Republican candidate for Kansas governor offering voters a prescription for change

Former Gov. Jeff Colyer says experience in legislative and executive branch affairs and a lifetime as surgeon prepares him to return to the Capitol as governor in January 2027. In this image, he speaks don the Kansas Reflector podcast Feb. 17, 2026, in Topeka. (Photo by Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — Republican Jeff Colyer says a blend of Kansas legislative and executive branch experience and a career in medicine prepared him to once again deliver common sense leadership as governor.

“I’m running to make Kansas great again, to steal that phrase,” Colyer said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. “I’m running so that we can actually grow our state.”

Colyer, who served two years in the Kansas House and two years in the Kansas Senate before he was elected lieutenant governor in 2010, was sworn in as Kansas’ 47th governor in 2018. He finished the term of Gov. Sam Brownback, who resigned to accept a diplomatic post in the first administration of President Donald Trump.

Colyer has worked for decades as a plastic surgeon in Kansas and Missouri, even while serving in state office. He’s volunteered with the International Medical Corps as a reconstructive surgeon in two dozen war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and, most recently, Ukraine.

“All experience matters,” Colyer said. “While I was in office, I was working as a surgeon, taking care of Kansans on their worst days. My life isn’t dependent on being a politician. My life is dependent on serving people and serving them in all different ways, and that’s what this job is about.”

Colyer, 65, is up against Senate President Ty Masterson, Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, former Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, former Wichita School Board member Joy Eakins and Johnson County businessman Philip Sarnecki in the August primary. In such a crowded field, a candidate capturing 35% of the vote could prevail. That makes a Trump endorsement significant for Republicans running for governor.

The Democratic primary features Sens. Ethan Corson and Cindy Holscher, both of Johnson County. The general election winner in November would replace Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in January.

Among the candidates for governor, only Colyer knows how it felt to manage state government from a second floor office at the Capitol.

“When you start that job, you’re starting on day one. And, on day one, believe me, we will issue more executive orders than President Trump did on his first day,” Colyer said. “You have to be the leader. You change the tone of the state. You need to make sure that you’re bringing in jobs. You’re making sure that the education system is working, that the budget actually balances there, and that you’re the comforter in chief.”

 

Immediate agenda

Colyer, while serving as governor for nearly a year, sought the GOP’s nomination in 2018. He lost that Republican primary by several hundred votes to Kris Kobach. Kobach eventually lost the general election to Kelly in 2018.

“There have been some gains, but we’ve missed some opportunities,” Colyer said. “When I left the governorship, we had more Kansans working than ever before. We had an $800 million surplus. We were starting to see improvements in education.”

In the past decade, Colyer said, 1% of the state’s population left Kansas. He said the state government budget surged 60%, while K-12 public schools slipped academically.

Kansas continued to be viewed as a high tax state within a 17-state region, he said. Kansans should amend the state Constitution to impose a hard cap on growth in property taxes, he said.

Economically, he said, Kansas shouldn’t be 43rd nationally in wages.

“We need to make sure that we get more money in people’s pockets, first by better-paying jobs. That means higher level jobs, more technology, more exports. Then, we also need to get rid of a lot of those (state) expenses that are unnecessary. We don’t need to be the most bureaucratic state in the country right now,” he said.

He said Kansas suffered from public K-12 and university educators blending blending gender politics into classrooms.

“Instead of focusing on, you know, reading, writing, math, we’re ending up in gender identification studies in lower grades,” Colyer said. “The idea that men could be in a woman’s bathroom, you know, scares the daylights out of me and out of many women that I know. Many people … on the Democratic side in particular have focused on ideological things.”

Colyer said educators ought to concentrate on student achievement and preparing people for the workforce. Attention to diversity, equity and inclusion shouldn’t be a priority, he said.

“We’re … spending time on diversity programs or inclusion programs that are meaningless for people, but just inflame everything,” he said.

 

Abortion politics

Colyer said Kansas government faced hardships during the years he and Brownback led the executive branch. Part of that was fallout from the national recession from 2007 to 2009. In 2012, Brownback compounded the challenges by signing a law aggressively slashing state income taxes in what he referred to as an “experiment.” State revenue collapsed. Balancing the budget led to partial retention of a state sales tax hike, heavy borrowing and cutbacks in core state services. In a bipartisan vote in the House and Senate, the Legislature repealed much of Brownback’s tax program in 2017.

Colyer said that when he took office in 2018, he focused on driving the state pension system to solid ground and controlling Medicaid spending, in part, by rejecting expansion of eligibility for Medicaid.

In a second Colyer administration, he said, Kansas should strive to shed its place as a Midwest magnet for abortion. Clinics and hospitals in Kansas conducted a record 19,811 abortions in 2024, but more than 15,000 were for out-of-state patients.

“The number of abortions are growing so quickly in our state over the last few years that by 2030 we could have more abortions than live births in the state,” Colyer said.

He declined to say whether he supported a total ban on abortion, but he acknowledged “the people spoke” in 2022 by rejecting a constitutional amendment to nullify a state Supreme Court decision that women had a fundamental right to end a pregnancy. Colyer backed the amendment and said he was a “pro-life politician. Always will be. That is who I am.”

 

Immigration ‘mistakes’

Colyer said he hoped the state’s voters adopted in August a constitutional amendment allowing election of justices to the Supreme Court. He said the Kansas Bar Association had too much influence in the committee that selected finalists to a governor, who made the appointment.

“Guess what? In the last 60 years, there has only been one conservative judge on the Supreme Court,” said Colyer, who argued change would lead to election of “justices that reflect Kansas values” rather than values of “trial attorneys.”

Colyer said Kansas had to do a better job eliminating fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the state’s unemployment insurance program.

He said the immigration crackdown ordered by Trump was essential and the president did “an excellent” job of sealing the border. In terms of lethal tactics relied on by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Colyer didn’t raise a strong objection.

“They make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “You do a real investigation, and you come to the bottom of that, which is the process that’s going on.”

He said as governor he would make certain Kansas cooperated with Trump on immigration enforcement by targeting “criminal illegal aliens that threaten families.”