TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A battle in Kansas between the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature over reopening the economy has grown increasingly bitter, clouded by election year politics present and past.
Gov. Laura Kelly has joined Democratic colleagues in other states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in facing a GOP backlash over actions designed to contain the coronavirus pandemic. In Kansas, many Republican lawmakers expect to pass a measure to curb the governor's power in emergencies when the Legislature convenes Thursday for a final day in session this year. That would force Kelly to choose between accepting their limits or having the state's current state of emergency expire.
Republicans are taking cues from aggrieved business owners, but Kelly's biggest legislative critic also is running for the U.S. Senate and struggling to get traction in a crowded field. Many GOP lawmakers said they have been ignored, and Kelly's taking charge in the pandemic irks some Republicans who still see her 2018 election win as a fluke.
Kelly promised a bipartisan approach to governing when she took office in January 2019, but she has clashed at times with top Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers refuse to concede her election meant a new direction for a state Republicans had nearly complete control over before she crashed their party.
"A conservative Republican leadership sees a governor and it wants to hit her like a pinata," said Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, an alliance of Jewish and mainline Christian congregations that has given Kelly good marks for her handling of the pandemic.
Ahead of Thursday's last legislative day, Kansas House and Senate committees have heard testimony questioning Kelly's handling of the pandemic. Committees expect to approve bills aimed at reining in the broad power state law gives a governor in emergencies, with Republicans arguing in favor of legislative oversight and more local decision-making.
The same laws that give Kelly broad powers in emergency required her to ask lawmakers to extend her disaster declaration to keep those powers in force. Republican lawmakers last week extended her current declaration only through Monday, Memorial Day, even though she had asked them to keep it in place until mid-June. Kelly acknowledged Tuesday she is likely boxed in if GOP lawmakers attach conditions to extending her declaration.
However, Kelly insisted Tuesday she's focused only on public health and economic issues.
"I really have put on, sort of, visual and audio blinders," she said during a Statehouse news conference.