20 Kansas Legislators are members of ‘far-right’ Facebook groups, report says
A think tank found 20 state lawmakers, or 12% of the Legislature, were members of Facebook groups deemed to be “far-right,” including ones spreading COVID-19 misinformation and raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election.
The report, published by the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights earlier this week, did not uncover evidence that lawmakers were directly participating in the discourse taking place in the groups.
But the study’s authors argue it is a sign of the growing influence of such ideology in state legislatures across the country.
And its publication comes as high-profile election conspiracy theorists testified in hearings at the Kansas Statehouse, as well as the growing presence of groups like Kansans for Health Freedom, who advocate for curbing the powers of public health officials in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Several lawmakers were only members of a group run by Americans for Prosperity Kansas, a conservative lobbying group with a regular presence in Topeka.
But others joined groups with titles ranging from “Open up Kansas and Lock Down the Governor” to “STOP THE STEAL #Election2020.”
Some groups began as a coalition of members pushing back on restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic but appear to have grown into a broader range of discussion on right-wing issues ranging from critical race theory to conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
The IREHR report, titled “Breaching the Mainstream,” said the survey was of particular importance given the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol and the increase in misinformation at statehouses nationally.
“We wanted to have some sort of indicator of how far-right ideas have moved from the margins to the mainstream,’’ said Devin Burghart, executive director of the institute. “Frankly, we were shocked by what we found.”
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Nationally, 875 legislators, accounting for one out of every five state lawmakers, were members of at least one far-right group. New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Missouri were the states with the heaviest concentration of legislators in at least one group.
In Kansas, Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Fort Leavenworth, is reported as belonging to six groups, the most of any Kansas legislator.
In an interview, Proctor said he was a member of those groups, most of which are publicly viewable.
“Our state and our country is better served by a vigorous discussion than it is by censoring speech one side or the other doesn't like,” he said.
Proctor also took issue with the classification of some of the groups as “far-right,” pointing to ReOpen Kansas, a group of opponents to COVID-19 restrictions that held anti-mandate protests at the Statehouse during the pandemic.
While the tenor of the demonstrations focused on things like urging Gov. Laura Kelly to lift the state’s stay-at-home order in May, 2020, attendees also opposed vaccinations while at least one waved a Confederate flag.
“I think that it's unhelpful to paint a whole side of the political debate as extremist or outside the mainstream or in some way objectionable because they're engaging in the public discourse and they say something that the other side doesn't like,” Proctor said.
Andrew Bahl is a senior statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at abahl@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: 20 Kansas legislators belong to far-right, anti-vax Facebook groups
