Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s celebrated “Middle Of The Road” political action committee, pledged to helping elect “moderates” to get things done in Kansas, seems to be only funding Democrats in the current election cycle.
And campaign finance reports show Kelly’s PAC kicked in $850,000 to nonprofits helping Democratic candidates through “issue advocacy.”
The website for Gov. Laura Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC appeared to be quite clear in the mission for the organization at its outset:
Governor Laura Kelly launched the Middle of the Road PAC to elect moderate, middle-of-the-road leaders who are laser-focused on supporting policies to improve the lives of all Kansans. …
Governor Laura Kelly is committed to supporting middle-of-the-road leaders who work together, regardless of political party, to deliver for Kansans.
Based on the PAC campaign finance report filed Monday, and released Tuesday afternoon, the Middle of the Road PAC has only supported Democrats and Democrat committees – no Republicans or other parties.
The “regardless of political party” statement is political gaslighting. The PAC only supports Democrats.
A Watchdog Lab article in August questioned the PAC’s name: Is largest Kansas PAC “Middle of the Road”?
Perhaps this misdirection is because less than 15% of the recent dollars contributed the Middle of the Road PAC are from Kansas donors!!
Express advocacy for democratic legislative candidates
Analysis of the campaign report shows the PAC supports express advocacy with independent expenditures for a dozen Kansas house and senate candidates.
“Express advocacy” ads contain “vote for” or “vote against” messages.
House candidates
The PAC spent nearly $258,000 with a single vendor for multiple mailings in support of seven house Democratic candidates.
Senate candidates
Middle of the Road spent another $220,000 in multiple expenditures with two vendors on five senate Democratic candidates.
PAC expenditures for “issue advocacy”
The two largest recipients of expenditures by Middle of the Road PAC are nonprofits.
Kansas Values Institute received a hefty half-million dollars, while the Bluestem Foundation for Economic Freedom received $350,000.
The 501(c)(4) nonprofit Bluestem Foundation for Economic Freedom sent flyers to voters in Douglas County using another nonprofit named Kansans for an Affordable Future. See details in tutorial below.
As a nonprofit Kansas Values Institute is using “issue advocacy” in Google ads to malign at least five state senate Republican candidates in Johnson County.
Similar ads are saturating a number of streaming TV channels, which apparently have no public disclosure oversight for issue advocacy ads maligning political candidates.
 | Kansas Values Institute’s political ads on Google had 4.6 million impressions and cost over $81,000 to target five Kansas Senate candidates the last two monthsEARL F GLYNN·SEP 30Read full story |
 | “Political nonprofit” Kansas Values Institute runs ads against Republican legislative candidates on streaming TVEARL F GLYNN·SEP 18Read full story |
Expenditure Summary
The following table is a summary of expenditures for recipients of $10,000 or more.
An article from August gives information about the people listed above:
- Will Lawrence is Chief of Staff for Gov. Kelly.
- Lauren Fitzgerald is the former Communications Director for Gov. Kelly and now has a similar position with Kansas Coalition for Common Sense.
- Jordanna Zeigler is the political director for the Democratic Governors Association.
Missing in this summary is the $23,000 Middle of the Road gave to Kansas Democrats.
Two Kansas senate Democratic candidates received $1000 PAC contributions: David Haley and Marci Francisco.
Recent contributors to PAC
A previous article about this PAC gives a summary of donors from the January and July reports.
The 17 contributors giving $10,000 or more in the current report account for 87% of the money raised this period.
Here’s a contribution summary broken down by five types of donors:
A summary of the contributions by state shows less than 15% of the donations come from Kansas sources!!
In the initial campaign finance report in January, two-thirds of donations were from out-of-state.
Earl Glynn – Watchdog Lab
Earl F. Glynn is a mostly-retired data scientist, scientific programmer, software engineer and physical scientist living in the Kansas City metro area, and the publisher of the substack Watchdog Lab.
