Interview of Kenny Wilk, May 16, 2024

Chris Courtwright: Good afternoon. Today is May 13, 2024, and we’re in the historic House Chamber of the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, Kansas. I’m Chris Courtwright, who served for thirty-four years working as an economist for the Kansas Legislature in its nonpartisan Research Department before retiring in 2020.  For full disclosure, Governor Kelly shortly thereafter appointed me to her bipartisan Council on Tax Reform.

Today I’m privileged to interview former Representative Kenny Wilk, who has had a long, distinguished, and diverse career in public service.  In addition to serving as a Republican member of the Kansas House here in the Legislature from 1993-2008, representing the Leavenworth area, he was a member of the Kansas Board of Regents from 2011-2015, including a year as Chair. He was a member of the former Kansas Bioscience Authority Board,  and since 2009, has been a key figure for the University of Kansas Health System, where he currently serves as Vice President for Government and Community Affairs. His illustrious career in both the public and private sectors previously included more than thirty-one years at Hallmark as well as service on the boards for the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation, the National Institute for Strategic Technology Acquisition and Commercialization, the First State Bank of Tonganoxie, the Metropolitan Mental Health Association of the Heartland, the Kansas State Historical Society, and Kansas, Inc.

As if all of that weren’t enough, he served for a time as a faculty member for a special Kansas Leadership Center program designed to help train newly-elected legislators. A longtime resident of the Leavenworth/Lansing area who has won multiple awards and kudos we will soon be discussing for his tireless advocacy for economic development, Kenny is a proud graduate of Ottawa University.  Did I get most of that right?

Kenny Wilk: You got all of that right. I’m quite impressed with your research. You did forget that I was an Eagle Scout, am an Eagle Scout. But otherwise you got it all! I forgot actually some of that. So thank you for recalling all of that.

CC: Absolutely. Well, this interview with Mr. Wilk is conducted on behalf of the Kansas Oral History Project, a not-for-profit corporation created for the purpose of interviewing former legislators and significant leaders in state government, particularly those who served during the 1960s and subsequent decades.

The interviews will be accessible to researchers, educators, and the public through the KOHP website, and also the Kansas Historical Society and the State Library. Transcriptions are made possible as result of the generosity of KOHP donors.  Former House Speaker Pro Tem Dave Heinemann is our videographer today.

During your sixteen years in the Legislature, I suppose it demonstrates your jack-of-all-trades, diverse skill set that you served on so many different committees, but looking over those records, I guess some of the highlights that jumped out to me were that you, of course, chaired probably the two most powerful House Committees, Appropriations and then Taxation. You also chaired the Economic Development Committee, which was certainly appropriate given your background and expertise in that area, and served on pretty much every other prominent panel worth mentioning, including Federal and State Affairs, Judiciary, Transportation, and Financial Institutions. I hope I cherrypicked most of the top ones, since there are quite a few others on your full list.

KW: That’s—I did have the opportunity to serve and chair Post Audit, Legislative Post Audit. I had what was a very fulfilling legislative career for myself, and I like to point that out to folks that are serving today. I think sometimes people pick up a committee or a subject area, and then they get comfortable there, and then they don’t want to move beyond that. I actually was quite curious about almost everything. I just always have found interest in every topic that I come across, some more than others. I didn’t always move because I wanted to move. Sometimes there were just reasons why I got moved, and I didn’t quite understand. But the lesson out of that for me was it created this diversity of experience. It gave me a breadth, not always depth, but a breadth of experience and knowledge coming in that I found very, very useful.

And then I quickly determined, so the best example I can actually share is when you serve on Appropriations, you really do get to learn all about state government.

CC: Oh, yes.

KW: And that experience will help you with any other committee you go on. If you actually have the privilege and the honor of chairing Appropriations, then chairing the other committees really becomes like kind of a walk in the park, but what you learn from all that when you put it all together can really allow you to work in the process. I have learned not many people have ever had the opportunity to chair Tax and Appropriations. I think David Adkins did that. He was in my class. And I always considered that a privilege and an honor.

And people will often ask me, “What did you like better?” and that’s a hard one for me to answer because I actually liked them both a lot. The way I described it, I always found Appropriations more about today. You’ve got to fund the government, keep the government going for the next year or two. So it’s really about today. What I loved about tax policy and the way I always looked at tax policy—I had some great mentors that really helped me to understand that tax policy is about tomorrow. It’s about tomorrow. It’s not just about the revenue. It’s certainly the revenue. You were helpful at that. There’s always consequences to that—what behaviors are you moving, what finances are you bringing, what is that going to do, not the next year or two, because I learned that as well. All of those types of policies, there’s a long-term consequence. There can be a short term, but there’s always a long term. So I found that challenge with the tax policy really fulfilling.

CC: Absolutely. Before we delve a little bit more into your legislative years and committee work and big issues and whatnot, let’s get some additional background. One question we always ask, are you a native Kansan, and if not, when did your family move here?

KW: I am a native Kansan. My family came here in the late 1800s, both sides, one from the Poland area and the other from Germany, German descent kind of come in, my dad’s side of the family more through Canada and actually ended down in the Leavenworth area seeking work as many people did back in the late 1800s in the coal mines. A lot of people don’t know, but there were coal mines in Leavenworth, and the caves are still there. That’s how they ended up in Leavenworth. My ancestry runs all of the way back there.

CC: You had been actively involved in your local Farm Bureau when you first ran for the Legislature in 1992, when you were thirty-three years old.  So maybe the politics and public service bug was in your blood from a fairly early age.  Can we start there and can you tell us whether your family had a history in politics and whether you had a mentor or anything who encouraged you to start down this very interesting career path?  I found a clipping from 1992 when you filed that said you were frustrated with what was happening in Topeka relative to both economic development and education, a couple of issues that as we know have remained near and dear to your heart here many decades later.  Were you approached by party officials or people in and around your community encouraging you to run in 1992, or was it pretty much something you decided to do on your own initiative?

KW: The short answer is I decided to run on my own, but not, not really. None of us ever decide to run on our own. At the local level, I didn’t have anybody coming and knocking on my door, saying, “Hey, Kenny, do you want to sign up and run?” My story is a little bit different, and I always love to share it. Did I grow up in a political family? Absolutely. Nobody was an elected official, but did we talk politics and religion? Every Sunday. Back then, we always went to Grandma’s for dinner on Sunday, every Sunday, and I grew up, and believe it or not, I started out in my political life when I registered when I was eighteen as a Democrat because I grew up in a Democrat family. I mean, and we talked politics every Sunday, and it was always heated. The fact of people being afraid to talk politics, it was just the opposite. That’s what I grew up with, and I mean, my aunts and uncles would have at it until Grandma rang the bell, and it was time to eat. Then we went and ate, and then it rested until the next week.

So the seeds of that, I didn’t realize that. I used to sit on the floor and listen to them go at it. I recall how much I enjoyed that. It has been really a significant event in my life, and again it was more accidental than anything else. I got elected when I was a junior in high school to go to the Kansas Farm Bureau Citizenship Seminar in Junction City, Kansas.

Now the only reason I went is because the name scared me off, but it was a coed event, and a good friend of mine was going, and we decided it would be a great summer getaway. So we went. And that event actually changed the course of my life. And I’ve told the Farm Bureau this a lot, many times. I’ve shared the story with a lot of folks here. I was so moved. They had a lot of elected officials. They taught us a lot about citizenship.

But there were some of the elected officials that were speaking, and I can remember to this day, and I’ve always try to do this—I’ve still tried to do it—I tried to do it as an elected official. I still try to do it. I always encourage young people because at that event, they’d always kind of close the same way, “Think about running for public office someday. Just don’t rule it out. Think about running for public office.”

We all need to encourage our young people to do it. That planted a seed with me. And I remember leaving that event saying, “You know what? I am going to run for office. I’m going to do it. That’s what I want to do.” I didn’t know what I was going to run for. I didn’t know when I was going to run, how, or anything else, but when I was sixteen years old, I knew I was going to run.

CC: Let’s save this planet.

KW: So it went from there, and we can get into the ’92 campaign if you want to.

CC: That’s where I want to get into. A fascinating race. I want you to tell us a little more about that 1992 race.  You got around 53 percent of the vote and knocked off a Democratic incumbent, Stevi Stephens, in what the Kansas City Star characterized on election night as an upset. The Star also said that you had been quite critical of her as the incumbent while she had been critical of you for accepting political action committee contributions and also sort of suggesting that you were a bit of a carpetbagger who had moved into the district just to run for the seat.

So this sounds like a fairly bare-knuckled campaign.  Were there debates and forums that you both attended, or was the campaign more fought along the lines of radio ads, yard signs, and postcards?  Also, do you have any funny front-porch stories to tell about the first time you were going door-to-door and meeting some of your more eccentric future constituents?  I will tell you that some of my very favorite front-porch stories often seem to involve somewhat aggressive dogs. Anything you want to tell us about the entirety of your ’92 race against Democratic incumbent Stevi Stephens?

KW: Well, yes, there’s a lot to unpack there. That all does capture it. Of course, that was my first race. It was only her second. She was a first-term, and really the bigger issue for her—so it was a kind of a combination. We did have some forums. I tried to make all of them. She came to about half of them. And they were fairly spirited, but at the time—I haven’t checked this, but I think I’m right about this. I believe I was the third Republican challenger to beat a female incumbent. It was tricky.

CC: It was a tall order.

KW: Yes, it’s just tricky. The thing that really helped me the most was she had given—that’s back when we had the Allied Officers from Fort Leavenworth that come to the Capitol every year from the different nations around the world. We always had a day here. I don’t know if they still do that now or not. I think they stopped. I don’t know if they restarted or not. That was a big event. And she gave an anti-war speech on one of the two years that she was here to greet them, and that got picked up locally. That really—that was the lynchpin of the campaign. Now we got into it about some other issues, but that really, really got—that was the lynchpin. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had a lot of good people helping me.

My first primary, I ran against the Vice Chair of the Republican Party who had been the Vice Chair for twenty-some-odd years. Fortunately for me, he just assumed that the Republican nomination would go to him. So he was not worried about this thirty-two-year-old kid.

CC: So this would have been July and August of ’92.

KW: Yes. He just dismissed me totally. I think I knocked on about 7,000 doors. I mean, I literally—I’ve got countless stories. I was different because I had a rural and an urban district. So I hit the urban areas numerous times, but I knew it was going to be a close race. I actually went out—there were some serious dogs out in the rural area, but if you had multiple Republicans registered at a household, I was coming to your house to see you. I walked through mud and rain.

I won by eighty-nine votes. So I won my first race by eighty-nine votes. One of my favorite stories of that night when we’re counting the votes. They were coming in, and my mom and family were there. There was only one precinct left to come in, and I was ahead by one vote.

CC: Oh, my goodness.

KW: And my mother had just dismissed it. She was just a nervous wreck. I thought we were going to have to admit her to the hospital. And I knew where that last precinct was at, and I knew I was going to be okay. I said, “Mom, it’s going to be okay.” Well, we ended up winning by eighty-nine votes.

It was a lot of knocking on doors, a lot of going to parades. It was a lot of hard work, but it was a great experience. Again, the veterans told me this. I didn’t believe it at the time. This is an important point, I believe. People complain about campaigns and how hard they are. You get the short—you don’t get time to respond. You’ve got too much going on. It’s chaotic. I was told the best preparation you’re ever going to get for serving is a good, hard campaign.

I found that to be very accurate as the years went on—learning to manage that chaos, learning to understand, when you get asked a question, you don’t get ten minutes to respond. You may get two. You had to learn to think on your feet and be adaptive, and that’s what campaigns are about.

So as people are thinking about running for office, people that are running for office welcome those campaigns and take them for what they really are—a great opportunity to learn and to develop the skills that you will need and you will practice every day if you’re able to win and serve in this Chamber.

CC: It sounds like the veterans were a key constituency for you. But I have to ask, since  this was 1992, this was the first statewide election in ’92 after the whole Summer of Mercy protests down in Wichita. Was abortion an issue up in Leavenworth at all during that campaign?

KW: Absolutely. That was back in—again I got some great coaching on that issue. I’m not here to persuade anybody on issues. I’ll just tell you the coaching I got and the coaching I shared with others. When you’re asked about that issue, if you can’t state your position in about ten seconds or less, you don’t have a position. So determine what your position is, state it, stick with it. What I found is that people respected that. Stevi and I were on different sides of that issue. It never got debated much. People just wanted to know where you were at. We stated it and moved on.

That was an issue, but back—school finance—property taxes was a huge issue in the early nineties. You know that.

CC: We’re going to get there, yes.

KW: I’ve got to tell you, that’s what they wanted to talk about was topics like—

CC: Property taxes, yes. Let’s talk about the environment you arrived in for your first term during the 1993-94 biennium.  I’ve always thought that the early nineties was maybe the most fascinating time in post-WWII Kansas legislative history because of how competitive and dynamic things were here at the Statehouse.  Setting the table for your arrival, we know that Democratic Governor Joan Finney had gotten elected in 1990 at least in part because both of her predecessors, Governors Carlin and Hayden, had been blamed for some of the property tax reappraisal and classification upheavals of the late 1980s, which you just mentioned.

And Democrats as a result of that 1990 election had taken control of this Chamber here in the House for just the third time in state history.  In 1992, the Legislature, at Finney’s urging, had just passed arguably the most significant piece of public policy in the last fifty years, the historic, then-new K-12 school finance law, a measure which was designed to comply with constitutional mandates regarding adequacy and equity in the funding of schools, but also to dramatically reduce property taxes in most areas of the state.

Then in 1992, even though Democrat Bill Clinton of course is elected President, Republicans here in Kansas do win back control of the Kansas House by a few seats—thanks to results like an upset win from a scrappy newcomer in the 42nd District—I think it was 66-59 GOP maybe your freshman term?

KW: Correct.

CC: Meaning that when you arrived here in 1993, you and your party were once again seated over here on the majority side of the aisle.  Can you tell us what the experience was like for you when you showed up for your first session, and maybe how you went about learning all the legislative procedure and nuances, and who the key stakeholders and lobbyists were? Also maybe whether there were some more senior members of the GOP caucus who helped mentor you and the other freshmen and sort of teach you the ropes?

KW: Yes, again a lot to unpack there. That brings back a lot of memories. So every freshman, you’ve got to recognize when you come in, you have no context because it’s your first time here. So you don’t really—but I certainly remember the very, very warm welcome that I and some of the other freshmen got because, yes, you’re correct, I do find this interesting, Chris. Today, I have people ask about my previous service, and I remind them that when I came in, the Democrats had been in the majority party.

Unfortunately, we have too many people in our state that don’t think that that ever happened or could happen. I said, “It absolutely could.” The Democrats were 63-62. I didn’t know what that actually meant as far as the majority party because I hadn’t served yet. But when I came here, did I ever get a warm welcome. So, yes, I was one of the few that flipped it back over.

When I got here, I liked to think I accepted early on what I didn’t know. It took me just a little bit, but I often categorized it this way. When you’re sitting around the kitchen table, it’s one thing to talk about the issues. When I’m campaigning and I’m out knocking on doors, that’s another level, talking about the issues. But once you’re actually elected, you’re sitting in one of these seats and you’re now deciding for three million people, it’s altogether different.

I remember, again one of my favorite stories, I had a lot of great mentors. I’ve got to mention some of them. One of them is certainly Joan Wagnon. I’ve got a story to tell about her as well. I remember one of my first encounters, I’m downstairs as a freshman. We’re coming up on the first break. You could not see my desk. In fact, you couldn’t even see me because every piece of mail that came in, I was saving it because I was going to read it.

And Rochelle Chronister came down, and she walked into my office. She said, “What are you doing?” And I told her, “I’ve got reading material here.” She said, “You really think you’re going to read all that?” She said, “Do you have any idea how much more stuff is coming?” And she took all of it, and she just threw it in the trash can. And I’m like, “What are you doing?” She said, “You can never catch up.” She said, “You have got to learn how to trust the staff here, learn the right people to ask questions of, engage, and learn that way. Keep up with what you can keep up on reading,” but she said, “the chances of you ever getting through that material are zero to none.”

So the seeds were sown right there. I was always interested in Appropriations. You talked about my service on Appropriations. I interned on Appropriations for four years because when Rochelle Chronister was chairing it, she was a drill sergeant, but she also was a tremendous teacher.

I didn’t know it, but new House members I guess were not supposed to interface with Senators. Well, I was in 174 West, and Gus Bogina, who just passed, I know you all had a great interview with him, he was right around the corner from me, and he chaired Ways and Means. Well, I was interested in the budget. So I’d just truck over there and ask questions.

One day I got set straight and told I wasn’t supposed to do that. So I stopped doing it. He saw me one day in the hall, and he asked me where I’d been. I told him, I said, “I apologize because I learned I wasn’t supposed to do that, being a freshman.” I never forgot this either. He said, “I don’t know who told you that,” but he said, “you have no idea how thrilled I am that a freshman member is interested in the budget.” He said, “You come over here anytime you want with any question.” He said, “You don’t need an appointment. You just walk in.”

I took those lessons—you know Keith Roe, the Chair of Tax. You know that. I was telling Joan Wagnon I got to serve on a conference committee with them. As a freshman, I had all these rich experiences, But I was open to it, and I sought them out. I sought out the senior members, and I sought out senators, too.

Another great lesson that Rochelle Chronister—actually she didn’t give it just to me.  She’d give it to every freshman. I just happened to take it to heart. It was like the first week, and she said, “I want all of you to get pen and paper.” She said, “I want you to go around and meet all 164 other members. I want you to meet all the House members, Democrat, Republican. I want you to go over on the Senate side, meet every Democrat, Republican. I want you to learn something about them and just write yourself a little note. And when you’ve got to the other 164, bring it around. I want to see it.” Well, I just took that as an assignment. I actually took it seriously. So I went out. That was a tremendous exercise because I got to know people, meet people, and it was really life-changing.

Again, I was just always coached. Representative Wagnon was this way, too. Actually, it may have been Joan and Rochelle collectively—I can’t remember who, but somebody that was very significant to me, if you’re going to work on major policy up here, you really need to make it bipartisan because if you don’t, it will be undone when you come back. If you want it to be lasting policy, if you want it to have a chance of working, make sure it’s bipartisan.

At that time that they told me that, I didn’t, again, no context. But as I got into my years of service, that could not have been better advice. I tried to do that. I actually not only tried to do bipartisan, but most of the major stuff that I did, it was always bicameral. I would go seek out early on in the process, a partner over in the Senate. Again, I’ve tried to help a lot of folks—I’ve suggested that to a lot of folks, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t get it because you have to get through both chambers.

Number one, it’s just a whole lot more efficient to do that. But number two, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. You actually get to know each other. It’s a lot more efficient way about doing policy.

CC: This is fascinating, and I agree. We’ve got a question or two later about how things are different today, and you can expand on this a little more. But it sounds like you got some especially helpful advice to you your freshman term and had some good mentors, not the least of which may have been Rochelle encouraging you to do things. You were learning the ropes fairly early on.

Because all of that was so important and transformative for you, did all of that lead you later in your career to want to be a mentor to newly-elected freshmen? I know you for a time have been helping Ed O’Malley over at the Kansas Leadership Center to sort of teach the ropes to new freshman legislators. Did the value of your experience make you want to help give back in that regard?

KW: Yes, it always had. I’ve tried to pay it forward. I could spend a lot of the morning here naming names that helped me. Clyde Graeber was another one from Leavenworth that was tremendous to me. He actually sat in this seat. Bill Reardon was on the Democrat side. He helped me with school finance. Those folks always give you great advice.

So I pretty quickly once I got some experience, I always tried to help the new folks. And, yes, today I work with the Kansas Leadership Center in the new legislative program. We don’t get into specific issues, but I tremendously enjoy that. I try to help folks just give them a little bit of an edge and come in maybe with a little bit of an advantage. We spend a lot of time down there. I think probably I have had some success on the relationship side, getting them to know each other. Unfortunately, it’s just too infrequent that new members come together in a bipartisan, bicameral way. You get up here, and you end up going to caucuses, and you split up, and the next thing you know, you’re never getting with the other, the groups. And that’s a loss for the institution. It’s a loss for you individually. And it just hampers the process. There’s no reason not to get to know folks.

CC: I’ve always thought Governor Finney was such an interesting figure politically, back to your first term here, because sometimes it seemed like she was from a third party—at least from the standpoint that she was not at all shy about clashing with legislative Democrats any more than she was with legislative Republicans.  Even though you were just a freshman during her final two years, did you have any kind of a personal relationship with her?  And how would you characterize her relationship with the House GOP caucus as well as the full Legislature?  Do you have any funny or fascinating stories about her to tell?

KW: Well, maybe a couple. You know, if you serve up here, you’ve always got stories if you’re paying attention. I did not know her well. I was a freshman. So she really had no need to know me. And probably where I got more acquainted with her than any other, she was for Initiative and Referendum. If you recall, she was very, very interested in that. At that time, that represents an issue where I evolved, but at that time, I was supporting that, and it passed in the House, and we all got invited up to Cedar Crest. So that was my first visit as a legislator up to Cedar Crest, and she had a picnic up there for us. It never passed because it never got through the Senate, but I remember that.

And she was always very kind. Probably my favorite memory there, which will involve you, you will remember the trifecta. I think that was 1993. It was ’93 or ’94, and I think we’re 62-63, 62 for, 63 against. Somebody went out to hide. That’s where the vote was going to fall, and I’m sitting next to Kent Glasscock, and it’s about 2:00 in the morning. I think Mary Holladay was her daughter’s name who was her Chief of Staff. She’s sitting down front there, and they’re trying to get ahold of Kent Glasscock because I’m voting no and Kent was voting no for different reasons.

Anyway, they wanted to talk to Kent Glasscock. He at that time, as you know: you always have a choice to pick up your phone or not. And my phone rings. Well, I’m a freshman. So I’m pretty delighted. My phone rang, you know? So I picked it up, and it was Governor Finney calling from the truck stop. You’ve heard the story about her calling—that’s a true story. She was very kind. She said, “Representative Wilk?” I said, “Yeah?” She said, “This is Governor Finney.” I’m like, “Whoa, Governor Finney.” She said, “Is your seat mate handy?” I said, “Well, which one would that be?” She said, “Representative Glasscock,” and I put the phone down, and I said, “Governor”—“Tell her I’m busy.” He was talking on the phone. I’ll never forget this. I said, “Well, he’s here, but he’s talking on the phone.” She says, “Well, tell him I’ll wait.”

So I cover it back up. I said, “She’s not leaving.” Anyhow, I handed him the phone, and that was a spirited conversation.

CC: I can imagine.

KW: Not with me, but with him. She was an interesting character.

CC: Yes, she was. At the risk of messing up our timeline regarding your own legislative path for a question or two—and as long as we are talking about prominent people you interacted with—let me take a minute and ask you about a couple of them who were still here when you arrived.  You served for a couple of years with future Governor Kathleen Sebelius before she ran for Insurance Commissioner in 1994. And you also had future US Senator Jerry Moran working just across the Rotunda over in the State Senate until he first got elected to Congress in 1996.  We’re going to delve more into your future interactions with both of them down the road in this interview, but can you tell us about what your initial impressions of them were and whether you had any inkling as to whether they had bright political futures?

KW: I would say I underestimated both of them, both Jerry Moran and Kathleen Sebelius, but fond memories of both. Governor Sebelius, she was a House member when I got here, and I do recall—again, we got great coaching, and they would tell us freshmen, “There’s a lot of people if you choose to tangle on the House floor that you can attempt to tangle with.” They did advise us to not take on Kathleen Sebelius, and I found that to be really good advice. I did not test that advice. I had a number of other freshmen colleagues that did.

Kathleen was a fierce debater on the floor. She also served on Fed and State [Federal and State Affairs committee]. So, again, recall she’s coming off of chairing that committee for two years, and now she’s the ranking D, and my good friend, Clyde Graeber, is the Chair, and I was on the committee. She really struggled not being the Chair.  So I’m just kind of taking it all in, but where I want to go with this is I would tell you, I think I probably misjudged her a little bit. I didn’t really understand her.

So then fast forward, and you recall this, we had an interim—I think it was ’93. Bob Miller is the Speaker, and we do the Blue Highway Interims, which I’ve looked back over that over the years, and I wish the Legislature had kept doing that because that ended up being a tremendous experience for me.

So I was on the SRS—Social Rehabilitation Services—at the time interim, and we went out on a Blue Highway tour for like two five-day tours. I mean, we went all over, and we got a bus, and we all met here. It was a big van. Kathleen Sebelius was on the tour, as was I.

That’s where I really learned a lot about her as well as everybody else. One, we learned a lot. We met in schools, in courthouses, and we—the Blue Highways had to do with getting off the interstate and going to the small towns. I was really taken aback by how many people would show up in the interests that we had, and I remember Kathleen—I believe she was the Ranking D on that tour. She had a depth and breadth of experience that you just don’t have when you’re a freshman. At that time when we did those, they were really not partisan. We were out really trying to hear what the state wanted to say. So I learned a lot about her there and really came to respect her. As history has suggested, she’s done very well.

Jerry Moran, again, he’s another—I mentioned Gus Bogina—I met Jerry, and again didn’t know the House members weren’t supposed to be trotting up—so I went over and visited Jerry all the time. We really became pretty good friends, and to this day, I think we still have a great relationship.

We worked a little bit on some policy, but not significantly. He did help on the process side. I always sought out mentors that could help me both on the policy side, which is really important, but what you have to figure out up here, you can be as good as you want to be with the policy, but if you don’t understand and appreciate the process, you’re not going to get very far. So you may need mentors for both of those. It’s not always one and the same, and I was always looking for people that could help me learn both.

Jerry was the Senate Majority Leader for several years. He did a great job. He’s obviously done—well, they both have done well. So I think it’s just a testament to Kansas and some of the good stock that we had—

CC: Had here during that era.

KW: That’s right.

CC: I found a clipping that reminded me, you were first appointed by Speaker Miller to the Taxation Committee, where you and I got to know each other so well, just prior to the 1994 session after Barbara Allen had given up her seat to fill an opening on Appropriations.  A couple of legislative powerhouses are leading that House Tax panel in 1994, with Republican Keith Roe as Chair, and his predecessor as Chair, Democrat Joan Wagnon, serving as Ranking Democrat member.  To jog your memory, some of the key tax issues passed that year included a decision to pay income tax refunds to military retirees, reduce the property tax assessment level for certain not-for-profit entities, and provide a new methodology for taxing recreational vehicles.  Any recollections of your first year on Tax working with some of these people and some of those issues?

KW: Absolutely. So I actually got appointed during the interim. My first year, I was not on Tax.

CC: ’94, yes.

KW: And again I got some help. So I do not like doing tax returns. I still don’t like doing tax returns. I don’t do my own tax returns. So the thought of being on the Tax Committee, that was kind of my context. It really didn’t exist. But, again, I had some great mentors that said, “You really ought to get on the Tax Committee.” I said, “Okay, if you’re telling me I do”—and then I immediately, immediately, really, really enjoyed it, and just found it—Keith Roe and Joan Wagnon, that was a great committee.

I was a bit of a pesky freshman. The military retirement pay, which was a 63-million-dollar deal, that was—I’m from Leavenworth. I want to carry that bill. So I go to the Chairman.  You remember Keith well. He’s explaining to me that freshmen don’t carry 63-million-dollar bills. That’s not how it works. And I just was like a bad penny. I would not go away. I never forgot this. He said, “All right. If you want to carry that bill, you’ve got to prove to me that you’re going to be ready.” He said, “We don’t have bills come out of our committee that aren’t going to pass on the floor.” That’s just the way that committee worked. If it came out of committee, he wanted that bill and so did the Ranking Member, wanted it to pass on the floor. “If you’re going to carry that bill, you have to be ready.”

So I spent like—he gave me a couple of weeks. [Atttorney] John Frieden and there were other folks that were involved with that. I’d go over to their offices at night and prep, and I worked with the staff. I mean, I worked my tail off. I literally spent two weeks up at night, prepared. So I’m thrilled. This is my first big moment in the House, carrying a major bill.

I carried it down there. I think I maybe had two questions, and they were more just—but the bill passed. I remember saying something to Keith afterward. I said, “You know, you run me through the wringer and made me do all this.” I said, “There was no debate.” He said, “Well, did it ever strike you that maybe people sensed that you were prepared, and that’s why you didn’t have the floor mess?”  He said, “That’s the way you want to do it. You always want to over-prepare, be ready,” and he said, “That will create your brand, if you will, and people will know, if they’re going to come down and question you on the bill, they’d better be ready to go be tested because you are.”

Well, again, great lesson. I never forgot that, tried to carry that one forward, too. When I was able and had the opportunity to chair committees, I would look—I did kind of do what he did. I didn’t just go pluck a freshman. Sometimes they asked, “How come you didn’t ask me to carry a bill?” “Well, you didn’t ask me. If you want to carry a bill, you got to say something. Don’t wait in the back of the room. Step up and say you want to carry a bill.” Those are the people that are hungry and want to do it.

Yes, that was a great experience, and we’ll come back to this, but you mentioned Bob Miller. I supported Bob when he ran for—I know we’re going to come to this later. But I supported him when he ran the first time. And my first appointment, I wasn’t even sworn in. I got elected November 5th or 6th, and he called about—well, it was after—when he got nominated to Speaker. So it was the first week of December after he’d been officially nominated, and he called and asked me if I wanted to serve on EPTSCR. I remember saying, “Yes, I do. I want to serve.” “Okay, good.”

So I hang up the phone. I thought, “I wonder what EPTSCR is.” I picked back up the phone. I said, “Hey, I agreed to serve on EPTSCR, but what is it?” That’s how hungry I was. Of course, that was Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, which then—we’ll get to this, but I come into the Legislature with a much deeper passion and commitment to research than anybody ever knew. That was one of the main reasons I came. So the fact that I get this call by accident—and Miller didn’t know it at the time, but I go on this committee for EPTSCR. Basically that’s a research program to help states that aren’t getting their fair share of research dollars from Washington, DC. And I end up serving on it for several years. But I sowed the seed then for my interest in longer term and research.

CC: Let’s talk about the 1994 election, which was a smashing success pretty much up and down the ballot for your party, as well as its aftermath.  Governor Finney had decided not to run again, and GOP Kansas Secretary of State Bill Graves was elected Governor after defeating Democratic Congressman Jim Slattery in that year’s gubernatorial race.  Graves was a moderate Republican, but a great many Republicans elected to the House that year turned out to be more conservative than their new Governor.

This led to a fairly dramatic event that you alluded to a minute ago that occurred here at the Statehouse prior to the 1995 session when Speaker Miller was challenged within the GOP caucus and subsequently defeated by Tim Shallenburger, long a champion of the more conservative faction, in the race to determine who was going to be Speaker of the House for 1995 and 1996. Can you tell us what you recall about that Speaker’s race, and maybe if you are willing, who you supported and how that shook things up starting with the 1995 session?

KW: Yes. There’s a lot to unpack there as well. You’ve really got some meaty issues here. I remember that well. Now again, context. I’m a sophomore. I’m coming back to start my third year. It’s my first experience of re-electing a Speaker. So I mistakenly thought that that was going to just kind of be a formality. I supported Bob Miller. I supported Bob Miller in my run in ’92. He’s running again. He’d been good to me. So I’m supporting him for re-election. I wasn’t necessarily on the inside of the campaign. I maybe thought I was, but I wasn’t. I later learned I really wasn’t, but I was still trying to help.

So I remember sitting here in the Chamber when the vote came in. I don’t even think it was very close. Tim won. Initially, that’s kind of a real emotional reaction. But, again, I learned a lot from that. So I didn’t like that. Things changed for me. I liked Tim, and I got along with Tim. I didn’t quite know how it was going to work out. Things went along okay. I wasn’t as satisfied probably as I was with Miller, but I’m still going along okay. I actually end up on Appropriations, so I’m fine.

Then Tim, through a series of votes that are made and some other things, I get removed from Appropriations. And I think I still might be one of the—there’s not many Republicans—they’ve been removed from the committee, but I’m not sure any of them have been removed during the session. I was removed in March of that year. I was very unhappy about that. I didn’t like the way it was handled.

But, you know, there’s a great lesson there, too, and I probably overreacted. He apologized. The bottom line, and I like to share this with folks, I think sometimes, and I was guilty of this, I think I put a little too much emphasis on who was the Speaker and what appointments I was going to get and of let that kind of consume you a little bit. You really shouldn’t do that. You’ve just got to kind of roll with the punches. They’re going to be what they’re going to be. There’s some things you can influence, some things you can’t.

Tim and I ended up—we talked. I like to think we’re pretty good friends today. We’ve talked a lot about that. I think—I always find this an interesting question. This is an observation now after about twenty-five or thirty years of it—different leaders both in the Senate and in the House have had a tendency on a rare occasion to remove people from committees. That seldom works out for either party. It seldom works out for whatever the leader thinks they’re going to accomplish. It certainly doesn’t necessarily work out for the member. I wish there was less of that because it hangs over people. It lets that be a threat to them that really shouldn’t—just stay focused.

And that’s what I tried. It took me a bit of time, but again I had some folks help me with it. “Hey, let it go.” So, first of all, I get removed from the committee, and I think four years later, I end up coming back chairing the committee. I want to repeat that. I get removed from the committee. I got sent to what I thought was the equivalent of legislative Siberia when they put me on Judiciary. I mean, that was the one committee that I just didn’t want to be on. But then I ended up coming back and chairing the committee.

So you can bounce back from those things.  You don’t want to take it too personal. Keep your head down. Keep working. Keep learning. Keep growing. You can get to where you want to go. You kind of have to know what you want to do here. That always helps, but if you really know what you want to do and be willing to work hard, build the relationships, even when you get derailed from time to time, you can pop back.

CC: You mentioned some of the shake-ups. I guess along the same line, I always thought that some of the brightest young minds in your caucus during that era, especially David Adkins and Kent Glasscock, sort of had their upward mobility at least temporarily derailed when the whole 1995 shakeup happened.

I know that Phill “Two LL”  Kline was quickly installed as the Tax Chair under the new regime, notwithstanding the fact he had never served on the committee before. At the same time a lot of the more moderate members were purged.  Everyone had figured that Kent, who had been Vice Chair, was going to become Tax Chair since Keith Roe did not run for the Legislature again in 1994, but Kent was suddenly no longer on the committee at all after the purge. A lot of lobbyists and reporters would still talk to him in the hallways and then tell me they thought of him as the Tax-Chair-in-exile.

Maybe your own experience with some of the changes and new faces in new places was just a little better given that you at least temporarily you ended up on the Appropriations Committee as you mentioned. I guess any additional thoughts about this era and how well you got along with Speaker Shallenburger, Phill Kline and others who may have been more conservative than you, and then as you mentioned, of course, your initial stint on Appropriations, even though you were just there for a few short months, did that help you continue to learn some of the nuances that you were going to need later on when you became Chair in 2001?

KW: Oh, absolutely. I think my first go-round was with Robin Jennison when he chaired Appropriations, and he was a really good Chair, a good teacher, too. One of the guys that I’ll always be eternally grateful for, not the Phill Kline you referenced here who was Attorney General. He was in my class, and he and I actually got along very well, worked together on a number of topics. But we called him Old Phil Kline, and you know who I’m talking about, the other Phil Kline. He chaired Appropriations, and he was a tremendous mentor to me. He actually was on the committee when I first started chairing Appropriations, and unbeknownst to a lot of people, I tell the coffee pot story a lot because we kept a coffee pot, and the Chair was responsible to make sure there was coffee in the coffee pot all the time.

I quickly figured out that’s the best investment you could make. People will come and get a cup of coffee behind, and you could chat. Whenever Old Phil would give me the look to head to the coffee pot, I’d get up and go back and get a cup of coffee with him, and I would be about ready to do something really stupid. He wouldn’t say it publicly. He’d just say, “Kenny, I think you might want to do this and this, and you might want to try this or this or just wait a day or two on that.” And I was smart enough to know if Old Phil Kline was giving you some advice, you followed it. He was tremendous.

Just a word on Tim Shallenburger because Tim, we had our differences, but you know, we aired them out, too. I didn’t run around hiding. We’d talk about it. And he was never personally mean. I don’t think I was ever personally—so all the people—I like to think I got along with everybody. I tried to.

The thing about Speaker Shallenburger at the time, and I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, he always let the process work. He always let the process work. Again, I attribute a lot of this to my mentors. By the way, I’ve got to mention Dave Heinemann, too. I served with Dave. Dave was a big rule guy, a process guy. The one place where he was very creative—I know they don’t do it today, but I have no idea how many amendments he crafted here on the floor. If you had an idea, you could go to Dave on the floor, and he’d whip an amendment for you, and off you were going. So, a lot of people that helped.

But back to Speaker Shallenburger. I appreciate the way he always let the process work. Whether he agreed or disagreed, we used to use the analogy that Speaker Shallenburger always left the back door of his office cracked open, and it was the pathway home. You just had to figure out how to get there. He wasn’t going to give you the map to get there, but he was going to let the process work, and he did.

Him and Dick Bond, I believe served together, and the two of them did not always agree, but I know they got together. I’m not encouraging any kind of bad habit here, but I know they had a cigarette from time to time together, and they talked every day, most days twice a day. And the process worked.

The legislative process, as messy as it is, as inefficient as it is, when you actually let it work, it’s still one of the best, if not the best, processes democracy has. And you’ve got to let it work, and you’ve got to deal with the mess. You need a quiet leadership about you if you’re a Speaker or a Senate President to let that part of it work.

And Shallenburger was really good about that. And I respected that because a lot of times, he would be voting no on stuff, but he’d say, “Hey, if that’s what the Chamber wants, have at it.” And I don’t recall him ever holding anybody’s votes against them. He might tell you, “I think that’s a bad vote for you, Chris, but if that’s what you want to vote, go ahead. I’m voting no, but you go ahead if you want to vote yes,” and we’d move on.

He let the process work. Keeping the process moving along up here is much more challenging than people think. And if you’re in leadership in either chamber, that really is your job. Your job is to keep the process—I remember Dick Bond being obsessed from Day 1—as soon as we’d gavel in, he’d basically say the only thing he was thinking about was going home. How do you get the place to get its work done and go home? Well, that sounds simple, but it’s not.

CC: You’ve got to be a facilitator.

KW: That’s right.

CC:  You certainly always seemed to have a good working relationship with Governor Graves during his eight years in office.  Can you characterize the extent to which the two of you relied on one another from 1995 through 2002?

lso, as we have discussed, the mid-to-late nineties was a time defined by some strong internal disagreements within the increasingly dominant Republican legislative majority, with Graves himself frequently siding with the more moderate faction.  This was a period where both the state and national economies were quite strong in the mid-to-late nineties, and one of the flash points involved tax policy, with major reductions being a top priority of many of the conservatives.