(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Nov. 7, 2016)
Within minutes of the last election being called on Tuesday night, or probably early Wednesday, the real action starts in the Statehouse, as the Senate—but more interestingly, the House—starts to organize to become your Legislature.
It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be quick and it’s not going to be politically pretty.
For most Kansans, Election Day means it’s time to start thinking about where the good china is and when to start thawing the turkey for Thanksgiving.
But for Statehouse habitues, it means watching every move, every gesture, who’s talking to whom, and trying to figure out where the real power is going to be in the upcoming two years of Kansas government and how it is going to effect what happens to them and to their clients, whether they be welfare recipients, highway contractors, schoolteachers or payday loan companies.
So, for insiders, things just start when the voting ends.
Key is going to be election of House and Senate leadership in early December Republican caucuses (the GOP is likely to maintain majorities in both chambers). Chances are good that Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, is re-elected to a second four-year term as leader of the upper chamber. Might be some squawking, but that race is about wrapped up. It gets more complicated when the leadership of the Senate—and it will need a new vice president and majority leader—gathers to select the chairs of committees and appoint members to those committees. The chairman of a committee pretty much runs things and can often decide how a bill gets amended-up for presentation to the full Senate.
There may, or may not be, significant under-the-covers deal-making to decide who will chair the committees.
In the House? Well, with the retirement of Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, there may be a two-way or three-way race for Speaker—and the Speaker gets the power to make single-handed appointments to committees.
A race for House Speaker among what is near-certain to be a Republican-dominated House means that the character of the new House GOP caucus is key. If it’s conservatives, look for them to vote for a conservative leader, and if more moderate Republicans hold the majority in the caucus, look for them to make their move.
But that scrap within the GOP caucus—and yes, there are committee memberships and chairmanships in the negotiating—is just the start of the organization.
The House Speaker is elected by the full House. That means that Democrats get to vote, too, for House Speaker but not until the first day of the session. In recent memory, the minority party has generally just confirmed the majority party’s leadership—but it doesn’t have to. It’s been a matter of political courtesy, which is starting to wear thin.
So, if Democrats decide to vote in return for political concessions, they could well back a Speaker candidate who didn’t win the majority in the GOP caucus.
What happens then? We don’t know for sure. Does a moderate GOP Speaker name some Democrats to committee chairs or stack committee membership so that Democrats have more voice?
Or does a conservative Speaker make friends with the moderates in the caucus and try to maintain enough unity so that Republicans can defeat on the House floor tax increases, school funding increases, and taxes on LLCs and other now tax-exempt Kansans?
It may be Jan. 9, first day of the session, when a House Speaker is formally elected that we learn who is leading the House and whether lawmakers spend the first week or so on the payroll waiting to find out who’s running committees. H’mmm…
So, while the politicking is over for most Kansans, it’s just starting for those folks you elected to represent you. This ride isn’t over yet…by a long-shot.