can get. If we don’t own our own bodies, then we have
nothing. Nothing,” she added.
“Today, I
hope we tell the country that abortion is health care.”
After the
primary election, Zito referred
to the amendment’s defeat as “the shot heard round the world,” and encouraged
voters who voted against the amendment to vote for Democrats in November.
Transgender Rights
Earlier this
year, the Kansas Legislature considered a bill that would ban transgender girls
and transgender women from playing on female sports teams at K-12 schools or
public colleges.
Both the
Kansas House and Kansas Senate approved the bill, which supporters named the,
“Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”
The bill was
part of an effort by conservative lawmakers in state legislatures across the
country to prevent transgender female athletes from playing on girls’ and
women’s’ teams in public schools and colleges.
Republican
supporters of the bill claim transgender female athletes have an unfair
advantage compared to cisgender female athletes in women’s and girls’ sports.
Dodson voted
in favor of the bill.
Gov. Laura Kelly
(D) vetoed the bill, which she said
would harm both students and the state.
“Both
Republican and Democratic Governors have joined me in vetoing similar divisive
bills for the same reasons: it’s harmful to students and their families and
it’s bad for business,” Kelly stated in a press release.
“We all want
a fair and safe place for our kids to play and compete,” she continued “However,
this bill didn’t come from the experts at our schools, our athletes, or the
Kansas State High School Activities Association. It came from politicians
trying to score political points.”
Kelly said
the bill would make it harder for Kansas to attract potential employers.
“This bill
would also undoubtedly harm our ability to attract and retain businesses. It
would send a signal to prospective companies that Kansas is more focused on
unnecessary and divisive legislation than strategic, pro-growth lawmaking,” she
said.
Kelly vetoed
a similar bill last year.
This year, the
Senate voted to override Kelly’s veto.
In the
House, 81 representatives voted to override Kelly’s veto, only
three votes less than the 84 required to reach the two-thirds majority
necessary to pass the bill into law.
Dodson voted
to override Kelly’s veto.
Kelly’s
Republican general election opponent, Derek Schmidt, is running
against Kelly based on her opposition to the transgender athlete ban.
Dodson did not respond to a message from Meticulous Musings regarding his position on the bill.
Zito told
Meticulous Musings the legislature shouldn’t waste its time trying to prevent transgender
girls from playing on female sports teams.
“The notion that there are transgender kids in Kansas K-12
sports is so manufactured and it’s a red herring to divert attention away from
real problems that the legislature has options for real solutions,” she said.
Zito said there are few, if any, transgender student athletes
in Kansas.
“The last
statistic the state has on this is PERHAPS one student. But most likely ZERO,”
she said. “This is a non-issue.”
The exact
number of transgender student athletes in Kansas is hard to pin down.
Tom Witt,
the Executive Director of Equality Kansas, told the Kansas Legislature last
year that the Kansas High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) said there are
only five
transgender high school athletes in Kansas.
Regardless
of the precise number of transgender student athletes in the state, it’s
certainly very small.
Zito said
the legislature wasted time and money by considering the bill.
“Regardless
of how many trans students there are who want to play sports, there is already
a governing authority in this arena and therefore, the state legislature need
not involve their time and resources on this,” she said.
“It is a
waste of taxpayer money for this body to spend time on this issue when it
doesn’t belong in the legislative purview,” she added.
“I find it rich that the legislature is concerned about
protecting women’s sports while they don’t give a flying fig about women. Full
stop.”
How I plan to vote
Both Dodson
and Zito have impressive resumes.
In
particular, serving as the commanding general for Fort Riley is an impressive credential
for a Manhattan politician to have.
But I plan
to vote for Zito this November.
I support
Medicaid expansion and abortion rights, and I believe transgender student
athletes should be able to compete on the team where they are most comfortable.
On these key
issues, I agree more with Zito than Dodson.
Learn more
You can
learn more about the race from the Manhattan
Mercury, as well as Zito’s and Dodson’s campaign
websites.
Postscript: Dodson is still welcome to elaborate on his votes against medicaid expansion and in favor of limiting eligibility for transgender student athletes.
As always, I can be reached at jasonbeets@gmail.com.
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