State Senate candidates argue over ethics laws in Wichita race

Do Kansas ethics laws unfairly favor current officeholders over challengers?

Rep. Gene Suellentrop, R-Wichita, included the address for his campaign website in a newsletter to constituents. That drew criticism from Lori Graham, his Republican primary opponent for a state Senate seat.

The two candidates seek the vacant seat in Senate District 27.

Suellentrop currently represents the overlapping House District 91, and sent a newsletter to constituents in June that included information about school finance, welfare reform and other issues.

It also included the web address for his campaign website: www.genesuellentrop.com.

That’s perfectly OK, according to Brett Berry, general counsel for the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, the agency that enforces Kansas ethics law. That’s because the name of the website does not explicitly advocate for Suellentrop’s election.

However, if the website address was voteforsuellentrop.com or suellentropforsenate.com, including it in an official newsletter to constituents would have been a violation of the state’s ethics laws.

The commission issued an opinion on the issue in 2007.

“They determined that as long as the link on there didn’t include express advocacy that it was not advocacy and therefore permissible,” Berry said.

Berry said that if a person types in the web address and then sees campaign material, “that’s someone taking affirmative action to get to that page.”

Graham called this interpretation of the law ridiculous and said it allows current officeholders to use taxpayer-funded newsletters as campaign materials.

Lawmakers have a $720 annual allotment for printing and sending constituent newsletters, according to Legislative Administrative Services. Suellentrop used $480 from his allotment to print 2,000 newsletters.

“It absolutely puts me at a disadvantage,” Graham said.

“If I put my business website address in the newspaper, let’s say, that’s advertising my business,” Graham said. “… We’ve got to close these loopholes in the ethics (laws), so that they’re actually ethical.”

Suellentrop dismissed Graham’s concerns.

“Didn’t the newsletter just summarize what we did in Topeka?” Suellentrop asked. “… That’s an unfair advantage? Why is she running for office?”

Suellentrop said he and other lawmakers are careful to check with the Ethics Commission and ensure compliance with ethics laws. He accused Graham of trying to raise the issue for political reasons.

“Those are the terms and conditions of the office. Those have been that way for decades,” he said. He added that he thought Graham raised the issue because her campaign is struggling. “She’s looking for, just like that, something to split hairs on rather than get into any substantial issues and rationale or reason why she should be elected,” he said.

Graham also said the newsletter went out to people who live outside of Suellentrop’s House district but reside in the larger Senate district. Suellentrop said he was unsure how the printers determined which addresses to send the newsletter to.

However, Legislative Administrative Services said a lawmaker or the lawmaker’s office provides the addresses.

The Ethics Commission says there is no law against sending constituent mailers out beyond a district’s borders.

Graham criticized another provision in Kansas ethics law, which was highlighted by The Eagle earlier in the week. It allows staffers for the governor and other elected officials to work on behalf of legislative candidates on taxpayer time.

“Career politicians have written the rules to benefit themselves and made it where it’s legal to do these things, and this is exactly why people are so angry at politics right now,” she said.

Many other states ban campaign work on taxpayer time and at government offices. At the federal level, congressional staffers are barred from doing campaign work in congressional offices, and most executive branch employees are restricted from taking part in political campaigns.

Suellentrop pushed back on the notion that Kansas ethics law needs to be changed and said that restricting legislative staffers from political work would be impractical.

“There’s good people on the Democrat side and there’s good people on the Republican side who know it’s almost impossible to split any policy and political discussions entirely,” Suellentrop said.

He added that Carol Williams, the director of the Ethics Commission, “would be pulling her hair out if she had to monitor all that stuff.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 4:31 PM with the headline "State Senate candidates argue over ethics laws in Wichita race."