Kansas needs solutions from its governor. Here’s The Star editorial board recommendation

In 2018, we said Laura Kelly was the clear choice for Kansas governor, pointing out her “practical yet determined plan” to repair the fiscal damage of her predecessors.

She executed that plan. Today, we strongly endorse Kelly, a Democrat and the incumbent governor, for the second term she now seeks.

Kansans should not forget the disaster Kelly inherited when she took office in 2019. The state was still reeling from the tax cut “experiment” of former Gov. Sam Brownback, which led to cratering revenues and underfunded schools.

Remember endless special sessions? Last-minute budget transfers? Plummeting state credit ratings? “It was pretty dire,” Kelly said in September, during an hourlong grilling with The Star’s editorial board. “We were suffering under a huge debt. We weren’t able to pay our bills without robbing every bank account we had.”

As governor, Kelly ended the chaos by rightsizing the budget, repaying debt and shoring up the state’s credit.

She had help, of course. The federal government has provided billions for COVID-19 relief. The state’s economy has also rebounded, pouring hundreds of millions of additional dollars into state coffers.

She resisted repeated attempts to squander some of that money on tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy. She wasn’t always successful, but her efforts helped limit the damage.

Now, under Kelly’s leadership, Kansas fully funds its schools, has stopped raiding the transportation fund and will soon end the state sales tax on food, which helps the poor and middle class. Those are solid accomplishments.

And an important element of those wins is the fact that she found common ground with mainstream Republicans who control the Legislature, and without whose support she would have gotten little done legislatively. That’s not a blotch on her report card, but rather a shining feature of the benefits of a state where political power is divided among the parties. It’s something Kansas would be wise to continue.

She has had other successes. Sports gambling has come to Kansas, providing additional revenue for the state. She worked with the Legislature to provide more than $800 million in incentives for a battery plant near DeSoto, which, despite its flaws — especially its failure to set specific salary and hiring thresholds — will greatly help the state.

Despite intense criticism, and very little cooperation from the GOP, she carefully guided the state through the COVID-19 pandemic. She was the first governor in the nation to close schools in 2020, which was the right thing to do to protect students and teachers.

COVID pandemic, foster care, unemployment system

Her opponent keeps slamming her for her supposedly “over-aggressive” approach during the pandemic, especially her decision to close schools early on, and her attempt to delay reopening schools by a month in August 2020, which the state board of education denied. But here, too, he mistakes a feature for a bug. Divided government produced a result we could live with, and for all the moaning about it, she can’t be held liable for the results of something that did not happen.

Kelly now promises to invest additional state dollars to help struggling students recover from remote learning difficulties, which is also the right thing to do.

Kelly has had setbacks. She has improved the state’s foster care system, but it still falls far short of protecting every foster child. That work must continue.

The creaky, outdated computer system managing the state’s unemployment insurance structure collapsed under the weight of the pandemic, leaving thousands without needed relief. An audit found Kansas paid more than $400 million in fraudulent unemployment claims.

“Honestly, I can’t see it as failure,” Kelly told us, dubiously. “We worked with what we had, and did what we could.”

There is no question that the need to access those funds was dramatic, and the Trump and later the Biden administrations deserve their share of the blame for a chaotic and fraud-prone system rolled out in the face of extraordinary dire economic circumstances. Had those funds not been available, it’s highly likely our current worries over inflation would have paled in comparison to devastating economic losses on the scale of the 2008 financial and housing crisis.

Nevertheless, Kelly was in charge of doling out those funds, and it was in large part a botched job. If reelected, the governor will be out of excuses. Fixing the unemployment system must be a top priority in a second term.

Kansas still refuses to expand Medicaid health insurance to its working poor. Suffering patients still can’t access medical marijuana in the state. Kelly wants to change the status quo on both issues, and they must be at the top of her to-do list.

But we think Kelly, 72, is far better-positioned to achieve these goals than her Republican opponent, Derek Schmidt, the current attorney general. He declined to speak with us about his candidacy.

Derek Schmidt campaigns on culture wars, Trump’s Big Lie

We had hoped Schmidt would discuss his plans for the state, including problems with foster care and unemployment. Kansans would like to know his views on tuition costs, particularly since he recently joined a lawsuit barring some federal student loan relief.

Voters should know if as governor Schmidt would join with Republicans in the Legislature to further gut the tax structure, or seek to overturn the August referendum on abortion rights. And we’d like to know why Schmidt endorsed Trump’s 2020 election Big Lie by filing a brief seeking to overturn the results in contested states.

Instead, Schmidt’s campaign has become entangled in the dispute over transgender athletes in schools. Kelly vetoed bills banning transgender participation in youth sports, calling them discriminatory. She wants the state’s high school athletic association to deal with those rules.

That sounds right to us. Schmidt’s reliance on the issue demonstrates the paucity of his vision for Kansas.

Kansas state Sen. Dennis Pyle is running as an independent. Seth Cordell, a Libertarian, is also on the ballot.

The risks of turning over both the Legislature and the governor’s office to one party are always high. But in this case, with the strain of Republicanism represented by Schmidt and leading lawmakers, the risk of damage is extraordinary. We could be facing a concerted effort to destroy the state’s finances once again, even as voters are treated to ceaseless culture wars.

Kansas has made strides in the past years under Gov. Kelly. Schmidt’s politics-first, substance-free campaign, and his performative use of his office as attorney general, raise significant doubt that if he wins this new office, he’ll take its responsibilities seriously.

A second term for Gov. Kelly, on the other hand, would ensure Kansas remains focused on the bottom line, while addressing real issues for actual people. That’s what Kansans want and need.

In her first four years, Laura Kelly has steered the state through a budget crisis and a pandemic. She’s committed to making Kansas a better place over her next term. She deserves reelection, and we strongly urge voters to keep her in office.