Kansas State Rep Explains How a GOP 'Power Play' Convinced Her to Switch Parties
*By Christian Smith*
Kansas Rep. Stephanie Clayton is leaving the Republican Party behind after the GOP leaders in her state pulled their support for a bipartisan plan to fund the local education system in what she called a "power play" to damage the incoming Democratic governor.
"What ultimately did it for me was when party leadership decided that they wanted to completely scrap an education plan that we had all spent about two years working hard to put together," Clayton told Cheddar in an interview Thursday.
Clayton said she believes the GOP policy shift was, in fact, a political maneuver to damage incoming Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's reputation.
"The area that I represent is an area that is very strongly supportive of education and as such, I knew that I really couldn't be in line with my party any more especially on that issue ー so I'm done," she said.
Clayton joins Kansas State Sens. Dinah Sykes and Barbara Bollier, who both officially left the Republican Party earlier this month and rebranded themselves as Democrats.
Education funding has been an intensely debated issue in Kansas politics since former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback stripped the state's education budget in 2012 as part of his tax cut experiment. Brownback believed the massive cuts would spur major economic growth in Kansas, but the state's economy eventually suffered.
Between 2013 and 2016, Kansas’ real gross domestic product only grew by 3.8 percent, while national GDP growth was nearly double that, at 7 percent, according to the [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Economic Research](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1).
Now Kansas is trying to put the pieces back together, working on a new education budget that right some of the wrongs of the Brownback era ー until the state's Republican leaders pulled the plug on the two-year long effort.
"They decided to scrap the whole thing as part of a power play, I assume, against our new Democratic governor," Clayton said.
Despite the decision by Clayton, Sykes, and Bollier to switch parties, Republicans still hold a supermajority in the Kansas state House and Senate.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/why-one-kansas-state-representative-left-the-republican-party-behind).
As negotiations drag on in Washington, DC over President Biden's social spending bills, Senate Democrats have introduced a new idea to fund Biden's plans: taxing the unrealized capital gains held by billionaires. Barron's reporter Sabrina Escobar joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she explains what's in the billionaire tax proposal, who it will impact, and why it's on the table.
Hunter Walker joins Cheddar News to talk about his report in Rolling Stone that revealed how members of Congress and the White House helped plan the protest that turned violent on January 6.
Jill and Carlo discuss the pending approval for Pfizer's vaccine for kids, the state of anti-Semitism three years after Tree of Life, potential criminal charges in the 'Rust' prop gun shooting and more.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Tuesday that restricts transgender students from playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. Democratic State Representative Mary E. Gonzalez joined Cheddar to discuss the ramifications for transgender youth the new law represents. She also disputed the bill's proponents who argue that the measure is a matter of fairness for girls in sports, noting that various medical groups have affirmed that transgender athletes do not inherently hold an advantage over cisgender ones.
COP26 been dealt a blow as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose countries are responsible for a third of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions, will not be in attendance. Bertrand Piccard, Chairman and Founder of the Solar Impulse Foundation, joins Cheddar Climate, where he discusses what he expects to see when the summit commences in Glasgow.
Social media platforms TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube are facing questions in DC about consumer protections, data security, and product safety for young users. Emily Birnbaum, tech lobbying and influence reporter at Politico, joined Cheddar to provide some background into what led to the congressional hearing and the potential outcome. Birnbaum noted that social media platforms have been attempting to distance themselves from Facebook and the ongoing bad press it garnered in recent months.
