Protecting Kansas Farmers and Small Businesses

Family farms, ranches, and small businesses are the backbone of rural Kansas, but too often they are expected to compete on an uneven playing field. Corporate consolidation, rising operating costs, unnecessary paperwork, limited access to markets, and decisions made by people who have never run a farm or small business make it harder for local families to survive and grow.

For Kansas farmers and ranchers, these pressures can become deeply personal. Farming is more than a job—it is often a family’s livelihood, identity, and generational legacy. Financial uncertainty, isolation, unpredictable weather, and fear of losing the family operation can take a serious toll on mental health. Suicide rates are significantly higher in rural and frontier Kansas communities, and agricultural workers remain among those at elevated risk. Supporting struggling farmers must include accessible, confidential mental-health and crisis resources designed for the realities of rural life.

I want Kansas to invest in the people who are already investing in our communities. That means protecting family-owned farms from unfair corporate practices, expanding local markets for Kansas-grown products, supporting rural infrastructure, reducing regulations that create costs without a meaningful public benefit, and strengthening mental-health resources for agricultural communities.

When local farms and businesses succeed, they create jobs, strengthen our tax base, keep money circulating locally, and help rural Kansas remain a place where families can build a future.

Crime Prevention and Accountability

Public safety requires both prevention and accountability. Kansas must invest in mental-health care, substance-use treatment, youth programs, family support, and early intervention so that fewer people enter the criminal-justice system in the first place. Rehabilitation should always be available to those who are willing to make long-lasting changes.

At the same time, repeated criminal offenses and escalating violent behavior cannot be dismissed without consequences. This includes juvenile cases. Young people deserve the opportunity to receive treatment, guidance, and rehabilitation, but when a juvenile continues committing offenses or displaying dangerous and violent behavior after multiple interventions, the response must become more structured and accountable. Repeated diversions or release without meaningful follow-through can endanger victims, the community, other youth, and the juvenile involved.

Kansas needs an approach that considers the seriousness and pattern of behavior, requires participation in appropriate services, strengthens supervision and monitoring when necessary, and uses secure short-term stabilization when someone presents a continuing danger. Accountability and rehabilitation should work together—not against each other—to interrupt harmful behavior before it becomes a lifelong pattern or results in an irreversible tragedy.

Cannabis Legalization

I support the responsible legalization and regulation of both medical and recreational cannabis for adults. Kansans are already using cannabis, but our current laws leave the market unregulated while the state spends public resources enforcing marijuana prohibition. Meanwhile, legal purchases made by Kansans in neighboring states generate jobs and tax revenue for communities outside Kansas.

A regulated Kansas market could create opportunities in agriculture, processing, testing, retail, and other supporting industries. State and local taxes on cannabis could provide additional revenue for priorities such as roads, aging water systems, public education, rural healthcare, substance-use prevention, and property-tax relief. I would support legislation that clearly dedicates a portion of this revenue to rural hospitals, Kansas infrastructure projects, and fully funding special education, rather than allowing it to disappear into the general budget.

Legalization must also include product testing, responsible licensing, age restrictions, impaired-driving enforcement, and safeguards against corporate monopolies. Kansas should replace an ineffective system of prohibition with one that protects consumers, supports local businesses and farmers, reduces unnecessary criminal penalties, and reinvests revenue in our communities.

Fully Funding Kansas Public Education

A quality public education should not depend on a family’s ZIP code or the property values within their school district. The State of Kansas must take greater responsibility for funding public schools instead of leaving local districts and property taxpayers to cover funding gaps through higher mill levies and local option budgets.

Special education is one of the clearest examples. School districts are legally required to provide services to students with disabilities, regardless of whether the state supplies enough funding. When special-education aid falls short, districts must move money from their general education budgets, placing additional pressure on staffing, class sizes, programs, and local property taxes. I support immediately meeting Kansas’s existing special-education funding obligation and working toward state funding of 100% of the remaining excess costs.

Kansas’s graduation rate has improved, but receiving a diploma is only part of the goal. Students also need access to qualified educators, career and technical programs, community colleges, universities, and other training they can afford. Rural students should not have fewer opportunities because their district has a smaller local tax base. Fully and consistently funding education is an investment in our workforce, our communities, and Kansas’s future.

Responsible Tax Relief for Kansas Families

Kansans deserve tax relief they can actually see in their household budgets. I support expanding property-tax relief for working families, seniors, veterans, farmers, and small-business owners while ensuring that assistance is directed toward those facing the greatest burden.

Tax relief must be responsible and sustainable. That means reviewing government spending, eliminating waste and duplication, auditing tax incentives to ensure they create the jobs they promised, and demanding transparency whenever rising property values result in increased tax collections.

The state must also meet its responsibilities to public schools and special education. When the state falls short, local districts and property taxpayers are left to cover the difference. State funding should include safeguards ensuring that additional dollars are used responsibly and help reduce pressure on local property taxes.

Kansas can also pursue new revenue through the regulated and taxed sale of marijuana instead of continuing to lose that economic activity to surrounding states. However, no single revenue source is a complete solution. Lasting tax relief requires growing our workforce through trade programs and apprenticeships, supporting local businesses, and bringing responsible investment into rural communities.

Working across party lines for practical tax relief that protects taxpayers without weakening our schools, roads, law enforcement, emergency services, or rural communities is necessary. We must fight for legislators who will not put their party's agenda ahead of what's best for Kansans. If you can't work across the aisle, you can't work for others.

I also believe that when legislators fail to prevent government shutdowns, they should not be paid until the shutdown is resolved. Government shutdowns cost many Americans their jobs, their income, and they put an overall burden on people.