Kansas Chamber-backed group sends mailers with questionable claims

A group making questionable claims about legislative candidates was funded by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee, according to campaign finance reports.

The chamber’s PAC contributed $61,500 to the Main Street Kansas PAC, a group that has paid for radio ads and mailers attacking moderate-leaning Republicans ahead of the Aug. 2 primary, according to documents filed this week with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

“The world’s gone crazy,” a man says in one radio ad paid for by Main Street Kansas PAC. “I read the other day that (Sen.) Carolyn McGinn voted with Hillary and Obama’s party 4,181 times.”

That number appears to be calculated from more than a decade of votes. The ad does not mention that the majority of legislative votes are on noncontroversial matters, such as naming a bridge or highway, and pass with broad bipartisan support.

This year, the Senate took 278 roll call votes and more than 57 percent were unanimous, according to Senate records. Last year, the Senate took 337 roll call votes and nearly 55 percent were unanimous.

That means the most conservative Republican and the most liberal Democrat in the Senate vote the same way more than half the time.

McGinn, R-Sedgwick, was one of the few incumbents to survive a primary challenge in 2012 when conservatives ousted nine moderate Republicans from the Senate. This year, she faces a primary challenge from Renee Erickson in District 31.

“I’m getting hit harder than I ever have by the Kansas Chamber and they’re disguising themselves because they’ve created multiple PACs to hide behind,” McGinn said.

The chamber is also the sole funder of Quality Schools For All Kansas Kids this election, contributing $20,000 to the group, which has made questionable claims about school funding in campaign postcards.

A postcard from Main Street repeats the claim about McGinn voting with the Democrats more than 4,000 times and features a photograph of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. It also references Clinton’s e-mail scandal and alleges that McGinn “SHARES THEIR VALUES.”

“I think it’s because they can’t control me,” McGinn said. “I think it’s because I’m an independent voice and they want a voice that they can control.”

‘Totality’ of the record

McGinn has often broken with Republican leadership on tax and budget policy in recent years, as the state has struggled to balance its budget. She has voiced support for rolling back some of the income tax cuts passed in 2012. The chamber is one of the main groups pushing to preserve those tax cuts.

The chamber’s vice president of political affairs, Rebecca McCormack, serves as Main Street’s treasurer. She said in an e-mail that the votes “show the totality of her record” dating back to when McGinn joined the Legislature in 2005.

“McGinn has voted with Democrats with more frequency than almost any Republican Senator and in several years has been the Senator with the record of voting most closely with Democrats for the entire session. We believe her constituents should have an opportunity to know her entire record during the Republican primary for voting with Democrats and not be misled by the ‘R’ behind her name.”

McCormack sent analyses from KanFocus, a legislative tracking service. The analyses show McGinn breaking from the Republican majority more often than most of her colleagues, but they also show she voted with the Republican majority 81.3 percent of the time in 2015.

McGinn, citing the same tracking service, said that over a 12-year period she has voted with the Republican majority 93 percent of the time.

Report omits information

Main Street’s campaign finance report, filed this week, shows the PAC paid $60,800 to Virginia-based Pinpoint Media for radio advertising. The group’s finance report does not list the money it has spent on mailers, a likely violation of campaign ethics law.

Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said the commission would make inquiries with any PAC that it discovers failed to list a mailing on its report.

“A PAC is a PAC and any monies that go into that fund and out are disclosed,” Williams said. “You don’t pick and choose what you want to show.”

McCormack said Tuesday evening that she was working to update the report, and it was amended Wednesday. The new report shows that the PAC owes Singularis, a Topeka-based firm, more than $86,000 for mailers that were sent out around the state in July.

It also shows which candidates are being supported by the radio ads, something omitted in its original filing. Main Street spent $7,500 to back Erickson in her race against McGinn.

Other Wichita-area candidates to benefit from the group’s support include incumbents Sen. Forrest Knox, Altoona, and Rep. Kasha Kelley, R-Arkansas City, who face re-election challenges from moderates Bruce Givens and Anita Judd-Jenkins, respectively.

Mailers in House races

Main Street paid for mailers in several legislative races.

Randy Banwart and Roger Elliott, two Republicans vying for open House seats, were the target of identical mailers. They featured an elderly man with a pained expression and a warning that the candidates “wanted to do nothing while Obama slashed $700 BILLION in Medicare funding.”

The mailer cites a Wichita Eagle article from April 2014 as its source. The article was about Gov. Sam Brownback’s decision to sign a bill that committed Kansas to an interstate health care compact as a way to escape the Affordable Care Act. It does not mention Banwart or Elliott.

It also does not assert that Obama slashed $700 billion in Medicare funding. The article quotes Brownback making the claim, which has been used by opponents of the Affordable Care Act, and then quotes a Politifact analysis rating the claim as “half true.”

The Affordable Care Act reduced the rate of growth in Medicare spending, but not spending itself. The cost savings did not reduce benefits for seniors, according to Poltifact, a website that checks the veracity of political claims.

“They’re just trying to muddy the water with false information,” said Banwart, a projects manager for Spirit AeroSystems. He is running against Susan Humphries in the primary in House District 99 in east Wichita and Andover.

Neither candidate called for cuts to Medicare funding or increased taxes as the postcard suggests, and neither was in the Legislature when the compact bill came up for a vote. Banwart told the group Women For Kansas that he opposes the compact. Elliott said he would like more time to research the issue.

“We do believe the candidates referenced in these mailers failed to do anything to stand up to President Obama’s $700 billion cut to Medicare,” McCormack said in an e-mail. “By either voting against or voicing opposition to the Health Care Compact, these candidates chose to not do anything or would have done nothing to address the numerous problems of Obamacare.”

The AARP and other senior groups have raised concern that the compact, which requires federal approval, would lead to cuts in Medicare if it became reality. Under the compact, states would receive federal health care funding as block grants.

“I haven’t committed one way or another,” said Elliott, a retired banker. “But yeah, like any human being that wants to be sensible, let me research it before I form an opinion.”

Elliott is running in the GOP primary against Jeremy Alessi in House District 87 in east Wichita. He said he was collecting the misleading mailers, which he calls “nasty-grams.”

“When I need a laugh I always pull these out,” he said. 　

This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 8:33 AM with the headline "Kansas Chamber-backed group sends mailers with questionable claims."