How would Bollier vote in U.S. Senate? Here are some key votes from her time in Topeka
Win or lose Nov. 3, Barbara Bollier will have run for the U.S. Senate with an advantage she never had during a decade in Kansas politics: the full-throated support of her party leadership.
Bollier spent most of her 10 years in the Kansas Legislature as a Republican often at odds with party leadership. She repeatedly went her own way on key votes and was an outspoken critic of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback during his time in Topeka.
“You can look back over every election I was in and the number of postcards that were sent against me by the Republican establishment,” Bollier told The Star in August.
“So yes, this is a remarkable experience to have a party stand behind me.”
Bollier’s battles with GOP leaders culminated in her decision to switch parties following the 2018 election after she had been stripped of committee assignments for endorsing Democrat Laura Kelly in the race for governor.
As she attempts to be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Kansas since 1932, some votes have been an asset to her candidacy. Others have been weaponized by Republicans to use against her. Even bills that never became law can hang over a campaign when they’re reduced to a postcard or 30-second TV ad.
Here is a look at some of Bollier’s most important votes as a state lawmaker.
123 to 1
Republicans have repeatedly attacked Bollier for voting against a 2012 bill drafted in the wake of the Penn State University sex abuse scandal. It would have broadened the definition of mandated reporters of suspected child abuse at educational institutions in Kansas and increased the criminal penalty for failing to report suspected abuse.
The bill passed the Kansas House 123 to 1. Bollier, then a Republican, was alone in voting no.
A Marshall campaign ad labels Bollier an “extremist” for voting against the bill and states “there’s no excuse for what she did.”
But the bill never became law after it stalled in the Kansas Senate.
At the time, Bollier warned that increasing penalties could have unintended consequences. She posed a hypothetical example of a volunteer Sunday school teacher, lacking the training of a K-12 teacher, who could face a felony charge for not reporting, according to a KMBC report.
“This bill would not have worked as it was intended, and I won’t vote for a bad bill just because of political pressure. The Kansas Senate knew it was poorly-written and ineffective legislation, too — which is why it never advanced in that chamber and never became law,” Bollier said in an email to The Star Thursday.
Bollier said she had a track record of defending Kansas children in the Legislature, pointing to efforts to reform the state’s foster care system and “crack down on child trafficking and increase penalties for the criminals who commit such despicable crimes.”
Standing up for same-sex couples
Bollier was one of a handful of Kansas House Republicans to vote against a 2014 bill that would have enabled public and private workers to refuse to serve same-sex couples on religious grounds.
The infamous measure passed the Kansas House 72 to 49, sparking an international uproar. Senate GOP leaders refused to take up the bill and same-sex marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court the following year.
Bollier didn’t just vote no, she took to the lectern to condemn the bill as discriminatory with stronger language than most Democratic lawmakers used at the time.
“As a legislator, I consistently opposed legislation that legalized discrimination in any capacity. It’s not only morally and legally wrong, it is deeply damaging to Kansas’ reputation as a state. Legalizing bigotry is never a winning strategy for growing the economy or attracting new people to Kansas. This is why business leaders, chambers of commerce, youth advocates, child welfare organizations, faith leaders, multiple Republican Kansas legislators, and others flatly rejected HB 2453 and similar anti-equality proposals,” Bollier said, reflecting on the bill.
“Like I said at the time, ‘I cannot vote yes for this bill if I am to heed the words of Christ when he said, ‘In as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.’’”
Repealing Brownback tax cuts
Arguably her most significant vote was in 2017 to override Brownback and repeal his 2012 tax cuts.
It wasn’t a surprise. Bollier, by then a member of the state Senate, had been an outspoken critic of the GOP governor’s tax policy for several years.
The surprise was the ability of Democrats and moderate Republicans to persuade a handful of conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning and House Speaker Ron Ryckman, to join them as part of the two-thirds majority needed to override Brownback’s veto.
“It took five years of unprecedented crisis— including months of tense negotiation and compromise in 2017— to establish a workable, bipartisan supermajority to put Kansas back together again,” Bollier said.
Kansas faced a prolonged budget crisis from November of 2014 through June of 2017, when the tax cuts were repealed. The veto override had been preceded by multiple rounds of budget cuts, fund sweeps and other short-term fiscal maneuvers as the state weathered regular shortfalls.
“The Brownback tax experiment made Kansas weaker, sicker, poorer, less safe, and unforgivably ill-prepared to deal with any kind of unforeseen crisis — whether it be natural, economic, or health-related,” Bollier said.
She called the bipartisan compromise to repeal the law one of her proudest legislative achievements.
“It was not easy, and no legislation is perfect. But it is a good compromise that allowed us to once again fully fund our schools, invest in our roads, strengthen our foster care system and restore our state. We do good when we work together.”
School finance
The repeal of the tax cuts gave lawmakers significantly more resources to use when facing a Kansas Supreme Court order requiring increased funding for public schools.
The Legislature in 2018 approved a $500 million increase for K-12 education, which Gov. Jeff Colyer signed into law.
The bill had bipartisan backing, but faced opposition from Johnson County lawmakers in both parties, including Bollier, who was in her final session as a Republican.
Bollier pointed to her vote in support of a school funding increase the following year under Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, which she said ultimately satisfied the court’s demands on school funding.
Pressed on her vote against the Colyer-backed bill, Bollier’s campaign referred to her explanation at the time, which was that the measure contained the same school finance formula that her district had “asked to be changed for over 30 years.”
State Rep. Fred Patton, a Topeka Republican, recalled that Johnson County groups opposed the bill because of its limits on a local option budget, the funds school districts can raise locally to supplement state aid.
“There were some Johnson County groups that opposed the bill because I don’t think it went as far as they wanted in areas of giving them the ability to raise funds locally,” Patton said.
Johnson County school districts, some of the most affluent in the state, have often relied heavily on local money, which sometimes put them at odds with Wichita and Kansas City, Kansas, on funding.
“Lawmakers have to stand up for their constituents even if it is difficult. In the State Senate, I represented District 7,” Bollier said. “In the U.S. Senate, I will represent all of Kansas. And that means I will do what is right for our state even if it is challenging and goes against my political party or the president.”
No vote on COVID-19 compromise
After endorsing Laura Kelly and switching parties in late 2018, Bollier became a close ally of the governor’s.
But she broke with Kelly this year when she voted against the compromise COVID-19 legislation the governor agreed to in June.
The bill enabled Kelly to extend her emergency orders and provided a mechanism to distribute coronavirus relief funds. But it also placed new limitations on her emergency power and sweeping liability protections for businesses related to the virus.
Bollier was one of just three Democrats to vote against the measure, which passed the Senate with a bipartisan majority of 26 to 12. Marshall hit Bollier for her no vote in both the September and October debates.
Bollier called the legislation hastily written and warned that a provision allowing health care professionals licensed in any state to practice in Kansas without a Kansas license could have dire consequences for patients by reducing oversight.
Asked about her vote this week, Bollier said restrictions on Kelly’s power had hampered the state’s pandemic response.
“I opposed the bill because I feared it would inject ongoing partisan politics into the Kansas emergency response efforts. As a doctor, I have warned from day one that politicizing the pandemic would slow our economic recovery and cost Kansas lives. I knew the flawed disaster declaration set the stage for a few far-right legislative leaders in Topeka to complicate, confuse, and politicize nearly every data-driven recommendation of the state’s top emergency management and public health officials,” she said in an email.
“This has repeatedly proven true over the last five months.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How would Bollier vote in U.S. Senate? Here are some key votes from her time in Topeka."
