TOPEKA — Voters in Kansas won’t have the benefit of two scheduled debates between Republican Ty Masterson and Democrat Cindy Holscher in the competitive race for governor.
Holscher and Masterson took part in a 90-minute debate Sept. 12 at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson, which was the first head-to-head showdown between the two major party nominees in the general election campaign. Masterson and Holscher were invited to televised debates planned by Gray Media on Sept. 24 and Nexstar on Oct. 1.
Holscher said she committed to both TV appearances, but Masterson declined.
“Ty has debated Cindy Holscher and appeared alongside her in multiple forums,” said Garrett Henson, a spokesman for Masterson’s campaign. “At this time, we do not have plans to accept any further debates.”
Holscher, a state senator from Overland Park, said she was prepared to follow the State Fair debate hosted by WIBW Radio with the Gray Media event to be broadcast on KCTV in Kansas City, KWCH in Wichita and WIBW in Topeka. She said the Nexstar appearance was to have run on six television stations covering 95% of the state, including WDAF’s Fox4 in Kansas City.
“Kansans deserve to hear directly from the people asking to lead their state, and that’s why I’m not afraid to debate anywhere, anytime,” Holscher said.
Holscher said Masterson, a state senator from Andover, was “running away from voters and hiding from debates because he can’t defend his record of shortchanging everyday Kansas families while doing the bidding of his corporate donors and championing Sam Brownback’s disastrous schemes. Kansans deserve a governor who always shows up, and Ty Masterson won’t even do that.”
The decision to not participate in the two TV debates followed an assertion by Kansas Republican Party Executive Director Rob Fillion that Masterson won the State Fair debate.
The sentiment was echoed by Henson, Masterson’s campaign spokesman, who said Holscher spent the debate running from her record in the Kansas Senate.
“Ty released his Homeowners Bill of Rights to stop runaway property taxes,” Henson said. “Cindy Holscher had an hour on the biggest stage in Kansas and never named one thing she’d do about them. Her word for property tax relief is ‘gimmick.'”
Henson said Holscher was the “most radical liberal nominee Kansas Democrats have ever put forward.”
Holscher campaign representative Riley Osen said the State Fair debate revealed why voters should reject Masterson on Nov. 3.
“Cindy is running to lower everyday costs and make life more affordable for working families,” Osen said. “Ty Masterson wants to drag us backward to the same extreme Brownback policies that Kansas already paid the price for once before. We fought too hard to recover from that disaster to go back now.”
Osen was referring to the 2012 bill signed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback reducing individual state income taxes. Brownback promised profound business and job growth resulting from an “adrenaline shot” to the economy, but the result was a decline in state revenue and huge budget deficits. The budget crater was filled by raising the state’s sales tax and cutting expenditures to education, transportation and other core state programs. Much of the Brownback tax experiment was repealed by a bipartisan vote of the Kansas Legislature in 2017.
In the State Fair debate, Holscher pledged to work toward lowering everyday costs for Kansans, a moratorium on data center deals and improvements in funding of K-12 public education. She criticized Masterson for a “$217k-per-year no-show job at GoCreate” on the campus of Wichita State University.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.