Interview with Nick Jordan by Chris Courtwright, April 10, 2024

Chris Courtwright: Good afternoon. Today is April 10, 2024, in the afternoon, and we’re here in the historic Senate Chamber of the Kansas State House in Topeka. I’m Chris Courtwright who served for thirty-four years working as an economist for the Kansas Legislature and its nonpartisan research department before retiring in 2020. For full disclosure, Governor Kelly appointed me shortly thereafter to her bipartisan Council on Tax Reform.

Today, I’m privileged to interview former Senator Nick Jordan who has had a long, distinguished, and diverse career in public service. In addition to serving as a Republican senator in the Kansas Legislature from 1995 to 2009, representing parts of Johnson County, he served in multiple Cabinet-level posts during the Brownback administration and even ran for Congress a time or two back in the day.

Prior to entering the political arena, his fascinating career in the private sector actually began as a busboy. His more than forty-year career in the travel and tourism industry saw him move into hotel management and then on to become the founding president of the nationally renowned Overland Park Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Nick’s prominence in both the public and private sector for many decades as a tireless champion for economic development throughout the state remains a key part of his legacy. Did I get most of that right?

Nick Jordan: So far, so good.

CC: This interview with Mr. Jordan 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’ve served since the 1960s. The interviews will be accessible to researchers, educators, and the public through the Kansas Oral History Project website, ksoralhistory.org, and also the Kansas Historical Society and the State Library. Transcriptions are made possible as a result of the generosity of KOHP donors. Former House Speaker pro ten David Heinemann is our videographer today.

During your many years in the Statehouse, Mr. Jordan, 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 should not surprise us, given what we have already said by way of introduction were that you, of course, chaired multiple committees on Economic Development and Commerce, vice-chaired a panel on Transportation and Tourism, and served stints on many of the most powerful committees here in the Senate, not the least of which included Assessment and Taxation, Federal and State Affairs, and it looks like two four-year terms on Ways and Means. I hope I cherry-picked most of the top ones since there’s quite a few others on your full list.

NJ: Yes, I told everybody at the time there was a very popular Royals infielder who played outfield. He played several positions. I kind of became the utility player for the Senate, and then that went on into the administration of Sam Brownback. I became a utility player in the administration, which was great. It gave me a lot of great experiences, a lot of different ones—everybody used to say it’s almost like you get a PhD on a lot of topics when you serve in the Legislature or when you serve in the Cabinet, and I got a lot of opportunities to get my PhD in a lot of different categories.

CC: Absolutely. We’re going to cover a lot of that ground here in just a few minutes. But before we delve into your legislative years and committee work and big issues and what not, let’s get into some additional background. Are you a native Kansan? If not, when did your family move here?

NJ: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and when I was probably less than a month old, we moved to Topeka, Kansas. I grew up here until I went into the ninth grade. Then we moved to Johnson County.

So Topeka was my home. Coming up here for all these sessions, I still knew my way around town pretty well. I drove by the old homestead once in a while. But most of my life was in Johnson County.

CC: We’re going to get into your mid-1990s arrival into the state political scene here in Topeka shortly. But by that point in your life, you were in your forties and had been well established with a great deal of private sector success and weren’t exactly an eager, young, twenty-something freshman legislator showing up here ready to save the world. Tell us a little bit about the whole very interesting busboy to hotel management to founder of the OPCVB journey that you undertook prior to getting here in 1995.

NJ: Sure. Obviously, I was looking for a job when I was fifteen years old and ended up being a busboy. I’m so thankful for the journey I’ve been on. When I was nineteen, they made me a restaurant manager, which was kind of a unique situation. I had a hotel manager, and at that time, there weren’t very many hotel management schools in the country. He said, “Hey, stick with me. I’ll teach you the hotel business. The most important thing is if you can learn people skills and travel, it’s going to do you really well the rest of your life.” The people skills part, it’s true, if you want to learn people skills, go into the restaurant or hotel business. You get every kind of personality.

Anyway, I did that, and I ended up becoming the assistant director of marketing at the Muehlebach Hotel, which was a nationally renowned, classic hotel. It had had every president since Teddy Roosevelt stay in the presidential suite, which continued with future presidents. I got to deal with a lot of VIP visits and events at the hotel.

In the meantime, my director of sales down at the Muehlebach wrote me a note and said, “Hey, Overland Park, Kansas is going to start a convention bureau. You really ought to apply for that.” So I applied and got the position. I was really privileged. I had a great staff. We grew that into a multimillion-dollar industry for the city of Overland Park.

In fact, we were the ones that walked in and said, “We ought to build a convention center” and started working towards having a convention center in Overland Park. I did a lot of seminars around the country about, “how do you brand a suburban location, competing against the metro, big urban location”. How do you do that? How do you brand it? I did a lot of seminars on branding and marketing of a community.

That was ten years of my life. I ran that bureau and grew that industry and saw a lot of good things happen in Overland Park. It was a great experience. Through that, I was a two-term president of the Travel Industry Association of Kansas, and that leads me into the political situation a little bit. Obviously, I was up here a lot.

CC: Yes.

NJ: John Carlin was Governor. Jamie Schwartz was Secretary of Commerce. Cathy Kruzic was Director of Tourism, and I was up here all the time, talking to them, constantly talking to them. Of course, back in Overland Park, we were a tax-funded convention bureau. So all the Johnson County legislators I had contact with one way or another. I became a volunteer lobbyist for some time for the travel industry.

So all that brought me a lot of different contacts, Rotary Club type things, a lot of contacts politically. Bud Burke I’d known before I came up, and he was president of the Senate when I came to the Senate. So I had all those contacts then.

In between the Convention Bureau and coming to and thinking about the Senate, I actually pastored. I was senior pastor of a large church, 2,500 attendees on Sundays, and had a school. That was a transition period, which is a long story that we don’t need to go into, but that was something that I did for a couple of years. We had a great staff able to keep everything together. Everything ran smoothly. I still don’t know why 2,500 people wanted to hear me speak every Sunday, but they did, and so that worked out.

When that was done, when I felt like I’d done what I needed to do at the church, I was actually lying in bed one morning, and my wife and I woke up, and I said, “Do you know, I think I’m supposed to go to lunch with Gus Bogina and say to him if he ever doesn’t want to run again, I’d sure like to maybe have a chance of running for the Senate.”

CC: So this was your idea.

NJ: Yes. It was my idea, and I called Gus. We had lunch. Of course, we knew each other from all the other stuff I’d done. We had lunch, and it was really nice. He was kind of patting me on the head and said, “It would be great. You’d be a good senator.” No, nothing other than that, and we left.

Within days, we went to the Ozarks for the weekend, and days after that, at about 5:30 in the morning, I started getting phone calls from Kansas City media. They woke me up. And they said, “Gus Bogina is going to resign and take a position on the Board of Tax Appeals, and you are the leading candidate to replace him in the Kansas Senate.” So that was kind of a wild moment. It took me a couple of minutes to wake up and think about what they were saying to me.

And I ran. Obviously, the precinct committee people were the ones to vote me in. I had two or three people run against me.  I won on the first ballot, and then from there it went.

CC: So there were a couple, three people in the race.

NJ: Who ran against me with the precinct committee people. I came up to Topeka and spent all those years here.

CC: This would have been the summer of ’95 when Gus stepped down, and then the precinct committee people plugged you into his seat. It seemed to me that you jumped pretty seamlessly straight into the Topeka political scene with both feet pretty effortlessly. I do want to ask if the public service bug had already been in your blood in any sense. Did your family have a history in politics or anything?

NJ: Not tremendously. My mom was a poll worker. As long as I can remember, she worked the polls and worked elections, but other than that, not really a whole lot of political background. It just was a part of me. It just is something, a part of me through a lot of things I’d done, like the time I’d come up here for the travel industry. Honestly, working at Muehlebach, I escorted Jimmy Carter around. I escorted a lot of people around all the time. I dealt with Secret Service I don’t know how many times.

I don’t know. There was just a real desire and plus a desire—sometimes you just want to make a difference. Sometimes you want to find a place where you can hopefully make a difference. I just wanted to do that. I wanted to try to make a difference. I’d done it with the Convention Bureau. I’d done it in other areas. So now I maybe had a chance to do something in Topeka.

CC: I have to ask, did you like Jimmy Carter?

NJ: He was good. Do you want a real funny story about Jimmy Carter?

CC: Absolutely.

NJ: I was sitting in my office at the Muehlebach one morning when the White House called and said, “Hey, Jimmy Carter, the president wants to do a national press conference at the Muehlebach.” Well, I didn’t realize what that means. He needed a hundred sleeping rooms, and he needed one of our huge ballrooms.

So I looked at our book, and we had a full house convention booked over those dates. I called them back and said, “Hey, I don’t think we can do it.” To make a long story short, I had to move a hundred rooms out of the Muehlebach into other hotels, and the convention said, “That will be okay if he’ll attend our convention in some way, dinner or something like that.”

So then I had to call back the Secret Service, and they said, “No, it absolutely isn’t going to happen.” Lo and behold, we had to move their reception out into a foyer here at the Muehlebach. It was a shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow reception. And lo and behold, he did. He went out into that reception, which I’m sure drove the Secret Service absolutely crazy.

The next morning before the press conference, this is the core part of the story, I get a call from his advance team saying, “Have you got any of those old wooden Coca-Cola boxes?” Do you remember those old wooden boxes? I said, “Yes, we do.” “Could you please put one behind the podium for the president today?”

So we had to run and get our box and put it behind the podium. I escorted him up to the press conference and everything. It was a typical thing. I escorted him a couple of times during the campaign. He always had that deal where he carried his clothes over his shoulder. He wouldn’t let the bellhops, or anybody touch it. He’d have to carry it, and we’d go up to the room.  So I had a lot of little contacts with political stuff being at the Muehlebach and the hotel business.

Bob Dole used to be at the hotel Glenwood Manor when I was a busboy and a restaurant manager. Bob Dole was there all the time for stuff. There was a lot of contact politically.

CC: So even before you got here, you were establishing your bipartisan bonafides.

NJ: I guess.

CC: Well, tell us a little more about your first race to retain your Senate seat in 1996. The records show that you got 60 percent of your vote against your Democratic opponent, Janice McIntyre.  From what I recall, the national and state economies were doing fairly well in the mid-nineties. Was this a campaign that focused more on social than economic issues? Also were there debates and forums that you both attended? Was the campaign fought more along the lines of radio ads, yard signs, and postcards? Also, do you have any funny front-porch stories to tell us about the first time you were going door to door and meeting with some of your more eccentric future constituents? I will tell you that my favorite front-porch stories often seem to involve somewhat aggressive dogs, but please tell us what you recall about your 1996 campaign.

NJ: At that time, social issues were a big thing, and I’m a pro-life guy. Shawnee at that time was very pro-life—there’s St. Joseph Catholic Church, which has a huge influence on the city of Shawnee. So that was a big issue. I’d say economic issues, too. Education is always an issue when you’re on the campaign trail, to talk about education. So there was a mixture of a lot of different things to talk about.

I always felt like, and I think again my background helped with this, I always felt like one of the best things you could do was be part of the community, be out there doing things. I always did that. I always felt like being at the Chamber[of Commerce], Rotary, all of that was important, even though probably some people didn’t agree with me on some things, it still was there.

Relationships are so important. I just felt like that always was important. I felt like that was a key from my very first campaign on, that I was known in the community. I was active in the community. I was involved in the community.

And then you did the typical campaign things. Yes, there were forums. Yes, we did the mailings, and all the things that we typically do in a campaign.

You’re talking about front-porch stories. You always have interesting conversations at front doors. Of course, nowadays, sometimes you can’t even get the front door answered on a campaign. So there’s not as many funny stories as there used to be.

But I did get bit once by a dog. It chased me away from the door and took a hold of my leg, and he gave me a little bite to let me know I shouldn’t be back.

CC: I hope those people voted for you.

NJ: I hope so, too. They didn’t answer the door. So I don’t know.

CC: Backing up a moment, prior to that ’96 campaign, can you tell us what the experience was like for you when you showed up for your first legislative session in January of that year. It would have been January of ’96, and maybe how you went about learning all of the legislative procedures and nuances, who the key stakeholders and lobbyists were, and whether some of the more senior members of the GOP caucus here in the Senate helped sort of mentor you or anything.

NJ: As I said, Bud Burke was president when I first got up here, and I knew Bud. There was a good relationship there. I knew a lot of the Johnson County delegation as it was. So I had a lot of great mentoring opportunities from people to kind of guide me through the process.

But learning the rules, learning the process and learning what you should do, I can’t remember the time frame, Chris. Of course, education is always a huge issue. When I first got up here, I remember Governor Bill Graves calling me up to the office and saying, “Nick, what would you like this session?”

At the time, we were flush with money. The state was doing really well financially, and I said, “You know, it would be great if we could reduce the mill levies, just reduce the mill levies.” He actually said in his office, “I agree with you. We ought to reduce the mill levies, if we can.”

So I come down to the floor. Of course, the education bill come across, and the mill levies weren’t reduced. I’m sitting there, and I’m thinking, “I’m going to be real cute now. I’m going to pass,” when it came to when my name was called. So I passed.

Lo and behold, when it got back to me, it was a tie. I had to cast the tie-breaking vote. I voted no, which all of a sudden, brought me a whole bunch of thank-you notes from the House side. It got me in trouble with some of my fellow Johnson County legislators a little bit.

At the end of the session, we reduced two mills. We did reduce two mills that year and got it done. So I only say that to say that I never passed again. I always tell new legislators, “Find your ground. Learn the issue. Find where you should be, what you believe to be the right issue, the right position. Vote it.” It will save you time with lobbyists coming at your door, and it will save you a lot of headache when you get to the floor if you’re just straight and honest about where you’re at, and it’s an intelligent position. You’ve got a reason for where you’re at, kind of thing.

So if you want to know a lesson from my first freshman year—the other one, another story if you want one—I don’t know how much time we’ve got.

CC: We have time.

NJ: I have another story. At the end of one of the sessions, of course, being a pro-life legislator, I think Tim Shallenburger was Speaker. This was probably my second term. Tim Shallenburger is Speaker and Dick Bond is President on the Senate side, both pretty good politically to get the session closed down.  As you know, closing a session down is not always the easiest thing.

So I’m new, new enough that I still was trying to catch on to stuff in a lot of areas. I’d never been on a conference committee yet. Dick comes up to me, and he says, “Nick, you’re going to chair a Conference Committee.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay. Well, tell me about this. When do I call a meeting? Where do I call a meeting?” He said, “You’ve got to call a meeting out at the rail, but don’t worry about it. The Conference Committee report is already written.”

Well, I’m naive enough to think, “Oh, that was nice of you.” “All you’ve got to do is go out and get a vote on it.” “Golly, you’ve made this awful easy, Dick. I really appreciate you doing this for a new legislator, a new guy.”

I come in. I’m preparing to debate this Conference Committee, which was a pro-life issue. It was roundly defeated for all the reasons we know now why. They had the votes already set up. The Conference Committee was just something that Shallenburger and the House must have asked for the Senate to at least look at before the closing of the session.

So I learned a little bit about some of the workings through that process. Those are all things that you can learn from. Finally, I did learn what Conference Committees were, obviously through all the other committees I chaired and worked on, but that was newest endeavor.

CC: I would also note that during that ’96 session, you, of course, spent time as a colleague in the Senate here with Jerry Moran before he first ran for Congress during the ’96 election. Can you tell us about your initial impressions of him, and whether you had any inkling as to whether he had such a bright political future. Also, I’m guessing you likely still enjoy a friendly and ongoing relationship with him?

NJ: I do. I really haven’t talked to him for a while, but I knew Jerry before he was in politics. I was Vice Chair of the State Tourism Commission, and Jerry was Chairman of the Tourism Commission. He was a lawyer in Hays. So we had several meetings together, and I knew Jerry before he ran for office. He was just a good lawyer out in Hays at that time.

I’ve known him. We’ve always gotten along good. I liked him. I don’t know that I had a big initial impression or whether he was going to go a long ways in politics. You could see he treated people fairly as far as I was concerned and ran the Chamber pretty good. We have stayed in contact since. Like I said, I haven’t talked to him for a while, but we’ve stayed in contact one way or another. In fact, one of the people who worked on my Congressional campaign now works with him. So I’ve still got contacts with the office and stuff.

CC: Less than a year before you entered the Senate Chamber, we already talked a little bit about Bill Graves, a moderate Republican who had been Secretary of State. He gets elected Governor in 1994. You’ve already talked a little bit about this, but you always, it seemed to me, had a good working relationship with Governor Graves during his time in office. So from ’96 through 2002, he was Governor, and you were here in the Senate. Any other stories about your relationship with him or others on the second floor during that time?

NJ: I don’t know if there’s another story. We did get along. We obviously probably didn’t agree on some of the issues and things. I can always remember him and Joe, and I can’t remember Joe’s last name that was his kind of righthand guy. [Joe de la Torre was chief of staff for Governor Graves.] They used to always come up and say, “Nick, we understand your district. We understand your base, fine. We understand why you vote the way you vote and didn’t hold anything—so we had a relationship where we could talk and understand each other.

CC: Okay, more generally, the mid-to-late nineties was a time defined by some strong internal disagreements within the increasingly dominant Republican legislative majority, and you’ve talked a little bit about this, with Graves himself frequently siding with the more moderate faction. This was a period where both the state and national economies were quite strong.

And one of the flash points involved tax policy with major reductions being a top priority of many conservatives. During these years, Kansas enacted a major tax cut in the statewide mill levy for schools in ’97 and also a broad smorgasbord of tax cuts in 1998. Graves and other moderates during this time, especially here in the Senate, were wanting to move a little slower on many of these tax cuts than some of the more conservative House members across the rotunda.

Senate President Dick Bond, your fellow Johnson Countian, was a moderate who normally flew in formation with Graves on these matters. Do you have any more stories or recollections about some of these tax cut battles of the mid-to-late nineties and where you may have fit in?

NJ: I probably fit in on a different side than Bill Graves and Dick Bond did on most of them. But, again, I’ve always had a philosophy. I may have mentioned this…I think it’s important, Proverbs says, “Bind kindness and truth around your neck, and you’ll find favor with God and man.”

I’ve always thought kindness is an important part of being a person whether it was in the political realm—anger doesn’t really achieve goals very often. Kindness can. And you can be kind to people, again I believe, on the truth side, you simply—truth is not an easy thing to get to. I don’t know if you ever know for sure, but at least you get to a position that’s intelligent, that you believe in, that you think is right, and you stand for that.

Now you don’t have to get angry if somebody disagrees with where you’re at. I’ve done more homework. I’m where I am, I am who I am, and I’m going to vote how I am. So we probably disagreed on some of those issues, probably a list of those issues, but we always seemed to be okay on the relationship. We always seemed to be able to continue the relationship and not close the door.

Everybody knows when you’re in the Legislature, in the Senate, or you’re serving, a lot of the time most of the stuff you’re dealing with is pretty run of the mill, easy issues, and there’s going to be days where it isn’t an easy issue, and you’re going to agree with somebody that you were at war with a month ago So it’s not good to build walls. It’s not good to build a wall between you and someone else to the extent that you become ineffective. That’s a long answer to your question, but I think we probably disagreed on some of the stuff, but I was hoping that we could still work together on things that we would agree on.

CC: It sounds like the relationship-building is an important subplot to your whole career up here.

NJ: It is.

CC: Moving along our timeline, is there anything worth recalling about your 2000 re-election campaign? History shows that you again had little trouble against your Democratic opponent, Cheryl Maddox, and got 59 percent of the vote. Any memories about the 2000 election?

NJ: I’ll say this and on my next election, what I always tried to do, Chris, is I always tried to call the person that was going to oppose me and say, “Hey, let’s have a cup of coffee, and let’s talk.” Generally, that happened. I don’t know with the 2000 election. I know the next one we’ll talk about, we did because we had a relationship, being from the same town and having served sort of together. I always thought that was important to do that. That always kind of dispelled some of the real crazy stuff that can happen in a campaign. It kind of put it to rest.

I can’t remember anything overly about that except again it was a typical campaign. I had been very active in the community. I’d been out doing things. I would suppose that’s why we got the vote we got.

CC: By the way, I think that’s to your credit, having a cup of coffee with your opponent.

NJ: We tried. Some of them refused. At least it’s nice to try.

CC: Can you tell us what you remember about the stresses of the 2002 and 2003 legislative sessions? You may recall that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent recession had a crippling impact on the state’s economy and on tax collection. Certainly, the salad days of the late nineties just a few years earlier must have seemed a distant memory. As I recall, lawmakers in 2002 had to enact both painful budget cuts as well as a tax increase just to keep the state out of red ink for the fiscal 2003.

NJ: We did. It was a tough time. It was a real tough time making the budget work. As you know, there’s items like education that are at least close to 50 percent of the state general fund budget [that] goes to education. So when you’re facing a situation like that, it gets tough to try to figure out how to handle your obligations that you have. Of course, KPERS, our retirement program, always had an unfunded liability, and you’re trying to figure out how do we get all this back on track, and yet we don’t really have the money to do it, and we’re really fighting a terrible economy and trying to make it happen.

It was extremely tough to get through that time and try to figure out how to make it work. I don’t know if it was that timeframe, I remember Governor Parkinson had to increase the sales tax to try to help bring us through, too.

CC: That would have been the next recession.

NJ: Our next recession, yes.

CC: Okay. Now that we are in the 2000s, I want to get into the key issues, your days of chairing the Economic Development and Commerce Committees. I’m guessing that you might characterize the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 as one of your greatest legislative achievements. You and your colleague across the rotunda in the House, Representative Kenny Wilk, of course, were the two famous godfathers of this very important legislation, and this is your chance, I think, to crow a little bit more about the importance of it and all of its economic development offshoot initiatives.

Your vision of having Kansas become a major player in the biosciences industry was fulfilled at least for a number of years. The state successfully acquired NBAF [National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility] of course. The Animal Health Corridor was developed, and there were a number of successes we can point to. So feel free to take a victory lap or two at this juncture, but please tell us about your vision and mindset and any and all political challenges that you and Kenny and Governor Sebelius faced in getting that legislation across the finish line in 2004.

NJ: Sure. Actually, Kenny and I had talked about several things. We thought about energy policy. We thought about other big initiatives. It was at that time at least my opinion that the Legislature reacted to a bigger vision easier than just little nitpicky things, trying to do things.

So we sat down, and it took a long time to develop this Kansas Economic Growth Act. It took a long time to develop it. But we saw the biosciences as a great opportunity. Nationally, it was blooming. A lot of states were beginning to look at bioscience, what they could do in the bioscience area.

So we sat down. How do you do that? What do we do? Obviously, that act had several elements to it. We were trying to attract eminent scholars and rising star researchers, which we did, some. We attracted a gentleman who was really into the composite materials, and he ended up, I think, at Wichita State as a researcher, brought his team. When you attract one of these, they bring a team with them. He went to Wichita, and actually the composite became a big deal in aircraft manufacturing, but he started saying, “Hey, this would really work with replacing knees and hips and shoulders.” So he kind of became a forerunner, so to speak, in using composite materials possibly in joint replacements.

So that kind of thing was happening. Of course, we saw—the KU Cancer Center was just kind of coming up and coming on its own.  This initiative really gave the Cancer Center a boost to become a nationally recognized research and treatment center. We would talk with researchers at the universities. The thing that really amazed me about the researchers at the universities were they’re great about discoveries. They love to discover. They love to find something, but it just kind of stopped there. So we wanted to try to figure out, how do you get a discovery from the researchers’ hands and into a local business, some kind of company growing in the Kansas area? How do we take this and make it more than just a great research center, but also a good start-up, a good business side to this thing, economic development part of it?

So we developed programs on working on doing that and getting that done as a part of the Economic Growth Act. I’ll tell you, I remember, I was asked to go over to Washington University in St. Louis, which is a great research university. I was asked to come over and speak to a conference right after this passed. There was a gentleman from Massachusetts there. Massachusetts was touting this great bioscience initiative that they had passed. Fortunately, he went first. This room was full of probably these top-flight researchers, way over my head type people. Corporation CEOs in the bioscience industry were sitting in the room. Everybody was there.

He was going through what Massachusetts did. They started asking him questions, and he said, “Well, we’re doing that, but the legislature hasn’t quite signed off on it yet.” And that happened several times through.

So I got up and spoke, and dollar-wise, our initiative was as big or bigger than Massachusetts, and it just blew the crowd away because we’d done it. It was done. It was happening. It was going on. He came up to me afterward. He said, “Nick, can I get a copy of your Bioscience Initiative, and maybe talk to you a little bit more about it?” So that’s how big this was. That’s how important this was. This was what it meant even nationally to a lot of people. It was a big deal.

One thing we tried to do, Chris, too, was we tried to form a group that wasn’t a state agency. We formed a board that had state legislators on it, had representatives from state government on it, but it was really business people who understood how to grow a bioscience company and how to make this thing work. And we did that to try to keep it at arm’s length away. We set up a funding mechanism for it to kind of keep it out of the state government thing.

All of that said now, your next comment may be “What happened?”

CC: We’ll get there.

NJ: I’ll address that in a moment, but it was well known. The other half of that, which by the way, when we were doing the Bioscience Initiative, we knew that pro-life was going to enter into it, where the money was going to be spent. And we did put a segment in the Bioscience Initiative that none of the money could be used for embryonic stem cell research. But we wanted the money used to set up an adult stem cell research facility at KU, and they did. So they have an adult stem cell research opportunity at KU.

The other side of the Economic Growth Act, which was important was at the time as we were talking and coming through these recessions, rural Kansas was really suffering. Ag[riculture] and oil business was really, really having a tough time, struggling.

So the other side of that Kansas Economic Growth Act was what we called the Kansas Center for Entrepreneurship, and that was designed to go in and help businesses and people in rural Kansas to be successful. How could we support them? How could we be successful? We gave a tax credit. If you donate to them to operate it, you got a tax credit for their donation and things. That’s now known as NetWork Kansas, and they are doing a phenomenal job. If you go into almost any rural Kansas community now and say, “Hey, NetWork Kansas,” “Oh, man, those are our heroes.”

They’re tied in really well with the SBA [Small Business Administration] now. I know the Kauffman Foundation is giving them grants. So they’re getting funding outside that’s just—they are really respected and looked up to. I think the gentleman, Steve Radley, who runs it—I think Steve even served on a committee for the Federal Reserve of Kansas City. They’ve just grown into a heck of an operation, a really great operation.

So between the two and to be honest with you, if you remember the Kansas Economic Growth Act passed both the House and the Senate by wide margins. It wasn’t a close vote whatsoever. It was a wide margin. So all those elements helped bring the votes in and get it done, and it was a great act. It was a great process.

CC: Absolutely. As long as we’re in 2004, let’s again talk electoral politics. The record book shows that you yet again that November had few problems with your Democratic challenger, a gentleman named Pete Roman, but I’m guessing the most interesting part of that election-year story for you involves the August GOP primary. Representative Lisa Benlon opted to try to move across the rotunda and challenge you for the Republican nomination in a primary that drew significant statewide attention and interest. Although you prevailed fairly easily with 58 percent of the primary vote, I want to know how that type of stress must have been different than general-election stress. Also the perception was that Lisa may have been more moderate than you were on a number of topics, including K-12 funding as well as certain social issues.

So some of the factional divisions that had been growing within the party that we’ve been talking about over the previous decade were now suddenly front and center for you. What are your recollections about this time on the campaign trail?

NJ: I was actually sorry that Lisa ran. We’d had a decent relationship. She is one that I did go have a cup of coffee with and say, “Lisa, what are we doing?” She just felt like—and, of course, I think education funding was a core issue that she wanted to address. And we had our coffee, and it was very congenial. I actually didn’t know if she was going to run after we had our cup of coffee, but she did, and that was fine.

I don’t know if I treated it any differently than I had others. Again, I’d been involved in the community. We ran an aggressive campaign door-to-door. We had a lot of volunteers. We just did our work, our due diligence in the campaign. As you said, it turned out to be a good result for us.

I don’t know if this is a spot to talk a little bit about K-12 education because I was always kind of—everybody would kind of go, “Nick, you’re from Johnson County. What the heck?” I always felt like, and I had a very, very good friend who was the superintendent of one of the big school districts in Johnson County, really in those days—it may have changed a little now—but in those days, when we passed those huge education bills, very little of that money was ever seen in Johnson County and Johnson County schools because most of it was the free lunch and the special needs kids and things, and Johnson County at that time didn’t have that many.

So I always voted for more local control. I was always a yes vote for that because I felt like maybe that’s the only solution for Johnson County schools is to get a little more local control to get the funding they need to run the schools, but that never really progressed in the Legislature.

So Lisa or whoever lots of times would run against me. I had a lady named Sue Gamble, who’d been on the Shawnee Mission School Board at one point, run. It was all education related. I just simply would say in all forums what I just said. It’s great, but the formula is not really working well for Johnson County schools. So I’m just trying to find a way for us to get the funding that the school district seems to think we need again responsibly. They’ve got to account for it. It just isn’t a good formula for our schools. So that’s the reason I always was kind of in the position I was in. Sometimes that won. Sometimes it wasn’t really liked.

CC: During your final six sessions here in the Senate for the 2003-2008 sessions, Governor Graves was no longer around, and you now had Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius calling the shots from the second floor here at the Statehouse. She had been Insurance Commissioner for a number of years when you first arrived before being elected Governor in 2002. Did your paths ever cross much during those early years before she became Governor? And once she was, how were the policy dynamics different for you and other members of the GOP Senate Caucus here in dealing with her versus what they had been under Graves?

NJ: I really didn’t have a whole lot of contact with her when she was Governor, to be honest with you. We obviously had some contact when we did the Kansas Economic Growth Act, but not an abundance of contact. Certainly, we didn’t before. In fact, I had some people trying to get me to run for Insurance Commissioner when she was, and I obviously didn’t and didn’t think that would be something I wanted.

I didn’t really have a lot of contact with her. I can’t say anything other than that. I just didn’t have a lot of contact with her. I did with some of her staff on issues and committee work and stuff, but not really a whole lot of contact with her.

CC: Governor Sebelius, as you may recall, in 2006 jumped in and embraced a proposed property tax exemption for business machinery and equipment, an idea that had been batted around previously by some Republican legislators. That bill was in fact enacted with people in both parties touting potential economic development growth as a key reason. So I assume it’s safe to say that you were part of the broad bipartisan coalition that championed the so-called M and E exemption in 2006.

But, of course, the property tax base is like a balloon. When you squeeze one side to reduce that particular part, the other side gets bigger. In other words, the concern was about the extent to which removing a major class of property from the tax rolls was going to shift the burden on to the remaining classes, especially residential.

So the 2006 exemption legislation contained an intricate formula that set up so-called “slider payments” that were going to reimburse local units for five years for at least a portion of the lost receipts in an effort to minimize some of the mill-levy increases and tax shifts that were otherwise going to occur. The payments were scheduled to decrease over five years and slide away before sunsetting all together. Hence, they became known as the slider payment.