Kansas lawmaker blasts ‘wine and cheese’ crowd. But wine and cheese are delicious and cheap!

Sen. Joe Claeys, R-Wichita, has highlighted the "wine-and-cheese crowd." But what's so bad about wine and cheese? (Photo by Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector)

I wonder when Kansas Republican legislators last shopped for their own groceries.

The question weighed on my mind after the Senate passed its budget Wednesday. Sen. Joe Claeys, R-Wichita, claimed that he had to cut funding for Kansas Arts Commission and public broadcasting to support a transportation project in Wichita meant to assist those with disabilities.

“With all due respect, I think the wine-and-cheese crowd can afford to buy their own art, and they can afford to donate to public broadcasting,” Claeys said.

The wine-and-cheese crowd? Really? Does Claeys live in 1980s Republican Party rhetoric? In case you haven’t been to either a grocery store or liquor store recently, wine and cheese are quite cheap. And delicious!

Let’s break it down. A bottle of 2024 Ecco Domani pinot grigio ran me $17.27 on Sunday (all prices listed from here on out include sales tax). A wedge of Henri Hutin brie, a round of Castello gouda cheese and a box of Back to Nature rosemary and olive oil crackers cost $16.35 all together.

(Kansas Reflector video)

The cost for that modest wine-and-cheese party? A grand total of $33.60.

By comparison, two large Big Mac meals from McDonalds — burgers, fries and Coca-Colas — cost $27.75. A large speciality pizza from Dominos, along with an order of stuffed cheesy bread, can be delivered to your door for $31.68.

If you want to go the slightly fancier steakhouse route, I checked out prices at Texas Roadhouse. Two 8-ounce sirloin steaks with baked potatoes, Caesar salads and fountain drinks cost $40.40. (Prices for these theoretical meals came from online order apps.)

Wine and cheese sounds like a pretty good deal! But for some reason, Claeys didn’t ask Kansans to give up their steak and potatoes to support a transportation program.

Instead, he chose nonsensical class warfare. I bet of a lot of his GOP colleagues enjoy appetizers, too.

 

Sen. Joe Claeys, R-Wichita, chats with colleagues on the Senate floor March 26, 2025. (Photo by Grace Hills for Kansas Reflector)

Fake fight

Let’s address another aspect of Claeys’ statement, one important enough for a separate item in this column. And that’s playing off worthy causes against one another in a budget.

He presented his colleagues with a false choice. They should have recognized this. There’s not some small sum of money intended for “things liberals want,” which lawmakers then have to divide up in times of budgetary stress.

No, there’s a whole ocean of state funds that can divvied up any way lawmakers want. They could fully fund every single line item if they wanted to. They could expand Medicaid, legalize marijuana, pay for special education, and expand subsidies for the arts and public broadcasting — if they wanted to.

The only reason they don’t is because they don’t want to.

As I wrote last week,  lawmakers chose to pass unsustainable tax cuts. They chose to focus those cuts overwhelmingly on the richest Kansans. In doing so, they put themselves in a half-billion dollar budget hole each year.

Lawmakers from Claeys’ own party chose this course. Saying now that there’s only so much money to go around ignores recent history and all good sense.

 

Three candidates for Kansas governor shared issues the state’s residents face at the Kansas Democratic Party’s annual meeting on March 8, 2026. From left, moderator Adam Orduna, Sen. Ethan Corson, Sen. Cindy Holscher and Marty Tuley. (Photo by Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector)

Dems seek spotlight

Democratic candidates for governor went out of their way to distinguish themselves in recent days.

State Sens. Ethan Corson and Cindy Holscher, the leading candidates for their party, each issued statements raising their profiles among the welter of political news.

Corson voted against the Senate budget mentioned above. He thundered online: “This budget fails our schools and working families, which is why I voted no. The first thing I’ll do as governor is institute a strong school funding formula that properly allocates the resources, including fully funding special education, to ensure all teachers and students can succeed.”

Holscher (who also voted against the budget) wrote an op-ed in the Kansas City Star on March 1 opposing the deal to relocate the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas: “At a time when our leaders should be laser focused on lowering costs for Kansans, instead they are delivering a massive giveaway to billionaires and asking us to foot the bill. Like the failed Sam Brownback tax experiment before it, the stadium deal makes big promises of nebulous economic growth, but risks blowing open our state budget.”

With election season heating up, we’ll see if voters pay attention.

 

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach answers questions from Kansas Reflector senior reporter Morgan Chilson on March 6, 2026. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Kobach’s retreat

Douglas County District Court was packed Friday for arguments over a temporary restraining order for Senate Bill 244, the state’s latest anti-trans legislation. The ACLU and Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office differed — as might be expected — over the law’s intention, effects and constitutionality. However, toward the end of the hearing, Kobach suggested delaying implementation of the law until March 26.

How that differs from a temporary restraining order, the lawyers in our audience will have to tell me. It certainly suggests that lawmakers whiffed when drafting and passing the bill. If only someone had warned them about bypassing committee hearings and full public debate. Oh, wait. Everyone did.

Not for the first time, Kobach has been left picking up the pieces from a broken legislative process. No doubt he agrees with the aim of the bill — he advocated for it in committee, after all — but a little more care in writing the thing would have prevented his courtroom retreat.

 

Questions

Making their first appearance since 2025’s Statehouse Scraps, open-ended questions about Kansas political news follow.

• If a Douglas County court temporarily delays SB 244 from taking effect, will that be the fastest that a Kansas law has ever been paused by the judicial branch?
• Who holds the upper hand in budget negotiations this session, the House or Senate? Will the final conference committee report show the $200 million in cuts promised by House Speaker Dan Hawkins or something less?
• After frenetic lawmaking in the first weeks of the session and promises to pass a budget in record time, the Legislature has slowed down a smidge. Will senators and representatives actually leave much earlier than usual this year?
• When do you think the Kansas GOP will hold a raffle celebrating free speech and the First Amendment as opposed to guns?

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.