Kansas AG sabotaged state’s COVID response. Now he’s telling us how to fix it
For the past 11 months, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Republican legislative leaders have played politics with the health and safety of all Kansans. They fought against a coordinated, statewide approach to COVID-19, politicized health precautions and openly flaunted their refusal to encourage masks. In the case of one Republican leader, he actually lied about and concealed his COVID diagnosis before attending a meeting with Gov. Laura Kelly and others without a mask on.
Now Schmidt and Republican leaders are spinning another tall tale. The governor took decisive action to combat COVID and included Republican leaders throughout the entire process, even compromising with them on a bill that stripped her emergency powers. Yet, Schmidt is falsely claiming her unwillingness to work with them has prevented the state’s recovery from the pandemic (“Kansas AG: To make leaders work together, limit emergency powers,” Jan. 26 Wichita Eagle).
This logic is equivalent to setting the house on fire and then complaining that the house burned down.
In June, when cases were spiking across the nation and threatening to overwhelm our healthcare system, Gov. Kelly put in place common sense protocols to enforce masks in public spaces. Instead of putting public health before politics, Schmidt and Republican leaders engineered a part of House Bill 2016 to strip the governor of her authority, impede statewide efforts to stop the virus, and thwart our ability to use contact tracing to slow the spread.
Afterward, COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths rose across Kansas. In fact, it wasn’t until Kelly’s second face mask order, which was adopted by a majority of counties, that COVID-19 cases trended down for the first time since HB 2016 was signed.
Further, when Governor Kelly issued an executive order to protect Kansas’ teachers, students, and school staff through common sense practices like enforcing masks, social distancing, and routine sanitization and temperature checks in schools, Schmidt actively encouraged districts to opt out.
In between his reckless political decisions, Schmidt campaigned without a mask, setting a bad example for Kansans statewide, and joined an “insane” partisan lawsuit to undermine our free and fair elections. As seen in the Kansas Republican Party’s local leadership, Schmidt’s actions incited insurrection at the Capitol riots on Jan. 6th.
Derek Schmidt and Republican leaders have put politics before public health from the moment this pandemic began. Now, after nearly a year of abdicating their responsibility, sabotaging the COVID response and rejecting the public health guidance, they want to further limit our ability to fight the pandemic.
Gov. Kelly has managed Kansas’ pandemic response despite their obstruction, while balancing the health of Kansans and protecting our economy. Thanks to her comprehensive response efforts, including the Unified Testing Strategy, face mask protocol, and now the vaccination priority framework, we’ve finally regained the ground lost to Republican obstructionism over the past 11 months.
At this critical moment in our fight against this virus, the last thing we want to do is give the fire hose to the arsonists.