[Part 1] How 73 voters brought state-owned casinos to Kansas

Over the past few years, I’ve heard nothing but confusion from regular people as to how our state has continued to decline economically, socially and morally. How did we become the first governmental body in the United States to own casinos? Why can’t we pass stricter reporting laws for abortions? Why can’t we stop taxpayer funded lobbying? Why can’t we defeat the environmental lobbyists and override Gov. Sebelius’ veto?

While I’m sure there are a lot of people who think there are many answers which are quite complicated, I don’t. I think they’re simple questions with very simple answers.

You and I are the reason. The voter. The voters put our leaders where they’re at to make the decisions they’ve made. The voters are the ones who elected our House and Senate members who voted for state owned gambling. The voters allowed our leaders to go to Topeka and vote against stricter abortion reporting laws. The voters decided to vote for candidates that side with out of state environmentalists and won’t allow energy independence for our state.

It’s not at all surprising to me where we are based on the kind of people we continue to put in office.

If our state is to move forward, it’ll have to be the voters that decide when that happens. And if the past is any indication, it could be just a handful of regular citizens, your friends and neighbors, that decide our fate for the next two to four years.

How 73 voters brought state-owned casinos to Kansas

Senate Bill 66 was introduced on January 11, 2007. It was gutted on the floor of the House and rewritten to circumvent the constitutional amendment process needed to allow out-of-state companies to build destination casinos in Kansas. The constitution only allowed for a state owned lottery, not gambling. To get around this problem and avoid the needed 27 votes in the Senate and 84 in the House (a near impossibility), the Governor, along with liberal Republicans, hatched a plan to redefine ’state-owned lotteries’ to include destination resort casinos.

It seemed ridiculous at the time to think that it would pass. Even the most liberal of Republican, I reasoned, would see that the state had no business running casinos, no matter how ‘badly’ they thought the state needed the money. Bureaucracy and gambling simply don’t mix.

I was wrong. With the help of former legislators circumventing the committee process, SB 66 was passed by six votes in the House and just one in the Senate.

Now, how would that vote have gone differently if voters had changed their minds in the voting booths back in 2006 and 2004?

For instance, SB 66 passed the House by a vote of 64-58. What if three legislators had changed their minds? Barring three House members that were absent coming in and voting, a change of three votes would have made the total 61-61 and killed the bill right there.

How close were the people of Kansas from getting those three votes? Let’s start in House District 16.

Gene Rardin won House District 16 in Johnson County by three votes. That’s right, theoretically, just two of those three people changing their minds would have sent Republican John Kriegshauser to Topeka instead of Democrat Gene Rardin.

But two people in House District 16 changing their minds wouldn’t have made a difference on the vote for SB 66. Assuming Krieghauser would have voted nea, it still would have passed 63-59. To get to our 61-61 tie, we’ll have to look back to the 2004 General Election in House District 67 as well.

In that race, 89 voters decided Democrat Tom Hawk was a better candidate over Republican Joe McGraw. A 2004 Manhattan Mercury article shows McGraw to be a strong fiscal conservative. If we assume he would have voted against SB 66 and that 45 of those 89 voters changed their votes in 2004 and that McGraw won reelection in 2006, we’re now down to 62-60, just one vote away from a tie. And it only took 45 changed votes in District 67 and two in District 16 to get us here.

Our final journey is to House District 96. In the 2006 General election, Democrat Terry McLachlan defeated Republican Willa DeCastro by just 50 votes.

So, assuming 26 changed votes and that DeCastro would have voted against the bill, we’re now at a 61-61 tie and the defeat of SB 66. Kansas doesn’t own casinos, we’ve avoided a costly legal battle to get the new law ruled constitutional and we’ve prevented potentially unlimited corruption in our state government.

And it could have all happened if just 73 people across just three House Districts had changed their ballots.