By JIM MCLEAN

A crowded race for the Republican nomination for governor in Kansas has candidates looking for ways to stand out.

At a forum held this month in Wichita, the hopefuls signaled how they hope to separate themselves from the field.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach wants primary voters to see him as the true conservative in the contest.

“If you want to see full throttled conservatism in Kansas then I’m your man,” Kobach told a near-capacity crowd at the state GOP convention. “We will go full speed ahead.”

He used a question about property taxes to employ the sort of provocative language that has marked his career, and the campaign in front of him now. Kobach said “stealth” increases in the assessments on his Douglas County farm had made him and his wife “slave farmers.”

“We are growing our crops for Kansas and not ourselves,” he said, claiming it takes nearly all of their relatively small farm income to pay the taxes.

Gov. Jeff Colyer is Kobach’s main rival for the nomination, according to the most recent public poll on the race. He had the flu and sat out the Saturday debate.

The other, lesser-known, candidates pitched themselves as successful business leaders who could bring order to a state government in turmoil.

Willis “Wink” Hartman, a Wichita oil and restaurant businessman who has loaned his campaign $1.6 million and said he was ready to lead a turnaround in Topeka quit the race last week.

But Mark Hutton, the founder of a Wichita-based construction company and a former legislator said he brings something to the table that Hartman doesn’t: Statehouse experience.

“I’m the only candidate up here that has 25 years of CEO experience from the ground up building a company … coupled with four years of legislative experience and, more importantly, the relationships that are going to be necessary to move Kansas forward,” Hutton said.

During his four years in the Kansas House, Hutton compiled a conservative voting record but also earned a reputation for independence as one of the first Republicans to call for a rollback of then Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts.

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer billed himself as a “thoughtful, calm decision-maker,” perhaps in contrast to Kobach’s more combative leadership style.  Repeatedly sounding practiced themes, Selzer promised to “lean in” to the job of reining in spending and growing the Kansas economy.

“We are going to make Kansas grow again,” Selzer said. “Remember that.”

Former state Sen. Jim Barnett watched from the sidelines, barred him from the stage by party officials for refusing to sign rules of participation that he said amounted to censorship.

“‘I’m not going to sign what I think is a debate agreement that is against democracy and the principles of this country,” Barnett said. “I would have spoken the truth and we didn’t hear that tonight. … What we heard tonight was a return to the Brownback/Colyer policies that took our state down to its knees.”

Rather than calling for reduced spending, smaller government and putting the Kansas Supreme Court in its place on the school funding issue, Barnett said he would have advocated for increased education funding and for expanding Medicaid eligibility to an additional 150,000 low-income Kansans.

Barnett was the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2006 but lost to former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The candidates who participated – Kobach and Hutton in particular – took a hard line on the school funding issue. They insisted it’s the legislature’s job should decide what’s appropriate, not the court.

“We have to clear up this constitutional amendment issue and tell the Supreme Court — the Sebelius Supreme Court — to butt out,” Hutton said.

Kobach cautioned GOP voters against buying the “fake argument” made by supporters of Medicaid expansion that it would help struggling rural hospitals.

“Unfortunately, there are some Republicans who haven’t got the message yet,” he said.

A recent poll by Remington Research Group, a GOP consulting company, showed Kobach and Colyer running neck-and-neck in the early going. Colyer held a 23 percent to 21 percent lead. Barnett was a distant third at 8 percent, followed by Hutton and Hartman at 5 percent each and Selzer at 3 percent.

The tilt-to-the-right tone of the debate scored well with the Republicans who came from around the state for the convention. For instance, retired Wichita teacher Elaine Fisher agreed with attacks on the Kansas Supreme Court over school funding.

“We need to get away from judges controlling how much money the state has to pay for education,” she said.

But the assault on the state’s high court didn’t resonate with everyone. Bill Clifford, a Garden City ophthalmologist and chair of the Finney County Republican Party, says what works in the convention hall may not work with the cross-section of voters needed to win.

“We have a much broader voting population out there,” the western Kansas Republican said. “All the candidates need to touch that group that wasn’t present in the building tonight.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Sentencing Commission is discussing deleting hundreds of names on a public criminal registry that allows Kansans to know if people who committed a wide range of crimes live or work near them.

The commission said Kansas has expanded uses for the registry so much that it now is nearly unusable, while complicating efforts to rehabilitate thousands of people, including those who are on the list for relatively minor drug offenses.

The registry includes names, addresses and crimes of nearly 20,000 Kansans, whose information stays on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation site for 15 years or longer, beginning when the offender completes any prison time, the Kansas News Service reported .

The commission wants to delete more than 4,500 people convicted of drug offenses from the registry. Advocates for the change say some drug users look at the database to get names and addresses of people who might sell them drugs.

“The state,” agency director Scott Schultz told lawmakers this month, “has unintentionally become an online shopping portal for methamphetamine and other drugs.”

Law enforcement agencies oppose changing the system, arguing that it gives law-abiding Kansans important information.

“They use it to see who in the neighborhood is creating a hazard for their child,” said Ed Klumpp, a former Topeka police chief who lobbies for sheriffs’ offices and police departments.

The Kansas House and Senate are holding hearings on several bills this session designed to reduce the database, which began about a quarter century ago largely to denote where sex offenders are located. Legal experts say Kansas is one of only a few states that have expanded online criminal registries to cover many more crimes beyond sex offenses.

Kansas adds more than 1,000 names to the registry per year, with most people who break laws that address small amounts of drugs or threats of violence that don’t lead to physical harm. Possession without intent to deliver and marijuana crimes are excluded. But someone who was given probation for misdemeanors can be listed with people who committed murders.

“People can’t tell actually at this point who they should be worried about and who they shouldn’t,” said Jennifer Roth, an appellate lawyer who testified recently on behalf of the state association of public defenders.

People on the registry can be sent back to prison for violating a complicated system of regulations. Last year, Kansas courts found 326 people guilty of failing to register and more than 100 went back to prison.

Removing drug offenders from the KBI database would save $1 million a year in prison spending by freeing an estimated 40 beds a year. That doesn’t include savings from not needing prosecutors, public defenders and judges for the cases.

The law requires registrants to visit their local sheriff’s office every three months to pay $20 and verify or update their information. They must visit every county where they live, work and study and pay the fee at each location. If information, such as changing jobs, getting a tattoo or buying a car, requires extra visits and must be reported within three days.

Missing a quarterly visit or other check-in is a felony, with fresh felonies incurred for each month that goes by. Falling $40 behind on fees for more than two weeks is a felony, too.

Schultz, of the Kansas Sentencing Commission, said studies haven’t found that high-frequency reporting to authorities increases public safety.

Those criticisms don’t sway law enforcement.

Greg Smith, a special deputy for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, told two House and Senate panels this month criminals can blame only themselves.

“Choices have consequences,” said Smith, a former state senator. “If you don’t want to register, don’t do the crime.”

The KBI didn’t testify on the bills but said it supports the registry in its current form.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A 35-year-old Kansas man is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after being sentenced for molesting three young girls.

A Jackson County, Missouri, judge sentenced Jesus Garcia, of Kansas City, Kansas, on Friday to three life sentences, plus 15 years, all to be served consecutively.

Garcia was convicted in December of statutory rape of a victim younger than 12, child molestation, attempted statutory rape and statutory sodomy of a victim younger than 14.

Court documents say the mother of two of the girls told a social worker in 2016 at Children’s Mercy Hospital that Garcia had been sexually abusing them from 2014 to 2015.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A suburban Kansas City man has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in what police say was a road-rage shooting that killed another man.

Jackson County prosecutors say a jury also convicted 46-year-old John C. Young, of Independence, Missouri, with unlawful use of a weapon, assault, two counts of armed criminal action and tampering with physical evidence.

Authorities say the May 25 confrontation killed 19-year-old Christopher Hutson of Lee’s Summit. Hutson’s pregnant girlfriend was grazed by a bullet.

Police say the couple was returning from a sonogram appointment when they became disoriented in traffic and Young, in another vehicle, began yelling at them. Police say he pulled up beside them and fired several shots, fatally hitting Hutson in the head.

Young will be sentenced at a later date.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — It didn’t take long after Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted for alleged invasion of privacy for Missouri Democrats to tie him to Attorney General Josh Hawley, the presumed GOP front runner in Missouri’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race.

Nor did it take long for Republicans to link the prosecutor who announced the charges to a prominent national Democratic financier.

The quick injection of politics was a strong sign that Greitens’ potentially prolonged legal battle stemming from an extramarital affair could have implications for the 2018 elections — especially for fellow Republicans whom history suggests have a disadvantage as the party in power during the midterm of Donald Trump’s presidency.

So far, Greitens has remained defiant against growing but not-yet-overwhelming calls to resign from some fellow Republicans, while instead portraying the felony charge against him as nothing more than a political jab by a “reckless liberal prosecutor.”

The Missouri Republican Party noted that St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner had received more than $200,000 from wealthy liberal financier George Soros during her campaign — casting the indictment as part of a broader Democratic attack on Republicans.

The Thursday indictment came just five days ahead of Tuesday’s start of the candidacy filing period for Missouri residents wanting to run for U.S. Senate, Congress, and state and local offices. Hawley is challenging Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

An incumbent governor typically is a help to his party in races such as the Senate, but an indicted one could be a detriment.

“It doesn’t help the image of the Republican Party, so in that sense it helps McCaskill and hurts Hawley” in the Senate race, said Ken Warren, a longtime political scientist at Saint Louis University.

The Missouri Senate race is being closely watched as one that could determine control of the chamber, where Republicans now have a bare majority of 51 seats. McCaskill is one of only two statewide-elected Democrats in Missouri, which Donald Trump carried by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Republicans got behind Hawley early after a disastrous 2012 campaign when McCaskill defeated Todd Akin following his comments about “legitimate rape.”

Whether Democrats can effectively tie Greitens to Hawley remains to be seen. But indications are that they will try.

On Friday, The Missouri Democratic Party noted that Hawley had accepted nearly $50,000 in contributions from Greitens in 2016 and has not called on Greitens to resign. The attorney general is conducting an investigation over Greitens’ use of a secretive app that deletes messages once they’ve been read. It’s unclear when the investigation will conclude.

Hawley took to Twitter on Friday and, without mentioning Greitens, noted that an indictment “is a serious matter” with no place for partisanship. He also expressed support for a newly announced legislative investigation into the governor, saying he’s confident “the House’s investigation will be thorough and swift, and will proceed without regard to party.”

That House investigation could serve as a first step for impeachment proceedings against Greitens, though it also could determine he has done nothing warranting his removal from office.

University of Missouri political science professor Peverill Squire said Hawley is in a “very awkward” spot.

“As the state’s chief legal officer, he has to not appear to question the veracity of the legal process and certainly be supportive of prosecutorial staff,” Squire said. “The other problem is, of course, he’s sort of the other young and upcoming Republican, and although he obviously doesn’t wish to get confused with Greitens, it’ll be hard for him to distinguish himself.”

McCaskill, a former prosecutor, has not commented about Greitens’ indictment, and spokespeople for both her Senate office and campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment on Friday. But she took a political jab at him after the media reported last month that Greitens had engaged in a 2015 affair with his former hairdresser. The woman was recorded as saying that Greitens had blindfolded her, bound her hands and took an unwanted photo of her during a sexual encounter in the basement of his St. Louis house.

Speaking to Democrats in Columbia, McCaskill quipped last month that Greitens had run as a political outsider.

“He was going to do things that literally no other governor had done,” McCaskill said, as reported by the Columbia Daily Tribune. “Little did we know it was sex in the basement.”

Republican consultant John Hancock, who is not affiliated with either Greitens or Hawley’s campaign, called the indictment a “political sham” but added that the underlying facts of Greitens’ affair pose “a real political problem” for Republicans in the 2018 elections.

In presidential midterm elections, supporters of the incumbent president’s party typically are less motivated that those in the challenging party, he said. The president’s party typically loses seats in Congress. Hancock said Greitens’ troubles could provide yet another reason for Republican voters to stay home on Nov. 6.

“A depressed turnout affects the entire ticket,” Hancock said.

Warren said that if Hawley starts to fall behind in the race, Republicans could pressure Greitens to resign. Noting the governor’s maverick streak, he doubts it would work.

“Since when has he taken cues from fellow Republicans?” Warren asked.

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ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is blaming his felony invasion of privacy indictment on a “reckless liberal prosecutor,” holding fast to the assertion that any case stemming from his admitted extramarital affair is politically driven.

The Republican governor and St. Louis’ Democratic circuit attorney, both just a little more than a year into their offices, certainly are political opposites. But a growing number of GOP lawmakers on Friday were questioning whether Greitens can continue to effectively lead while facing the indictment.

The indictment — handed down by a grand jury and stemming from an investigation launched by Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner — alleges that Greitens took a compromising photo of a woman without her consent and transmitted the image to a computer. Greitens has admitted being unfaithful to his wife before he won election as governor but has denied criminal wrongdoing and has insisted that the affair with his former hairdresser was consensual. His attorney filed a motion to dismiss the indictment.

Greitens claims the criminal case is politically motivated.

“The people of Missouri deserve better than a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points,” Greitens said in a statement Thursday.

Gardner didn’t respond, but her spokeswoman Susan Ryan said the prosecutor “will not be playing political games during this process.”

“These personal attacks, while disappointing, will not distract her from her duty to serve justice and the citizens of this community,” Ryan said Friday.

While the state Republican Party was still supporting Greitens, some lawmakers, including some Republicans, were calling on him to resign or face legislative impeachment proceedings.

“In the wake of the grand jury criminal indictment, and with legal proceedings to come, I cannot see how he could effectively perform the duties of his office, let alone to lead with the kind of moral authority needed to make a positive impact,” said Sen. Kevin Corlew, of Kansas City, one of at least four Republicans who were newly calling for Greitens’ resignation.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Kehoe, a Republican from Jefferson City, said the indictment “causes me to question whether the governor has the ability to effectively lead the state going forward,” but he stopped short of calling for Greitens’ resignation.

Other Republicans remained reserved in their judgment but expressed support for a legislative investigation into Greitens announced Thursday by GOP House leaders. An investigation is a necessary first step before an impeachment proceeding but does not necessarily lead to one.

Former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Wolff said it’s up to the House to decide whether a state official can be impeached for conduct that occurred before he took office.

The only statewide Missouri official to be convicted, impeached and ousted from office was Democratic Secretary of State Judy Moriarty in 1994. She was convicted of a misdemeanor for backdating her son’s candidacy paperwork for a state House seat, then later impeached by the House and removed by the state Supreme Court.

The prosecutor pursuing the case against Greitens was once a Missouri House member herself, serving two terms starting in 2012. Gardner came to politics after serving as a prosecutor in the circuit attorney’s office under her predecessor, Jennifer Joyce, from 2005 to 2010.

Missouri Republican Party executive director Sam Cooper called the indictment of Greitens a “political hit job.”

But Democratic Rep. Alan Green of St. Louis County, chairman of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus, defended Gardner, nothing that it was an independent grand jury that “found probable cause to indict the governor.”

The circuit attorney is an elected official. Gardner’s office reviews up to 13,000 cases brought by police each year and files charges in roughly half of them, Ryan said.

Gardner, who grew up in St. Louis and earned a law degree from St. Louis University, decided to run for the job leading an office of about 60 prosecutors when Joyce opted not to seek a fifth term in 2016. With unrest in nearby Ferguson still on the minds of people in St. Louis, where black residents slightly outnumber whites, Gardner, who is black, pledged to restore trust in the criminal justice system.

Gardner, 42, defeated three other Democrats in the August primary, aided by $200,000 in late donations from a national super PAC partly funded by liberal billionaire George Soros.

Her career path has some precedent: Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill also began as an assistant prosecutor before winning election to the Missouri House and later being elected the Jackson County prosecutor.

The indictment has Greitens at a standstill. He canceled plans to go to Washington this weekend for a National Governors Association meeting, and the Republican Governors Association said Greitens “no longer intends to serve” on its executive committee.

The indictment states that on March 21, 2015, Greitens photographed a woman identified only by her initials “in a state of full or partial nudity” without her knowledge or consent. The indictment said Greitens “transmitted the image contained in the photograph in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”

Soon after the affair began, the woman’s husband secretly recorded a conversation in which she described the alleged incident. She said on the tape that Greitens invited her downstairs at his home because he wanted to show her “how to do a proper pull-up.”

She said Greitens “taped my hands to these rings and then put a blindfold on me,” took a photo of her partially nude, then warned her to remain silent.

“I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said, ‘You’re never going to mention my name,'” she said.

Greitens, a married father of two young boys, has repeatedly denied blackmailing the woman. He has declined to say whether he took a photo.

According to the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator, 274 felony invasion of privacy charges have been filed in the state since 2004. But the data lists only one in St. Louis city — apparently Greitens’ case.

Greitens is a Rhodes Scholar and former Navy SEAL who entered the 2016 race as a brash outsider. He won an expensive primary, then defeated Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster in the general election.

He has faced questions about “dark money” campaign contributions. His use of a secretive app that deletes messages is under investigation by Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley.

KANSAS CITY- (AP) – The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City has a new display featuring the John Singer Sargent painting depicting British soldiers blinded by a gas attack on the Western Front.

 

The Kansas City Star reports that the American artist’s 8-foot by 20-foot oil on canvas titled “Gassed” is so large the museum had to build a new exhibit space. The exhibit opened Feb. 23 and lasts through June 3.

Sargent’s 1919 painting is on loan from the Imperial War Museum in London. It has been on tour while its home exhibit space is being renovated. Kansas City is the only stop in the Midwest. The visit coincides with the ongoing centennial observations of World War I.

By STEPHAN BISAHA

Alayna Nelson, a sophomore at Wichita Northwest High School, grew up hearing stories of repeated mass shootings on the news.

“Every single time this happened I always wanted to do something about it,” Nelson said.

Now, Nelson and other students in her generation are taking action against gun violence.

“I feel like I’m finally getting to the age where people will start listening to me,” she said.

The outpouring of students calling for gun control was set off by the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and educators. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the shooting occurred, have become activists, telling their stories on national news shows and pleading the case for tougher gun laws.

Students said one of their biggest fears is that this issue will fade into the background in the coming weeks or months without any action being taken. That’s what happened after other shootings, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 that left 26 dead.

Nelson said the idea of another school shooting occurring without any legislative action “absolutely petrifies me.”

That’s one of the reasons why students across Kansas and the country are planning multiple school walkouts over the next few months. Nelson and other students at Wichita Northwest plan on participating in the April 20 walkout, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

And if that date passes without action, Nelson says she’ll keep fighting.

“If something doesn’t change I’m going to stay angry,” Nelson said. “I know personally that me and my friends aren’t going to let it go.”

Wichita Public Schools officials are aware of the planned walkouts, but have yet to decide how they will be treated. The district has a policy that says walkouts and boycotts are not recognized or permitted.

Some have dismissed the student protests as pushing a left-wing agenda, but Nelson said there is no more unifying issue in the country.

“Because I think everyone in this nation can agree that it should be harder for kids to die in school,” she said.

Still, Nelson said not every student at Wichita Northwest agrees that gun control is the answer. While she estimates about half favor tighter gun laws, she says another 20 percent oppose it.

Other schools see a split in the opposite direction. Connor Moore attends a rural high school where he said “build a wall” chants are common. Moore said the more right-leaning student body makes gun control less of an open subject than it is at Wichita Northwest.

“A lot of time when you want to talk about these kind of things you have to be very quiet,” Moore said.

But Moore said he, alongside other students, still plans on walking out on April 20. He also wants to make sure the gun debate receives national attention until lawmakers approve some form of gun control.

“They’ll say don’t worry, this is all going to fade away really soon, and I don’t want it to happen,” Moore said. “Who is going to stand up?”

Sage Goering, another sophomore at Wichita Northwest, said she is recruiting more students to join her for the April 20 walkout. She said that students have an important voice in the discussion of school shootings.

“We are the victims,” Goering said. “If we understand that there’s a problem then the adults should, too.”

Stephan Bisaha is an education reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @SteveBisaha.