Kansas Law And Government

The top executives of the state are Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Lieutenant Governor Mark Parkinson. Both officials are elected on the same ticket to a maximum of two consecutive 4-year terms. Parkinson replaced John E. Moore who served as Lt. Governor during Sebelius's first term which ended on January 8, 2007. Sebelius will not be up for re-election in 2010. The state's Attorney General is Democrat Paul Morrison, a former Republican who was first elected in 2006.

The legislative branch of the state government is the Kansas Legislature. The bicameral body consists of the Kansas House of Representatives, with 125 members serving two year terms, and the Kansas Senate, with 40 members serving four year terms.

Kansas has a reputation as a progressive state with many firsts in legislative initiatives—it was the first state to institute a system of workers compensation (1910). Kansas was also one of the first states to permit women's suffrage in 1912. Suffrage in all states would not be guaranteed until ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. The council-manager government was adopted by many larger Kansas cities in the years following World War I while many American cities were being run by political machines or organized crime. Kansas was also at the center of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a 1954 Supreme Court decision that banned racially segregated schools throughout the U.S.

Since the 1960s, Kansas has grown more socially conservative. The 1990s brought new restrictions on abortion, the defeat of prominent Democrats, including Dan Glickman, and the Kansas State Board of Education's 1999 decision to eliminate the theory of evolution from the state teaching standards, a decision that was later reversed.[17] In 2005, voters accepted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The next year, the state passed a law setting a minimum age for marriage at 15 years. [18]

Although Kansas is considered to be one of the most Republican states in the nation, there has been a long-running feud between the socially moderate (or "mainstream") faction and the socially conservative faction of the party. This battle is so heated that it is often said that there are three parties in Kansas--Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans. It is possible for a Democrat to win by winning the support of moderate Republicans and a few registered independents. Thus, recently, Kansas has been warming to Democrats, electing a Democrat Governor, Kathleen Sebelius in 2006, with 58% of the vote, as well as Democrat Paul Morrison (a former Republican) as replacement for incumbent Attorney General Phill Kline. Democrats also picked up six seats in the Kansas House of Representatives, and Democrat Nancy Boyda defeated Congressman Jim Ryun in the 2nd Congressional District.

The state's current delegation to the Congress of the United States includes Republican Senators Sam Brownback of Topeka and Pat Roberts of Dodge City and Representatives Jerry Moran of Hays (District 1), Nancy Boyda of Topeka (District 2), Dennis Moore of Lenexa (District 3), and Todd Tiahrt of Goddard (District 4). Boyda and Moore are Democrats; Moran and Tiahrt are Republicans. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term as President in the wake of the Great Depression. Senator Sam Brownback carries the distinction of being the most popularly-elected politician in Kansas history and is a current candidate for the Republican party nomination for President in 2008.

Politically speaking, Kansas is a notoriously conservative state. The people of Kansas have not supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson won the state's electoral vote, and Republican candidates have carried Kansas in every election except one since 1940. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state's 6 electoral votes by an overwhelming margin of 25 percentage points with 62% of the vote. The only two counties to support Democrat John Kerry in the same election were Wyandotte, which contains Kansas City, and Douglas, home to the University of Kansas, located in Lawrence.

The legal drinking age in Kansas is 21. In lieu of the state retail sales tax, a 10% Liquor Drink Tax is collected for liquor consumed on the licensed premises and an 8% Liquor Enforcement Tax is collected on retail purchases. Although the sale of cereal malt beverage (also known as 3.2 beer) was legalized in 1937, the first post-Prohibition legalization of alcoholic liquor did not occur until the state's constitution was amended in 1948. The following year the Legislature enacted the Liquor Control Act which created a system of regulating, licensing, and taxing, and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) was created to enforce the act. The power to regulate cereal malt beverage remains with the cities and counties. Liquor-by-the-drink did not become legal until passage of an amendment to the state's constitution in 1986 and additional legislation the following year. As of November 2004, Kansas still has 32 dry counties and only 15 counties have passed liquor-by-the-drink with no food sales requirement.[19] Today there are more than 2600 liquor and 4000 cereal malt beverage licensees in the state.[20]

The state's investigative branch is the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius

Sam Brownback