(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Jan. 12, 2015)
Two interesting things are going to happen this week at the Statehouse.
Oh, the governor and legislators get sworn into office, and legislators are going to spend the first couple days meeting each other, and trading stories about their children and such, but that happens regularly.
The two things to watch? The Kansas Supreme Court and Democratic legislative leaders.
The high court? Its justices are going to be sitting in the House of Representatives Chamber Thursday night listening to the first gubernatorial State of the State message delivered a couple months after Gov. Sam Brownback campaigned against—and voted against, he says—the retention of two of its seven justices.
Brownback, recall, opposed the retention of Justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson because they voted to send a decade-old Wichita murder case back to a district court for resentencing. Not setting the infamous Carr brothers free, just having their death penalty sentences for four gruesome murders reconsidered at the district court level to meet new requirements for death penalty case sentencing.
The issue of the two justices was hot in the Republican vote-rich Wichita area, and Brownback joined. Both Rosen and Johnson were retained, by historically narrow margins, but there were Brownback fingerprints on that election.
Wonder whether the justices will show up for the State of the State, or whether they’ll clap?
And the legislative Democratic leaders?
The interesting thing to watch with their anticipated after-the-speech press conference will be what they talk about.
Practically, those party leaders have spent a good two years blasting the governor for signing into law a couple bills that reduced the income tax bills of all Kansans, but eliminated state income taxes for small businesses which were clever enough to restructure their business organizations to join the tax-exempt crowd.
The point? That tax reduction is now state law, and we’ve lived with those cuts that were bigger than Brownback sought, but, well, that’s the law now. And, like it or not, and Democrats don’t like it, Brownback has another four-year lease on Cedar Crest, the governor’s mansion.
Do they continue to talk about the tax cuts, or move the discussion to the present, when Brownback either has to seek more revenue from Kansans or cut spending and pinpoint for the general public what gets cut?
Statehouse denizens are thinking with four more years of Brownback, it’s time to turn the Democratic talking points to the present, just what has to be done to provide a level of services to Kansans that they want, or to strategically make sure that cuts in spending strike potential 2016 voters in a way that sends them to the polls to elect more Democrats and more moderate Republicans.
The Democrats have a year and a half—until the primary election of August 2016 when House and Senate members stand for reelection—to make their case that current state tax law is depriving Kansans of services that they expect, and maybe demand, from the government. They are going to have to find those pinch-points where voters are inconvenienced or see local taxes eat up their state tax-savings to turn the crowd.
That’s going to be the real job for Democrats. Nobody is against smaller government or more economical government, but they have to find a way to personalize those budget cuts for the August 2016 voters, both Republican primary voters who essentially determine state tax policy with their votes and Democrats who didn’t bother to vote.
And, we’re thinking that ought to start pretty quickly if it is going to work for Democrats.