Minnix-Lee Debate, Wichita County High School Auditorium, Friday, July 15, 2022
[Prior to the recorder starting, a speaker was talking about the Value them Both Amendment. We didn’t get all of it, so we’re omitting it. We’ll pick up with Jim Myers.]
MYERS: […] President Ronald Reagan once said good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great. And so we gather to debate and hear the exchange of visions and ideas. And this is how we are good citizens and this is how we defend democracy. We ask that the audience not clap or cheer after the candidates speak. We will give both candidates a warm welcome and then have a spirited but respectful debate. So without further ado, let's welcome Jim Minnix of Scott City and state representative of the 118th District and state representative Tatum Lee of the 117th District history.
The format of the debate is opening remarks by each candidate. Fourteen questions, and both candidates will have 2 minutes to answer, and then both candidates will have 30 seconds for rebuttal. Then both candidates will have closing remarks.
The questions were created by the Republican committee in Wichita County. Neither candidate has seen the questions. Let's begin with a prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for our freedoms that you can ask for. We thank you for this great country. We pray for Blessings on this nation. Thank you for this time to be together in Jesus name.
By coin toss, it was determined that Tatum would begin with her opening remarks. Again, let's not clap or cheer after each candidate speaks. You will each have 3 minutes. Go ahead.
LEE: Good evening. Thank you so much for having us here, to the Republicans. It's good to be home. I grew up here until I was 15, and so it's good to be back on this stage. I had my first talent show on the stage when I was seven. And so this is the first time I've been back since junior high. And it was actually in seventh grade Kansas History where we were learning about eminent domain. And I was so incensed the government could come and try to take our land. And it was the second time in my life that I heard Holy Spirit speak to me that I was going to run for office. The first time when I was five and when I got saved. So it's good to be back. Tonight, you're going to hear two very different views on how to view liberty. Jim and I have both been representatives for two years. We came in as freshmen at the same time, which is the same vote, but we voted very differently. So this is not personal. This is about the record. And you get to decide whose votes line up with you guys.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim.
MINNIX: Thank you all for attending, and thank you for allowing me to address you this evening. I want to thank the Wichita County Republican Party for hosting this event. My name is Jim Minnix. I'm a fourth generation farmer in southwest Scott County. I farm dryland acres of corn, sorghum, and wheat, also irrigated—a couple of circles. We have a small [unintelligible] background yard, and we also have about an 80-head cow herd. I'm a K-State graduate and econ in 1977, business finance degree and a master's degree in business administration in 1980. I've been married to my wife, Eileen, for 31 years. She's sitting down here in the front. She's [unclear] there and some of you might know. We have six children that we claim, three that we raised, and we have five grandchildren. And we had all five of them here this week for fair week. First time we see a couple of them or the second time in about three years. It's been awesome. I'm a deacon in the Prairie View Brethren Church, just west of Friend. I'm the past chairman of the Scott County Republican Party, and I was the county commissioner in Scott County for 26 years. I strongly believe in local government. While representing the 118th District. I served on the Agriculture Committee, Transportation Committee, and Water Committee, and I believe I have been beneficial in making sure that this district has a seat at the table for those discussions. As your state representative, I voted with the Republicans 97% of the time, and I look forward to the discussion we're going to have this evening, an illustration of issues. And thank you for attending.
MYERS: Okay. Jim, first question “What is your vision for water conservation in western Kansas? Do you believe it should be regulated by the state or locally?
MINNIX: That's an easy one for me. It's absolutely locally. I strongly support the GMD Act and in the ability for people in their own communities to give voluntary—and I didn't say mandatory. I said voluntary efforts toward conserving water in the state of Kansas. Serving on the water committee for two years, I've had a great education on, especially in eastern Kansas, the issues they have with reservoirs. And yet in the legislature, with one representative from 118th District, our nine counties, and 26 reps, starting in January, from the Johnson County area, we need to spend some time educating those urban legislators on how some of those issues and bills will affect rural western Kansas. I strongly support the GMD programs. The LEMA is an excellent tool here. Recently we've added the five-year flex program. There's lots of other tools that we need to look at within the state of Kansas to promote conservation. I like the water technology farms that have been funded through the state water plant. I believe that we need some long term, stable funding for the Kansas Water Plan. This is the first year that we actually fully-funded the water plan at a million out of—6 million from State General Fund and 2 million from the [unclear] funds. The total was about 22 million. And I want to see everybody participate in the future. Whatever, whatever propose to you is that 1/10 of a percent of the entire sales tax paid in the state of Kansas goes toward the water plan. That would raise about 48-and-a-half million dollars per year. And I think that's something we need to look at because we're facing some contract payments with Corps of Engineers on reservoirs in the Eastern—
MYERS: Thank you, Jim.
MINNIX: Thank you.
MYERS: Tatum.
LEE: I also believe that control of our water needs to happen at the local level. I was very disappointed that the House leadership actually had created this committee to want to move the water department out of the department—or these water different water entities—out of the Department of Ag. Thankfully, we'll have some new leadership next year. And thankfully, that bill there was a gut-and-go, and that did not—that did not pass out of committee. And so I'm always about local control, whether it's education, whether it's water, whether what's happening with our hospitals. You know, I'm a fifth generation cattle producer and farmer in Ness county and water is a big deal for us out here. And my family—or my dad's family farms here, my mom's family farms in Ness County. And it's probably more important than oil at this point, our water supply. So I also agree that that the locals know best. And so we need to make sure that we're protecting water at every turn.
MYERS: Jim, a 30-second rebuttal to that?
MINNIX: The bill that my opponent referred to was 2686 House bill. It was a 283-page bill dropped on us in committee on a Friday. We discussed it somewhat on Monday, and on Tuesday we voted 9 to 6 to defeat that bill. We came back, several of us working with some—some groups came back with a substitute to put into that that was referred to as a gut-and-go that would have applied the 1/10 of a cent sales tax that the blue ribbon committee from several years ago recommended, and I still think that's a good approach. Water will advance in this upcoming session or the one after. Within the next two years I see some changes coming in the water policy in Kansas.
MYERS: Tatum, what solutions do you have to help alleviate the costs that businesses, farmers, and households are feeling due to the price of gas, diesel, and utilities?
LEE: We're in a world of hurt in this country. Not only are we're losing our liberty at every turn, but they're attacking us on every level, whether it's our gas, our groceries, you name it. They're coming after our liberty. They're coming after our sovereignty. And, you know, I am not a politician. I've only been here the last two years. And I went there to go fight for life because my grandpa was in a nursing home. And I'll tell ya, partisanship plays a big role in—to begin, it's disgusting. I actually co-sponsored with Democrats. I co-sponsored a bill to completely get rid of the sales tax this year on groceries because people are hurting so much and they need relief now. And unfortunately, the Republican leadership wouldn't bring that up because they didn't want to give Governor Kelly a win. I'm not a fan of Governor Kelly at all. As a matter of fact, I think she leans more towards the communists than the Democrats. But if we can give a sales—a tax cut is a tax cut. So that would have been a really good place to start. We did pass a bill for sales tax on groceries. That is going to be a stepped-down—step down to 0% at the state level. And so, you know, people are—people are hurting. And now's not the time to play politics. Now's the time to give people relief. The news broke. It was, I think, 9.1% inflation just a couple of days ago, the national rate of inflation, I think that's fake news. I think it's much higher than that. And we need to be cutting spending at the state level. I did not vote for either budget this year or last year. We increased spending over $200 million more than even Governor Kelly wanted us to last year. Unfortunately, my opponent thought I guess that was a good idea and he voted for both budgets. I think just like you families, we at the government level, we depend on We-the-People-Taxpayer, and we have got to cut spending.
MYERS: Jim.
MINNIX: As I said before, I believe in local control. And I think property tax is something that I'm very interested in seeing some relief on. Local ad valorem tax reduction has been on the books for 70 or 80 years. It was last funded in 2002. That's some sales and income tax at the state level that comes back to local units of government, to cities and counties, to reduce the property tax burden within our communities.
I would like to see the food sales tax go to about 2%. I voted for the full phase-out, but we have a little bit of time here. I'd like to see 2% stay on sales tax, and the other $170 million, roughly, that would have been saved on the food sales tax revenues that would continue to go to the state, I would like to see that devoted to the appropriated for the local and Local Ad Valorem Tax Reduction Fund. We did give some tax breaks. There's an additional 20,000 that's exempted from the 20 mil school finance bill. My opponent alluded to the largest budget and two years in a row. There was a huge amount of federal money that came in the state of Kansas, and we allocated that to many things. We put about $1,125,000,000 into the KPERS fund to pay some bills down, some long term bonding. And that will save the state about $70 million in a year going forward. That was one time money paying down debt, paying for some of the obligations that the state had facing them, which will save us in the future from raising taxes in some way to finance something else. I think we did a really good job financially this year. There's a huge difference between budget and the taxes. If you can lower taxes and then have this huge amount coming in from the federal government, we needed to allocate that as an expenditure to services, and retiring some debt, and some of those things to savings in the future. And we thought that was a prudent thing to do.
MYERS: Thank you, Jim. Tatum?
LEE: One of the things I think we need to do in terms of this federal funding, that we've got to get off the federal tit. We absolutely have got to stop taking money from the federal government in lieu of our liberty. We've seen what happens at the federal level or at the state level, for instance, with these counties, with these hospitals, nursing homes, not being willing to let families come in and see loved ones because they were afraid of getting that federal funding taken away, and my position on that is: we cannot continue to take federal funds in lieu of liberty, it just is not—.
MYERS: Thank you, Tatum.
MINNIX: That one-time, federal money was used for a lot of different things. It was intended to spur on the economy, and now we're facing inflation. And I think that inflation is going to be a bigger crime to us as a public than some of the other things that are going on. I see that being very detrimental to fixed-income individuals, and it's going to lower the value of what you have.
MYERS: Thank you, Jim. We’ll move on.
Jim, what is your position on the state incentivizing people to drill for more oil and gas in Kansas.
MINNIX: I'm positive. I would love to see this country become oil independent again. We should not be dependent on importing foreign oil. We were there at one time. That's—a lot of that is a federal issue. But here in the state of Kansas, I think we can encourage the businesses that go out and do oil exploration. I've sold water to drilling rigs in my general area in southwest Scott County over the last 20 years. There's $2,500 for about 350,000 gallons of water from my irrigation well for them to go seek and drill another hole. I'm happy to do that.
MYERS: Tatum.
LEE: Well, praise the Lord that that he's given us these natural resources to be able to be energy independent, because I'm 100% an America First candidate, American First patriot. I was very disappointed—We already are energy independent. We don't need to become energy independent again. We're there. You know, it is—there—there are a lot of federal ramifications to that. I'm thankful that we have some oil production on our land, and we, too, have sold water to some of these drilling companies. And I am very thankful that I've worked very closely with the oil and gas industry on Biden's 30 by 30 plan to put 30% of our water and land in—to federalize it and take it away from the landowners. And I work very closely with oil and gas. As a matter of fact, I spoke at their meeting in Russell a few weeks ago. Again, it's another way they're coming after us, and we need to fight like the dickens to stay independent and to support our oil and gas guys. I'm glad that oil is more than a bucket of chicken right now. It's a little bit higher than that per barrel. So praise the Lord for that.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: Again, anything that we can do to incentivize local production and spurs our economy here in the state of Kansas. Just the impact of drilling one well for exploration requires about 12 people on the site on a 24 hour rotational basis. There's lots of subsidiary businesses, the support—the companies that haul the water, the companies that haul the oil to the refineries. And I think Kansas can do better and improve our production. It helps our valuation that spreads out our tax base. It helps people.
MYERS: Thank you, Jim. Go ahead, Tatum. 30 seconds.
LEE: Well, you know, one of the things I think that we really need to be mindful of is all this global warming, Green New Deal things that are coming down the Federal pike. And, you know, in the legislature, we have a lot of folks that are not rural. And so it's really important. I'm thankful that I have great relationships there because we've got to expose these global warming lies. This climate crisis is just a crock. And whatever we can do to support our oil and gas guys here in Kansas, I'm absolutely on their team.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum, about 40 million acres of farmland in the United States is owned by foreigners and foreign entities. China is quickly purchasing farmland. The food supply is at risk of being controlled by countries that are hostile to the United States. How does this state protect ownership of Kansas farmland?
LEE: This is such a great question. It is a burr under my saddle pad. I tell you what, I know that we—I get calls, a lot of calls—from producers in Ness county, Wichita County, and they're very concerned about this foreign ownership of land. A friend of mine is a state senator in Arizona, Senator Wendy Rogers. And they actually were able to get a bill passed in Arizona this year to mitigate a lot of this foreign ownership coming in to buy up our land. You know, it's the reason I didn't vote for the APEX bill, which is that unknown foreign entity that came in and they wanted to suck $1,000,000,000 plus in tax incentives. We didn't know who that foreign country was. It could have been communist China. That was a bad bill. I didn't vote for it. I tell ya, communist China is a danger, an absolute danger. And we are going to, next year, —actually that's in my pipeline of a bill that I have already talked to the Revisor’s Office about. We have got to do something to protect our farmers and ranchers. Food security is national security. If we look at Bolshevik Russia in the 1920s, we will see that if you control the food, you control the people.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: I think one of the best things we can do is improve our economy, and inflation is going the wrong direction. That's a federally-started program that we're going to have to work our way out of as quick as possible. If we get our economy rolling again and $3,000 dryland farm ground around here, under inflation's going to go up 8-9% per year. We need to get our economy rolling so that we're not such an easy target against all these foreign investors. I think there are some things that the state judicial—or the rules and regs that we have can restrict them somehow—even within Wichita County I'm sure much like Scott County, probably half the land ownership actually on your books out here are grandsons and kids of the grandparents who grew up in this community, but they live somewhere else. I was part of the Community Foundation original board in Scott County, and it's amazing how much those kids can contribute back to your community because they have a tie to your community. And I think that's something we need to celebrate and enlarge upon and grow that. And the real answer to this question is we need some provisions in state law to protect us better. And it's something we need to work on in the future.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: You know, I think that this foreign ownership is a Trojan horse. And I think that we better be paying attention because, again, they are coming to attack in all—in many different facets. And, you know, this foreign ownership, the tricky part is they're using surrogates to come in and to buy this property. And so this is one of those issues. It's a tough issue to be able to tackle, but we must, because, again, I genuinely feel like in my spirit—just like radical Islam is a Trojan horse into the center of this country, so is this foreign ownership of our land.
MINNIX: I think that's a very good thought. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think there's a lot of things that work in this country that are trying to divide us, and those things are tearing us down. I think we as good Americans need to try to come back together. We don't need the extremes that's trying to divide this country based on lots of different things. And I'm not sure that it's all coming from within this country. There may be some of it started and instigated from outside our country. Even social media posts can be manipulated and sent out from—
MYERS: Thank you, Jim. Jim, what is your position on transgender kids participating in sports in their post-transition sex?
MINNIX: I was absolutely opposed to it. That isn't fair, that biological females have to compete. I personally, I voted to support that bill. I do think that it's a little bit odd that the legislature is bringing that up. I think the Department of Education should be the one or KSHSAA to set rules on that that would take care of things. I think the legislature has many other important things. I do not want to see the Kansas State Legislature try to take over a lot of things in education. I like the framework and the structure that we have. I like it even better prior to 1992 when we consolidated a lot of, especially the finance, to the state level. I thought we operated far better when we had local control. When local school boards set the curriculum, they set the budgets; they hired the teachers. They did a really good job of it in the public schools out here in western Kansas. I do not like some of the consolidation and what it’s done to people. This is one of those issues if it came up to the local school board here it’d be an easy issue to deal with. We're trying to set one rule that the state of Kansas to apply to all the school districts in the state. I don't like that part, but if anyone needs to do it, I believe it's a Department of Education or KSHSAA, on some of these extracurricular activities and the competition.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: I've already mentioned that I believe that school control needs to be at the local level and I am so aggravated, and quite frankly disgusted, that our schools have, instead of teaching ABC-123, we're having to teach LGBTQ-whatever, all the, all the letters. And I think that's a huge disservice to our kids. I actually not only did I vote to protect our girls in this transgender sports bill, but I went to the well and I spoke about it. And, you know, in Topeka, we had our first transgender lawmaker in Topeka this year or the last two years, this first session. And, you know, nobody wants to offend anybody. Nobody wants to hurt anybody's feelings. And yet at this point, my feelings are hurt, and my daughter's feelings are hurt and my friends’ daughters’ feelings are hurt. And it is time to just we just draw a line in the sand and we can do that very kind and very lovingly. But, you know, The Word says, “And He created them male and female and He blessed them and called them human.” And that's the foundation and the biblical worldview that I place—that I make all of my votes on, is that biblical worldview.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim.
MINNIX: Let's all agree that it's unfair for transgenders [sic] to compete against biological females. I think that's enough said.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: It's absolutely a travesty that that failed the veto override in the Kansas House this year. Every single one of those lawmakers should be ousted. They're RINOs. And I hope that they lose their races. I know several of them didn't run because they are primaried because of that vote. And in my opinion, that's just the start. There's a lot of votes that the RINOs took and really just shot—just some foundational bills. And so I’m hoping that we can pass that again this year.
MYERS: Tatum, what is your position on education spending? Do you support the outcome of the Gannon case? What was your position on special education funding this legislative session?
LEE: Yeah. So the Gannon decision was the Supreme Court decision that actually is going to require the legislature to have to fully fund education at a—and I don't remember what the formula was that they had used in order that the state had to fund that budget. You know, the state budget right now spends 60 to—62% of our budget right now is spent on education in the state. And I'll go back to the fact that I am a product of public school here in Wichita County and in Ness County. And I'm absolutely our teachers—he money needs to be getting where it needs to go. And unfortunately, we're using a splatter gun—a scatter gun—and it's just shooting in a pattern that money is not going where it needs to. And so, you know, more funding doesn't always mean higher test scores. It just means more money. And so I'm absolutely for funding our schools and making sure that money gets to where it needs to be. It goes back to local control, in my opinion. And I actually there was an amendment to fully fund special education this year, and I voted for that. And then games were played in Topeka and there's a lot of text messaging happening and they brought that up to bring that vote up again. There was—the leadership didn't like that they had fully funded that. And so that was that failed, actually. But I'm for fully funding—I was for fully funding that special education. But the funding issue needs to come back to local control. And we need to just make sure, for instance, our teachers, they’re our greatest commodities. Let's make sure we're paying them a living wage, for heaven's sakes. This is not rocket science.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim.
MINNIX: Tatum was entirely right on a lot of that. The Court used the Rose method to determine school funding and I'll go along with it. I don't think we're getting enough to the classroom, but I would say in 118th District—in the last the current one we're in, before we start in January—there were seven full counties, two partial counties, and 23 school districts with about 18 superintendents. And most of those don't have new buildings. They haven't spent a great deal on anything extravagant in my mind. I think they've done a very good job of using on for their own children. Some of the school districts are ten miles wide and 40 miles south and 30 miles north along I-70. It's an entirely different type of situation than some of the ones farther south here to the district. I think they've done a very good job. I applaud them for providing the services they have. It's very difficult to get teachers out here. We're lucky if we get one applicant for an open position. I'm a strong supporter of, if someone is a retired engineer, highly technically trained, if they want to teach chemistry or physics in our high schools, I like the transitional program that they can become a teacher, if they have the talent for it. As far as Special Ed goes, it's statutorily supposed to be at the 92% level. I'd like to see it get to that. For every dollar that's short, It seems like the schools have to take a little bit from their other funding to make up for that. And Special Ed is one of those things that private schools don't have to do. They're under different accreditation rules. And it's something that we as a society need to take care of those children just like everybody else. I would love to see more challenge to some of the gifted kids, more services to some of the kids that need it the most that are in special ed.
LEE: Yeah. So there is an education bill that we have passed this year. Hb 2567. And I voted for it and it was actually an education budget with policy attached. So, you know, the problem with the Gannon decision is we can't afford it. And there's a phase-in that will increase at the rate of inflation over the next three years. The problem is what rate did they use for inflation? Because now here we are and we're going into a recession if we're not there already. And so base aid for these kids at the state level is 4846—$4,846. With all the federal funding, it's about 16,000 per kid—.
MYERS: Thank you, Tatum. Jim?
MINNIX: I think as a state we’re going to see another lawsuit in the very near future. I think it's going to take a little while for school boards and communities to kind of balance to what the funding currently is and get to a comfortable position and provide the best services they can with the money available. There was some federal funding that came to schools also through some of the different programs, and there's some facilities and other grants and things out there. But each community can look at those and—.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim, how do you feel about Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ lifestyle being taught in our public schools?
Speaker1: I honestly don't think it's being taught in our public schools out here. I can't speak for the rest of the state. I've talked to a lot of superintendents. I have all of them on an email list. I think there's people that are throwing that out there to divide communities, to create some dissension, to make people wonder about our public institutions like our public schools out here. I grew up in a community that we support our kids, and the parents are involved. As long as you have parental involvement, I don't think you're going to have bad curriculum in schools. And it's my opinion that that's something we need to encourage, make it flourish more than it does. As far as critical race theory, I'm not in favor of any of that. I don't know anybody in this area that would be. I think we need to teach our kids kindness, courage, a little bit of temperance, a lot of humility, and we just do the best we can and move forward.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: Well, I absolutely have alluded to it already. Our schools need to be teaching ABCs and1-2-3s. And this critical race theory is absolutely being used by the left to divide us in every way. And unfortunately, I would like to be able to say that in western Kansas, these things aren't happening. But that's naive. I have a 15 year old daughter—which I should say that my family's here and I'm so thankful. And I bless you in Jesus name. They've been amazing during this campaign and supported me so much.
But I hear these stories from my 15 year old daughter who actually goes to school in Scott City and she tells me stories and things that are going on with those kids and not necessarily happening from the from the from the teacher's desk, but happening, nonetheless. And it's scary. And I get calls from folks all over the state and they are—administrators are desperate to know what to do when you have students who want to be called a different name and they don't want the parents to know. And so you have administrators telling these teachers, hey, you can't tell the parents. Schools should be transparent and accountable. Those kids are yours. They're not the government’s. We need to make sure—It's just it's very naive to think that it's not happening out here and—not that we don't have good teachers, but these kids are being indoctrinated at a very young age through tik-tok, social media, whatever, all the things. And we need to be ready for that—which again, it goes back to local control and making sure that we have hired patriots at every level of government, including our school boards, because they're the ones that are going to be in charge of making sure that these tentacles of—of this alternative lifestyle don't enter into our classrooms.
MYERS: Thank you, Jim.
MINNIX: I think our school superintendent from 466 is here today, if anyone has a specific incident or anything, I please ask you to report it to him and move forward with it. I know the schools have policies to deal with those types of things. If something happens, we can take care of it. It's not something that we need to spend a lot of time railing at the wealth in Topeka. That's not where the solution lies. The solution lies in a lot of our communities out here and local school boards
MYERS: Tatum.
LEE: [Silence] Oh, sorry, rebuttal. I was ready to move on. You know, it's insidious—and really it goes back to the fact that, when we took God out of our schools. Here we go. It’s why we're in the position we're in. And so my position is that we need to make sure that we we've got to bring God back into our schools, back into our government buildings, back into our families. That's where the breakdown lies. Yep.
MYERS: Tatum, what are your opinions on Obamacare expansion?
LEE: Well, I sure have a few of those opinions. So you know Obamacare—Obamacare is government-funded abortions. Obamacare is government-funded gender reassignment surgeries. Obamacare, which is also known as the Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Medicaid expansion, is absolutely—it's insidious. In the state of Kansas, not only can we not afford it, but people that need to be covered by Medicaid right now are already covered. The only folks that Medicaid expansion would cover would be able-bodied, working folks. Health care is not a right. It's not something that you should be forced to pay for somebody else's abortion. Obamacare funds Planned Parenthood, for instance. That completely flies in the face of being pro-life.
I am pro-life from womb to tomb. That means babies and old people, which is why I went to Topeka. My grandpa was in the nursing home. Those elderly folks were completely being ignored, and they're dying without their families. We need to value life in the entire spectrum. And fortunately, there was a—there was an amendment brought by a Democrat in Topeka on the budget for Medicaid expansion. I absolutely didn't vote for it. It is a core value to protect life. There's no gray there.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: My opponent didn't say that I did vote for them. And I thank you for the question. Would that have been what came up from a particular representative, and I know it's not going to pass. It doesn't stand—Medicaid expansion does not stand a chance in the Kansas House or Senate, even though it might be the saving grace of some hospitals that are in financial problems. By taking that vote—a few people knocked on my doors and asked me in the hallway if that was so much out of character for me, what was the deal? I got to explain to some urban legislators what funding a rural country hospital by the county amounts to. In those urban areas, Kansas City has KU Med, Wesley Medical Center and Via Christy in Wichita, Stormont Vail in Topeka. The Shawnee County does not support Stormont Vail Hospital. When someone comes in with an unpaid bill, I'm sure they still treat those individuals and the company itself takes care of them. In rural communities, it's the county hospital or the county taxpayers, property tax payers that pay that unpaid bill. And what I was trying to illustrate to some urban legislators, [by] which we're vastly outnumbered, we need some property tax relief out here. We're dealing with medical issues. We support the hospitals, the nursing homes, the clinics. They don't—they probably have a county health department. And that's the extent of the medical care that they provide in urban areas.
I took a vote on that, knowing it could be used as a campaign deal. I said through my chair, and I knowingly, willingly said I voted yes on that, but I had a reason for it. And a lot of it has to do with trying to educate the urban legislators on how some of these—.
MYERS: Thank you.
LEE: If I vote for something, you better make sure—you better know that my yes is my yes. And my no is my no. And I don't take a vote just to make a statement there, especially on something as critical as protecting life. There was an independent study that was done by the Kansas Policy Institute, and one of the things they talk about is that Medicaid expansion creates more problems than it solves. It talks about how studies find that expansion is no healthier under private insurance and there's a disturbing relationship between Medicaid and opioid use—.
MYERS: Thank you, Tatum. Jim?
MINNIX: I think you can take this issue and sensationalize it all you want. You can call someone an abortion or a tax payer abortion payer advocate and a transgender surgery advocate or something. I view it as an opportunity to do some education with some our legislators, and I think that's part of my job down there. I'd probably spend a third to a half of my time in committee and in my office—if I'm not studying bills or doing something else—trying to garner some support. If those people have respect, they’ll come and ask my opinion—.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim, what is your position on abortion? You used to support exceptions.
MINNIX: I'm Christian and Abortion doesn't make it—it makes me hurt for the mother and the child. I think that's murder. I'm a little bit struggling with the case of incest, rape, or for the life of the mother. And I think under those situations, that should be something that's up to the individual in consultation with their medical doctor as far as late term partial dismemberment stuff, I would vote easily to restrict that. I encourage everybody to go vote on August 2nd. It's really a simple bill, but the pro-abortion industry is trying to confuse people out there. They're wrong. I voted to make fake meat labeling truthful. It's plant-based. I believe the same thing on this abortion amendment issue that we're going to vote on August 2nd. I think people should be honest, true, and tell people what the whole story is. But the whole truth is not just partial truth and let people make up their own mind. This August 2nd vote is actually very simple for me. It's a yes vote.
MYERS: Thank you.
LEE: You cannot be pro-life and vote for Medicaid expansion. The two votes cancel themselves out. You cannot say you're for Value Them Both and vote for funding Planned Parenthood. The two votes cancel each other out. I absolutely am pro-life, again, from womb to tomb. One of my best friend's daughter was conceived because she was raped and that little gal is changing the world. And so, you know, I'll tell you, if I'm—if we're being BFF-honest with our closest, best friends in Wichita County, that's a hard decision. If the mother's life is in danger, that would be—and I think that happens very rarely—and might be in my in my heart, the only exception in terms of terminating that pregnancy. I don't know at that point if it's called abortion. If it's an [ectopic] whatever-you-call-it pregnancy. So but in terms of rape and incest, we've got to protect life. That's contrary to us being a born-again, spirit-filled believer, to not be protecting life.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: Personal story. Our daughter was born at 28 weeks of pregnancy. She was 2 pounds, 13 ounces. Born in Saint Catherine Hospital. Within 2 hours or 2 ½ hours, she was in Wesley Medical Center Neonatal ICU. She received oxygen on the way down on the airplane. Her blood-ox level seemed to be fine and they weaned her off the oxygen. We monitored her in the NICU there for 12 days and then we went back to Garden City to Saint Catherine. We got to take her home when she was four and a half weeks old— or six weeks old, weighing four and one half pounds. By the time she'd gotten to what her due date would have been, 12 weeks after her birth. She's doing quite well.
MYERS: Thank you.
MINNIX: I'm going to be real, real honest in my own heart. You know, we've taken the course of two years about 400 votes. And some votes are so pivotal that either you protect life and you defend liberty or you don't. And some votes just carry a lot more weight than others. And this vote on Medicaid expansion is one of those votes.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum, explain to us the Values Them Both question on the ballot and what is your opinion? What is your position?
LEE: This almost seems a little redundant. So again, Value Them Both is not perfect, you all. As a matter of fact, there was a resolution that would have protected that would—it was called the personhood amendment and it would have made the unborn as part of a protected class of folks in Kansas. And yet—Value Them Both is great—I'm going to be—I will be voting for Value Them Both because, if it saves even one baby, is it worth it? Absolutely. But is it the best option? It was the milquetoast option, because in Topeka, there's not a lot of courage to stand and actually fight for what's hard. And so there was a resolution that has been introduced for several years, the personhood amendment. And that's the direction we should have gone. But in Topeka, a lot of lobbyists write a lot of checks. And those seem to be the bills that we get heard on the House floor, Senate floor as well.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: The Value Them Both question is very simple. If you vote yes, it means that the legislature has the ability to restrict, in some way, abortion. If you vote no, the state remains wide open to any type of abortion. I think the other fellow earlier did a very good job of explaining it. It's that simple. I'm adamantly for voting on that amendment. I'd like to finish my story that the 12 week old baby went on to earn an Early Childhood Development Master's Degree with a 4.0 grade point average all the way through and ran a state track as a freshman. We worked with her. She was a fully developed human being. I'm adamantly against if we could do a ban on late term partial dismemberment and all that kind of stuff, I'd be all over that. The pro-abortion industry's really trying to confuse us. And I hope you can keep it simple and understand what the question really is.
MYERS: Thank you, Jim. Tatum?
LEE: You know, again, there are a few things that as a person, I think, define who we are. And for me, it's, again, looking through that biblical worldview. Value Them Both needs to pass, even if one baby is saved. But in Kansas, we need to do better. We should we need to take the next step. And I'm going to count on you all next year. And we are going to push and we're going to get that personhood amendment and we are going to ban abortion completely in the state of Kansas.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: A lot of these things are intertwined. Part of the increased budgets that we passed this year gave more money to the Senator Stan Park Pregnancy Services Fund. That's to help individuals that want to keep their baby, that have some difficult situations going on. I do not want to support Planned Parenthood and all those other things that I've been accused of. I didn't vote to help the Stan Clark Pregnancy Maintenance Fund, and I think that's some of the things that the state needs to do.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim, if you drive down the main streets of all the communities in this district, you see empty buildings. What is your vision to revitalize our small communities?
How does the state partner with our communities?
MINNIX: One of the big things we did this year also was increase the funding for housing. We put $50 million into the fund and gave some stipulations to it and gave some vast majority of the Kansas Housing Resource Corporation to administer some programs. They have very—four very good programs to help people get finance to afford a mortgage. You can tailor those many different ways. On our Main Street businesses, several years ago as a commissioner, I was a big proponent of the state of Kansas collecting sales tax on these online sales to protect our brick and mortar businesses here within our communities. They were on an unfair playing field, competing against an online company that had no investment other than a mailbox that they were sending things from. That's probably one of the reasons why the revenue estimates have been as high as they have been in the—not the estimates—that the returns have been.
There's commerce has some good programs, too. Let's say, renovate the upstairs of a—business on Main Street on the lower level to work on the apartments above or to open up some of those spaces for habitation. We need people out here. We've got lots of jobs. Our unemployment's extremely low. We need housing, daycare, and a lot of that stuff will come because we have the jobs if we can get the people here. We've increased the broadband in the community through the last several years. I think that's, that's one of the things. We need to actually advertise our communities a little better than we do. There's a lot of people in big cities would love to send their kids off to a school that can educate the kids in a manner that their families will appreciate—.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum.
LEE: So I should mention that I'm on the Agriculture and Natural Budget Resource Committee. And so one of the—one of the bills—one of the issues that have come up is this whole housing issue. And I ask the question, you know—here's what happens in Topeka. So in the Budget Committee, you see these budgets and you have like 15 minutes to go over these budgets. And apparently when you get into Shawnee County, zeros and commas just don't seem to matter. And it's the craziest thing I've ever seen. And so I said, okay, we're going to throw a bunch of money to rural housing. That's fine. Let's do that. But what does the term rural mean? “Well, Representative, 50,000 or less.” Well in District 118, 50,000 or less, that's pretty broad. And so, again, I am for making sure we're revitalizing Main Street and revitalizing these communities. But it needs to make sure that if Topeka—they want to put the word rule on a lot of bills to make this— it's a warm, fuzzy feeling—we're really helping rural Kansas. It needs to make sure that if we're going to spend a bunch of money on rural housing or rural this or rural that, then it gets to actually rural Kansas. Right? Not 50,000 or less. Rural doesn't really count if you have a Walmart in your town. I'm sorry, that's just my opinion on that. The other thing I would say that we need to do is, we need to revitalize and support the companies, industry that built Main Street, Ness County, small county, which is our oil/gas and our agriculture. And those folks are hurting right now. They're hurting real bad. And so if we're going to make sure—if they're making money, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker that all trickles down to Main Street and everybody's making money. So we need to make sure, for instance, in beef production that every segment of the industry is making money from the cow/calf guy all the way up to the feeder and even the packer. So we need to focus in—that is something we need to educate our, our urban legislators about because they just have no idea.
MYERS: Thank you, Tatum. Jim.
MINNIX: That rural housing I was talking about earlier, I guess I forgot to mention it was targeted at communities or the majority of IT communities of 8000 or less. So all nine counties within the 118th District would qualify for that. There were some people in WKREDA—the Western Kansas Rural Economic Development Association—that worked tirelessly on that and not have to go through about four different committees between the House and Senate. And that was kind of a long haul, and it took a lot of work behind the scenes to make that happen. A lot of people think that—
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: You know, when I moved back home, one of the first things that I did is I contacted the Economic Development director in Ness County and I said, “Hey, what can I do of help?” And he was didn't have a clue. I said, “What are we doing? How can we, my family, help build that community? We've been there 137 years. What can we do to revitalize these communities?” And so I am absolutely all about making a plan and making sure this money goes to where it needs to go. You know, sitting on this Budget Committee, one of the things they kept telling us is, you know, we've lost population in western Kansas based on the census, right?
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum, the state has a significant surplus. What is your vision on how to spend this surplus and cut taxes in the future? Do you support the sales tax rate reduction? How do you lower property taxes?
LEE: So I alluded to this already, that the state of Kansas—this surplus they're talking about, that’s We The People's money. And it's very aggravating to me that there are some lawmakers in Topeka that act like kingmakers. And they want to they want to act like that's their money that they get to decide what to do with. That's not their money. That's our money. And so, you know, we already talked a little bit. I alluded to the food sales tax. We have got to stop playing politics in Kansas—and in the US as a whole. And we've got to do what's best for the people. We need to give people their money back. And so I you know, again, it was very aggravating to me when—as a matter of fact, if you step out of line in Topeka—for instance, when I co-sponsored that food sales tax bill, man, I tell you what, there was a chastisement there because, you know, I, I my, my opponent has mentioned that he voted with the Republicans 97% of the time. At this—I’m to the right of the Republicans at this point. Sometimes I think my party has left me. I didn’t vote with the Republicans 97% of the time because they're not always right. I'm not part of that good old boy, paid-for swamp all the time.
I think for myself. And sometimes we can't just fall in party lines. We have to listen to our constituents. We have to listen to our people. And nobody made a phone call to me and said, “Hey, don't co-sponsor that bill because I might give Laura Kelly a win.” They said, “Hey, what are you gonna do to give us some some relief?”
MYERS: Thank you. Jim.
MINNIX: I'll say time and time again: local control, local ad valorem tax reduction. I want to see some money coming back to cities and counties to determine what their needs are, and especially to lower the property tax burden. It's that simple. The state does need to maintain a little bit of balance there. But [unintelligible] of the 50 states as far as revenue leftover at the end of the year. Kansas had run for so many years in having to go out and bond things, to borrow from KDOT, to take away from your highways. We now have a robust highway program, the Eisenhower program, that can move forward. It is funded. We had a bill that came up that would allow them to do things in a little more rapid pace. And that made a lot of sense to me. I voted for it. There's quite a few people that voted against it. Right. I think we need to maintain our infrastructure out here and stuff, but simply local ad valorem tax reduction, property tax relief.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: You know, I go back to the to the local government. If COVID showed me anything personally, it was that you better make sure that you have patriots elected at every single level of government, whether it's the sheriff, whether it's the hospital board, whether it's the school board, county commissioners—our county commissioners have a whole lot of power, so we better make sure—and their decisions, plan, and make this property tax issue. We need to make sure that we're hiring very conservative county commissioners because they have a lot to do with this property tax issue.
Speaker1: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: I'm not here to tell you who to vote for locally. You vote for the best people that you have in your community to be your commissioners, your school board, and your city council members. And you do your community as you see fit within the framework and parameters of everybody else around us. We can all be different. We can be unique. Some communities grow and thrive and move forward. I'm proud of the work that I did in Scott County as a Scott County commissioner and the good people I got to work with, and I get to work with some very good people at the state level and I get really tired of hearing them belittled because it might not fit someone else's plan.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim, the revenue neutral rate was enacted two years ago. It doesn't allow local governments to raise the amount of tax levied without going through a separate process. Do you support the revenue neutral rate law?
MINNIX: Yes, I do. As a commissioner in the early nineties, we were under a tax lid. I started in 1991 at the age of 36, before I was married. Tax lids were a joke. The state will tell the populace out here that they're going to try to control local government spending. What happens—in the most recent tax lid? The first one got shot so full of holes and exemptions in the middle 90s it went away finally. We had another one starting in 2011 or 12. It will eventually get chock full of exemptions. It did, and it got replaced by this revenue neutral deal. That tax lid, they gave you one year to set up a baseline. Every county in the state, as far as I know—and I was on the state county commission executive board at the time, raised total. That was the what if funds. If you're running your household budget and your spouse told you next year we're going to stay on the same exact budget, it seems to be human nature to pad that a little bit. That same three mil, when we replaced it with the transparency, the Utah model, basically give them back to you people. But it's been carried along for quite a few years. Don't believe everything you hear. I get a real kick out of somehow they made some of these bills. Look, the transparency bill. If a county has a good need for those funds and they have a meeting and you agreed to it, I think that should be your decision and not some arbitrary tax we set in Topeka that they're going to have to live with.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: Yeah. So I believe this was SB 13, if I remember if my brain remembers correctly. And I also I absolutely believe that it's good, but that the state should put the same restraint on themselves as they do these local governments. Again, I don't believe in these kingmakers in Topeka sitting there saying the counties have to all do this, but we're not going to abide by those same rules. And so, you know, again, I, I just think the state needs to hold themselves to the same accountability that they do these local governments.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: I encourage everybody to look up Senate Bill 47. Look at the Property Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Look at all the different provisions within that Senate Bill 47. It's something I voted for. In opposition to the some of the other comments that have been made here. I still get back to local ad valorem tax reduction as a way of spending these excess funds and protecting our property.
MYERS: Tatum?
LEE: I'm good.
MYERS: You’re good. Last question. Tatum, what are your ideas to help uphold and strengthen election integrity in Kansas?
LEE: That's a great question, and I'm so glad you guys asked that question. So I said on the Elections Committee. I'm on the AG Budget Committee, the Elections Committee, and the Local Government Committee. And on the Elections Committee, we were, we were, we had we had many different conferees come in and testify. And one in particular conferee came in, and he had run the election data in the state of Kansas, and there were definite irregularities. The majority of them happened back in Johnson County, as well as Sedgwick County. And when I saw that data— you all, if we don't have free and fair elections, we don't have a republic. We have to be able to protect private property rights and elections. In my opinion, that's the foundation of our republic. And so when I had gone to speak at a church later that evening to talk about the fact that, you know, “Hey, if we have even an inkling of any sort of fraud in Kansas, we need to investigate that. We don't need to be nervous and try to cover our buddy up who maybe the secretary of state. We need to go after that. We need to make sure that our elections are free and fair.” And again, I've seen the data on many different folks that have actually done analysis on this and have researched this. And we have a problem here. We can do better. We can do better in the state of Kansas, for sure. And actually, when I spoke at that church that evening and I, I said, “Hey, y'all, here's where the data is. And I'm very concerned about this. It was actually the very next day that the Speaker of the [Kansas] House ordered—I call it a political hit—to put 117—break it apart and put our—break my district apart and put in Ness County in with 118, which [unclear] and I'm super glad to be with you all and to be home. But I don't know why there's so much nervousness in Topeka to make sure that we have free and fair elections. We had a problem in 2020 at a federal level and I believe in Kansas also.
MYERS: Jim?
MINNIX: I totally agree with safe and secure elections and I believe Kansas is ranked third or 11th or something, the most secure, safe, available elections in the in the country. From the information that I've read, if anyone has a single instance or of some major fraud, I'm sure if you report to Secretary of State's office, they'd be tickled to deal with it. This year we passed several bills to try to add more guardrails. Kansas is very secure with the signature must match the one on the registration card. There were some instances in 2020 that I've heard of on the Democrat side that some companies from outside of state requested advanced balloting for ballots. Some individuals received two of those. Your county election officer would only allow you to vote one of those. There are many checks and balances. As a county commissioner, I canvassed 26 general elections and probably 18 to 20 primaries within the primaries where there was no contested races. I believe the county clerks run a very good election process here in the state of Kansas. Scott Schwab has brought to us and things that we can do to even as they currently are. I get back to the thought that there's some forces from outside our country or within our country that are really trying to divide us on many issues. And I think as Americans, we need to get to the bottom. If there's a problem, show us the problem. Don't insinuate or leave things out there aiming to make people think there might be a problem. Show us the specifics. Bring them forward and we'll deal with them. In my opinion, I think elections—I can't say that the 2020 election was a rob in state of Kansas—.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum.
LEE: So the day that Dr. Doug Frank had come to testify and many of you, if you know the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, this is one of his election scientists, and he'd come to testify in the state of Kansas. And it was just fortuitous—I believe it was Holy Spirit—who had prompted another state rep to give me a report that had been done in 2018 and 2020 by our own legislative research department. And the data said that our elections were vulnerable. And so please make sure you hear my heart when I say I'm not saying that we have bad county clerks. That's not what I'm saying. The fraud happened at a higher level than that. But if I were on research department says that our elections were—were—.
MYERS: Thank you. Jim?
MINNIX: One of the bills we passed this year is no election equipment can be connected to the Internet. There's a couple other guardrails that we put in. We want a safe and secure election going into this Value Them Both major question that we have coming up on August 2nd. And I want you as citizens to go out and feel that comfortable that you go cast your ballot, your ballot will count and it won't be fraud. It'll be so much better than the Department of Labor under the administration we currently have. I can't say that there hasn't been a $500 million fraud here.
MYERS: Okay. We are at closing remarks, 3 minutes each. Jim.
MINNIX: I want to thank you for the opportunity to come here this evening and address you. I know there's been many allegations against me. I just thought of something a little while ago. Tomorrow is the first day, July 16th, within the state of Kansas and across the United States, the 988 three-digit mental health and suicide hotline becomes available. Not today, but tomorrow. I want you folks to know that. There's many issues that we deal with at the legislature. I'll tell you honestly, campaigning is not my favorite part of the job by any means. I enjoy constituent services, though. I've had phone calls from people here in Wichita County. This week I had a call from a woman in Ness County who had a problem with telemedicine. Under the Emergency Preparedness Act, actually declaration, that we were under, telemedicine was encouraged here in the state of Kansas to keep people from traveling and being exposed, and add availability for services this individual needed to visit MD Anderson [Cancer Center in New Mexico] and if they could have done the telemedicine bill, I think that's something that we need to work on in the future, something to help our local hospitals. You shouldn't have to travel to Kansas City or Wichita or Houston if you can stay here and do some telemedicine. I'm sure that the good hospital and doctors here in town. It's another tool they can utilize.
I'm still strong proponent of local control, property tax relief. My philosophy hasn't changed a lot since I first took county commission office in 1991. I've been through a lot of life stages and from my Christian philosophy in treating others in a manner that they would like to be treated, I hope that when you leave here, if you have questions, you will ask me. If you've made up your mind, that's fine. I would like to go back to Topeka and represent the entire 118. I've done a good job over the last two years and have a lot of support in a lot of communities. I've always found it's better to be respectful and be respected than to be disagreeable.
A good friend of mine is leaving the legislature. He has been a banker in Parsons for quite some time. You might know his daughter, Laura Lewis. Rich Crail, when he went to the podium for his last time at the very end of session, said he'd learned to walk the legislature. And the biggest thing was if you want to be recognized, stand up. If you want to be appreciated, shut up. And we have a lot of people that like to run to a microphone or the camera. I'm not always one, but I'm working behind the scenes every way I can to improve the lives and quality of lives for our citizens out here. Now, again, I thank you very much.
MYERS: Thank you. Tatum?
LEE: This election is critically important, not just at the state level but at the national level. We are literally fighting for the soul of our country right now, and we're losing our liberty further and faster than we ever have before. I'm not a career politician. This is the first office that I've held. And I went to Topeka because I was a desperate granddaughter and nobody would help me. We cannot continue to do things how we've been doing them for this—the same amount of—for years and expect that something is going to change. That's called insanity.
You know, I didn't go to Topeka to make enemies, but I didn't go to Topeka to make friends either. I went to Topeka to represent We the People, because We the People are completely being ignored. And our rights and our liberties and our constitutional sovereignty is being eroded. And it's time that normal people stand up and fight back. And if it takes us into. A little bit louder to stand up for the Constitution. I guess we've got to get a little bit louder. Because what has happened in the last two years, for instance, in the nursing homes, I believe that could be looked at as a crime against humanity. What we allowed to be to happen because we were afraid to step up and have courage and fight back.
A friend of mine told a story as another state rep representative Sarah Jacobs. I'll give him credit for this. And he goes, Hey, Tatum, do you know why there are only 56 signers to the Declaration? I said, No, sir, I don't. He goes, How many people were asked to go there that day and sign the Declaration, but didn't have the courage to put their name on the line, to sign away their life, their sacred honor, and their fortunes. And I thought, wow, that's powerful. The question that we are facing in this country right now is, do we have the courage to be the 57th signer? Because I'm going to tell y'all, this is a hard job. If you go up to Topeka and you're as conservative as I am, they're going to come after ya. God bless President Trump. And so I'd ask you for your prayers. My family, please cover them. I would ask you to pray. And I just even say, now, Lord, forgive our—forgive us, heal this land. It's going to take a divine intervention for the Lord to right this ship. I believe the Lord is wanting to use Kansas in a powerful way to set the tone for the rest of the country. There's a scripture the Lord keeps whispering in my heart, and it's this “Out of the issues of the heart flow—the flow—life—the flow—the issues of life go where the heartland.” God is wanting to do something special here, but it can't be business as usual. I'd ask for your vote on August the second.
MYERS: Thank you. This concludes our debate. We're very thankful for both candidates coming in and exchanging their ideas. Thank you and good evening.
