Three Kansas GOP candidates for governor share harmony, hostility in party-sponsored debate

Kansas Republican Party gubernatorial candidates, from left, Philip Sarnecki, Scott Schwab and Charlotte O'Hara, take part Thursday night in a televised debate. The majority of the seven GOP candidates on the Aug. 4 ballot either chose not to participate or weren't eligible because they didn't pay a $10,000 fee to the state GOP. (Composite from Kansas Reflector photos)

TOPEKA — The three Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidates eligible and in attendance at a televised debate Thursday agreed the state’s public schools had plenty of funding to operate successfully but were mired in inefficiencies that harmed student learning.

Philip Sarnecki of Overland Park, who declared his lack of experience in elective office an advantage, said local, state and federal government spent a combined $18,800 per public school student in Kansas for 2024-2025. Tragically, he said, barely half that money was deployed where it was needed — in classrooms — while support for administrative bloat continued.

“We got the worst outcomes that we have ever gotten in the state of Kansas on our testing scores,” Sarnecki said. “This is not a money issue. It’s an allocation of resource issue on where the money is going.”

Secretary of State Scott Schwab and former Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, GOP gubernatorial candidates from Overland Park taking part in the debate, also faulted spending priorities in K-12 schools.

Schwab said public school districts had plenty of cash, in part, because the Kansas Supreme Court sided with a handful of school districts that prevailed in a series of school-finance lawsuits against the state. He dreaded a potential new suit by districts confounded by the Legislature’s refusal to fully fund special education instruction in Kansas.

“It is so frustrating that the funding formula is based on who can afford to sue the state and win,” Schwab said.

O’Hara, who earned a college degree in education and homeschooled her children, said the public education system in Kansas was “absolutely broken.” She said the state was “failing our children” because student testing showed 70% of Kansas’ fourth-graders weren’t proficient readers.

“We need to get computers out of the classroom,” she said. “Our kids are addicted to these computers.”

She offered radical ideas of defunding the $300 million Kansas Department of Education and refusing all federal money for K-12 education in Kansas. In O’Hara’s view, the result would be an “incredible economic development boost to have the school districts actually competing with each other.”

This was the fourth and final campaign gubernatorial debate sanctioned by the Kansas Republican Party before the Aug. 4 primary. For a candidate to take part in the series of debates, each had to pay $10,000 to the state party. Five candidates did, including O’Hara, Schwab and Sarnecki. Former Gov. Jeff Colyer paid the fee and took part in an early GOP-endorsed debate in Wichita, but he decided not to formally file as a candidate by June 1.

Senate President Ty Masterson of Andover, who received the endorsement of President Donald Trump, declined to take part in this forum hosted by television stations WIBW in Topeka and KWCH in Wichita. Sarnecki had predicted Masterson would skip the debate and denounced the decision as “insulting to Kansas voters.”

Three Republican candidates for governor — Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt of Topeka, Stacy Rogers of Wichita and Nick Reinecker of Inman —declined to pay the $10,000 and weren’t eligible to share their views with the audience.

Hans Torgerson, spokesman for the Kansas Democratic Party, said the GOP primary turned into a “parade of no-shows. Kansans deserve candidates who tell the truth and actually show up when it counts.”

Candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor include Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog, state Sen. Ethan Corson of Fairway and state Sen. Cindy Holscher of Overland Park. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who endorsed Corson, cannot seek a third term in office.

 

Data center growth

Addressing the escalation of data center projects in Kansas, O’Hara said the motivation was a 2025 law adopted by the Kansas Legislature to provide developers a 20-year sales and use tax exemption on construction, remodeling, equipment and repair services for data centers. Qualifying projects had to make a capital investment of $250 million within five years of operation and were required to create at least 20 jobs within two years.

“Can you imagine?” O’Hara said. “Wouldn’t you like to have a 20-year sales tax exemption? That absolutely has to be repealed. If there’s not feed in the trough, the hogs are not going to come. And that is the answer to keeping the data centers out of Kansas.”

Proposals have surfaced for $32 billion in data center projects in Johnson, Wyandotte and Miami counties, the Kansas City Business Journal has reported.

Despite the subsidy offered by Kansas, there has been public criticism because data center facilities draw huge public subsidies, consume vast quantities of water and electricity and create few permanent jobs.

Schwab, who served in the Kansas House before elected secretary of state in back-to-back elections, said there were national security implications if the United States allowed China to prevail in the artificial intelligence war associated with the data center expansion. He also said city and county governments should be allowed to decide whether data centers were built.

“We don’t want a monolith of Topeka telling counties whether they can or cannot have a data center because some communities actually want them,” he said.

Sarnecki, who sounded an alarm about proliferation of tax breaks for big business, said data centers should be allowed to proceed if the project didn’t have an undue burden on the water supply, didn’t increase local utility rates, avoided use of eminent domain and was endorsed in a local vote.

 

Marijuana, abortion politics

Schwab, O’Hara and Sarnecki shared opposition to legalizing medicinal or recreational sale of marijuana in Kansas. Polling by the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University indicates 70% of Kansans support medicinal sales of marijuana, while 59% endorse recreational sales of marijuana.

Schwab, who is married to a pharmacist, said the decision should be based on scientific assessment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rather than political considerations. He worried marijuana wouldn’t be dispensed in a consistent manner. In Colorado, for example, consumers had the option of products with THC levels ranging from 15% to 30%, and some concentrates on the market exceeding 50%.

“With the potency coming out of cannabis, there is no consistency,” Schwab said. “I’ve never met anybody who consistently used marijuana and suddenly got smarter.”

Sarnecki said consumers of modern incarnations of pot were experiencing hallucinations, anxiety and schizophrenia.

“If we open this Pandora’s Box, we are also going to increase crime in our state,” Sarnecki said.

Meanwhile, O’Hara said in her opening and closing statements that a top issue in Kansas was the future of abortion rights. She said it was alarming that 19,000 abortions were performed in Kansas during 2024. The numbers surged in Kansas as abortion restrictions were tightened in nearby states.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the state’s Bill of Rights created a fundamental right for women to end a pregnancy.

“Life is the most important issue in the state of Kansas,” O’Hara said. “This is utterly morally bankrupt. That we cannot honor life from conception to natural death is just unbelievable.”