THE SUNFLOWER STATE CIRCUS
Welcome back to the Sunflower State Circus, where fifteen separate outside groups are now pouring roughly $20 million in broadcast and digital spending into the Republican primary for governor.
This week's edition: the Masterson-Sarnecki feud spiraling completely out of control, a fresh wave of special interest money, and Sarnecki unveiling a harmful agenda on schools ripped straight from the Brownback playbook.
THE MASTERSON-SARNECKI FIGHT IS COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL
What started as a primary rivalry has collapsed into one of the wildest intraparty brawls Kansas has seen in years, with the two leading Republican candidates for governor now openly accusing each other of lying, fraud, and moral bankruptcy on a daily basis.
Just this week:
A Masterson-aligned PAC launched an ad claiming Sarnecki "ran an organization that funneled nearly a million dollars to Democrats" and went years without voting Republican, while a Masterson campaign spokesperson dared Sarnecki's allies to explain "why Philip Sarnecki skipped the Value Them Both election and then lied about it."
Sarnecki fired back with a sprawling post calling the ad "shameful and quite frankly, evil," blaming a conspiracy of lobbyists, billionaires, and artificial intelligence, and never quite addressing whether he actually voted.
Sarnecki then released an ad explaining that Trump's endorsement of Masterson doesn't count because "even President Trump gets bad advice sometimes," asking primary voters to believe their own president was duped into backing the wrong man.
Underneath the chaos, neither candidate is talking about Kansas. Masterson is running on a Washington endorsement, Sarnecki is running on the claim that he would serve Washington even more faithfully, and neither has offered a single answer for the Kansas families dealing with rising costs, struggling rural hospitals, and underfunded schools – all caused by an agenda they support.
FOLLOW THE (OUT-OF-STATE) MONEY
The Sunflower State Journal reports that two more outside groups joined the pile this week, and the pattern is impossible to miss: the Kansas governor's race is increasingly being financed by special interests who don’t care about everyday Kansans
American Mission, a Nevada-based PAC whose stated mission is electing pro-AI Republicans, has booked or spent about $429,400 boosting Masterson across the Wichita, Topeka, and Kansas City markets.
The American Future Fund, an Iowa dark-money 501(c)(4) that is not required to disclose its donors, dropped another $274,000 into the primary this week.
The School Freedom Fund, a federal PAC largely financed by a single out-of-state billionaire and affiliated with the Club for Growth, is spending $2 million of its own.
That is fifteen entities and $20 million, much of it routed through groups that never have to disclose a single donor, all spent deciding who gets to run a state these funders will never set foot in.
BROWNBACK 2.0: SARNECKI'S SCHOOL FUNDING PLAN
At this week's KCTV5 forum, Sarnecki said school funding should be taken away from the "unelected, unaccountable judicial branch" and handed to legislators, and he urged Kansans to vote yes on the constitutional amendment to elect Supreme Court justices. Here is the history he is counting on voters to forget:
The Kansas Supreme Court only stepped in because Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and his allies gutted public school funding so severely that the courts ruled the state was failing its constitutional duty to Kansas kids.
Sarnecki's plan would undermine the rule of law that stopped the Brownback experiment and hand the checkbook back to the same politicians who created the crisis.
See you next week.
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