Kelly later broadcast an ad in which she said she doesn’t support men playing girls’ sorts, leading Republicans to charge that she was lying about her record. The Republican Governors Association has tried to undercut Kelly’s appeal to the middle with TV ads attacking her for vetoing two proposals to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s school and college sports teams. She didn’t, saying only, “Women should have bodily autonomy equal with men.”īut education and school funding are potent issues, especially in vote-rich Kansas City suburbs that have used strong public schools to fuel economic and population growth. Schmidt, who supported a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution that voters decisively rejected in August, challenged Kelly to name a restriction she would support. In a wide-ranging debate, Schmidt also softened his previous opposition to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, saying broad public support for it would lead him to back a narrow legalization law.
Schmidt mocked Kelly’s attempt to portray him as a clone of Brownback, saying, “The governor has an unhealthy obsession with her predecessor.” Most of the experiment was repealed in 2017, and the state’s finances have improved dramatically since. Sam Brownback, who launched a nationally notorious experiment in cutting state income taxes in 2012-13 that was followed by large, persistent budget deficits. Kelly has tried to tie Schmidt to former GOP Gov. “You know, I have a hard time being lectured by you on public schools,” Kelly told Schmidt during their debate in the Kansas City suburbs, sponsored by the local association for attorneys.
Schmidt has said that as governor he would ensure the state keeps spending enough money, but as attorney general, he defended past Republican school funding laws that the court declared insufficient under the Kansas Constitution. Kelly, a target for the national GOP, takes credit for Kansas increasing its spending on K-12 schools enough to satisfy multiple state Supreme Court rulings in a lawsuit filed against the state in 2010. He is also pounding on the incumbent, saying Kelly allowed students to be “locked out of schools” for months during the coronavirus pandemic. Schmidt’s approach recalls a strategy that helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win over suburban parents and triumph in the 2021 governor’s race in normally blue Virginia. But Schmidt has emphasized what he calls parents’ rights - making it easier for parents to challenge classroom materials and seek to remove books they find objectionable from libraries - a key issue.
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