Spotlight on Kansas. Marshall ethics complaint. Legislator dies.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

By Max McCoy

In just 48 hours, Kansans will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape history.

The opportunity is unexpected — and unexpectedly urgent.

I was thinking about that urgency the other day when I was part of a television panel discussion about politics at a public television station in Kansas. The set was quaint, as you might expect, and on a side table next to the host was a miniature wooden globe in a square stand. I wanted to pick up that globe, hold it to the camera and say we must meet the moment because this is what’s at stake.

I didn’t, but in my mind, I started writing this column.

This year’s midterm election has been called a “unicorn” for red America by a major political analyst. In Kansas, the surprisingly competitive U.S. Senate race has drawn the attention of the nation. For many, the race is a referendum on what may be the most corrupt administration in American history — and a repudiation of the phalanx of legislative quislings that keeps it in power.

TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall may have violated federal campaign finance law when he paid a top aide with funds from a leadership PAC, which can’t be used to finance a candidate’s own campaign, according to a complaint filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.

End Citizens United, a campaign finance watchdog, sent the nine-page complaint to the FEC and the Senate Ethics Committee. It was the group’s second complaint against Marshall in eight days. The initial complaint said Marshall improperly used taxpayer funds to travel to political and personal events and, referencing a Kansas Reflector-MS NOW investigation, found that Marshall has no paid campaign staff. It requested the ethics committee investigate Marshall.

The second complaint went a step further, alleging Marshall broke federal campaign finance law by making payments from his leadership PAC to his chief of staff, Brent Robertson. Marshall’s campaign maintains he follows all applicable laws.

TOPEKA — Rep. Dan Goddard, who served in the Kansas House since 2023, died Thursday. He was 78.

Goddard was a Parsons Republican who served in the Kansas Senate from 2017 to 2021 and was elected in 2022 to the House.

Medicaid recipients who are disabled or have a chronic illness will not have to prove they are unable to work to be exempted from new work requirements that take effect next year, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

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