Newcomers in Kansas Senate race full of ideas for change

Voters in the Republican primary for the state’s Senate District 25 will choose between two candidates who have never been elected to public office.

William Eveland and Jim Price, however, come into the race with some firm ideas.

Eveland, 51, wants to put the state’s needs ahead of special-interest groups and require local school districts to fund areas beyond the educational basics.

Price, 45, wants to force state government to reduce its size by eliminating personal income taxes.

They seek a seat left vacant after incumbent Michael O’Donnell opted to pursue a spot on the Sedgwick County Commission rather than a second Senate term. District 25 covers a chunk of central Wichita, extending from I-235 on the west to an area along Hillside on the east.

Disappointed in Legislature

Eveland, an accountant who has never sought public office, said he decided to run after becoming disappointed in the way the Legislature has conducted itself the past several years.

“Everyone seems to listen to special-interest groups and has no concern with what the general public wants,” he said.

For that reason, Eveland said, he won’t seek endorsements.

“If you seek out endorsements, you are predispositioning yourself to having your votes go the way the endorsement people want,” he said. “I shouldn’t be representing a group. I should be representing the people of District 25.”

On education funding, the father of two school-age children said the state is going about it all wrong by “sitting back and cutting from the top and thinking it’s going to trickle down and weed out all the excesses that may be in the schools.”

Eveland added, “The approach that this administration has taken is 180 degrees of what a good businessman would do.”

He said studies should be done to determine what people want their schools to be.

The state should provide money for the educational basics, such as reading, writing, arithmetic and technology, and let the local school districts pay for the extras, he said.

“I’m not bashing sports,” Eveland said. “Sports can develop certain aspects of every child, but you can’t do it at the risk” of the basics.

“School districts should be in charge of icing on the cake,” he added. “Seems like every district has a new football stadium. Well, if your district feels that’s important, then that should come out of a local option budget.”

On taxes, he said he disagrees with Gov. Sam Brownback’s 2012 initiative that allows owners of certain businesses, such as limited liability corporations or S corporations, to pay no income tax.

“Everyone who uses the roads, schools and so on should pay their fair share,” Eveland said.

Even if those businesses were taxed at the lowest rate of 3 percent, he estimated that would generate more than $200 million yearly.

“I’ve been a Republican all my life,” Eveland said. “I’m all for giving all the tax breaks I can, but you have to be responsible, too.”

Reduce government

Price has worked for 14 years as a defense contractor overseeing construction of high-security projects on military bases in the Midwest.

He said he is running a campaign to reduce the size of government and to enhance personal liberties.

Eliminating the income tax would force the state to reduce its size.

“If we lessen the tax, that means we have to shrink the budget,” Price said. “We need to learn to be more efficient and more productive instead of increasing the budget every year in a down economy.”

Eliminating the income tax would “free up more money and also keep government under control,” he said. “We call ourselves free, but we have got ourselves a whole pile of laws that really dictate our lives.

“There are so many rules on the books that it’s hard not to be in trouble some time.”

Price, who opposes the Common Core standards, wants the state to stop accepting federal money for education.

“If we eliminate that,” he said, “we can educate our kids the way we want to. Instead of following a federal model, we can follow a state model.”

Price noted his mother was a longtime teacher in the Wichita school district and his father was an operations director for Rose Hill schools.

“I don’t have a problem with spending money on education,” he said, “but we are spending it more on overhead than on classrooms.”

Price ran unsuccessfully for a state House seat two years ago and the Wichita City Council last year.

He has two criminal convictions, which have been reported in the past by The Eagle. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge and received probation in connection with a 1990 gas station robbery in Texas when he was 18. He was put on probation and fined $500 on a misdemeanor charge for not complying with a search warrant when law enforcement officers investigated his teenage son’s small marijuana growing operation in Butler County in 2012.

Price said he was an unwilling participant in the heist that was committed by two hitchhikers he had picked up. He said he was charged only because “I didn’t stop them.” And he said he was unaware his son was growing marijuana in a spare room at home.

He said that history is a “moot point” for him now.

“If I can get high-security clearances as a contractor,” Price said, “then I can’t see that’s valid.”

Wichita school board member Lynn Rogers is the only Democrat seeking the Senate seat, so he will not have a primary race.

This story was originally published July 3, 2016 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Newcomers in Kansas Senate race full of ideas for change."