Some conservative-leaning legislators are crying foul over contributions by the Kansas Senate Leadership PAC to a group that also is helping finance liberal-leaning Republicans whose aim is defeat conservatives in the Aug. 5 primary by sending mail claiming, among other things, that GOP conservatives have ties to the KKK and want to send parents to jail for trying to save sick children.

According to the latest available campaign finance reports, the Senate Leadership PAC contributed $45,000 to "Kansans for a Traditional Republican Majority," a group that supports liberal candidates running against conservatives by distributing negative material widely condemned by both moderates and conservatives.

The group has especially targeted conservative candidates for the state senate, as  well as Johnson County DA Phill Kline, who is running as an incumbent.

Sen. Tim Huelskamp, a conservative from Hutchinson who did not draw a primary opponent this election season, said he believed Republican office-holders should not meddle in party primaries.

By getting involved in primaries, he said, the Senate Leadership PAC diverts from its coffers money that should be used in Republican campaigns against Democrats, not each other

Instead, by the time the general election rolls around, "they’ve already spent a lot of resources beating up on fellow Republicans,” he said. The negative campaigns also make it harder for any conservative Republicans who survive the negative campaigns to defeat Democrats in November, critics say.

Huelskamp said that he believed the Senate Leadership PAC’s contributions to KTRM allowed that group to support liberal Republicans in races against more conservative counterparts, without exceeding contribution limits that apply to PACs.

Huelskamp said the contributions were in part reflective of a Republican Party fracture along ideological lines in Kansas that is by no means new. But it’s particularly troubling this year, he said.

“I think there are vulnerable Democratic Senators and Republicans have a real opportunity to pick up seats in the Senate this year,” he said. “Every dollar spent in Republican Party primaries is a dollar that won’t be available for those contests.”

Sen. President Steve Morris could not be reached Friday, but has indicated in other media outlets that conservatives who are complaining about the contributions also worked to recruit conservative candidates to oppose sitting Republican senators.

Huelskamp, for one, denies that he has recruited any candidates, though he concedes he’s talked to prospective office-seekers.

“I’ve had people who are sick of deficit spending and other issues approach me to assess their chances but I haven’t gone out and recruited anyone,” he said.

Whether it’s been engineered or not, the fact remains that, numerically speaking, conservatives have a chance to wrest control of the senate from liberals and "moderates" for the first time ever.

Six liberal-leaning senate incumbents are being opposed by Republicans who have been endorsed by the conservative Kansas Republican Assembly.

A conservative-majority Senate would mean the current leadership team headed by Morris would be deposed. In the past, Morris has said he preferred working with Democrats and liberal-leaning legislators rather than conservatives, who, he said, were difficult to work with. A defeat for Morris also would frustrate Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ agenda during her last two years in office.

In fact, Huelskamp contends that the Senate Leadership PAC’s support for moderates is as much a bid by the current leadership team to retain power as it is about electing like-minded moderates to office.

Former Sen. Kay O’Connor, an outspoken Olathe conservative, said she believed a conservative take-over was in sight.

“If I’m [Senate vice president] John Vratl or Steve Morris, I’d be feeling pretty uncomfortable right about now,” she said. “Can you imagine if they had to be ruled by conservatives? They’d probably never get a committee chairmanship again after all the dirty tricks they’ve played.”

O’Connor said she thought there probably was some recruiting going on by both conservatives and liberals. She remains convinced that her opponent in her final Senate campaign was recruited by liberal-leaning Republicans and supported financially by the Senate Leadership PAC.

“When I first went to Topeka 14 or 15 years ago, I tried to be a good soldier,” she said. “I really believed the talk of the big tent Republican Party and I went to their [Senate PAC] events and gave them money. But over the years I learned they’re not interested in being fair. I can’t remember getting a dime out of them in all my campaigns and in all my years in the Senate, I never got a single chairmanship of a committee – not one.”

O’Connor added that some Republican liberals who received Senate Leadership PAC support later switched their party affiliation and ran for office as members of the Democratic Party, “where they belonged in the first place.”

“You know what I do now?” O’Connor asked. “I look at individual candidates and choose who to support instead of trying to contribute to candidates through a PAC. It’s a lot of work finding out about candidates, but it’s better than giving the money to a PAC that’s going to turn around and stab conservatives in the back, and I think a lot of conservatives are doing the same thing.” 

Update and correction: 5 August 2008 0325

The Week in Review