MEMORANDUM
To: Interested Parties
From: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Date: September 9, 2019
Re: How KS-03 Candidate Amanda Adkins quarterbacked the Brownback agenda
As a longtime advisor to former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, KS-03 Republican candidate Amanda Adkins has spent her career deeply involved in building his record, including disastrous tax cuts that gutted funding for Kansas’ education system.
When Adkins teased her candidacy in July, the Kansas City Star reported that “Adkins could also feel the drag from her connections to Brownback, who left office with a low approval rating.” Adkins’ strong connection to Brownback and his failed agenda is a liability – and it’s one that won’t be going away anytime soon.
Adkins’ relationship with Brownback stretches back decades to 1998, when she worked on his first Senate campaign. She managed his second in 2004. When Adkins ran for Kansas Republican Party Chair in 2009, Brownback endorsed her run and they then worked closely to draft the party’s new strategy to expand GOP control in the state. Once Adkins left her role as Kansas Republican Party Chair, she maintained a close working relationship with Brownback when he appointed her as chair of the Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund.
As Brownback’s Children’s Cabinet chair, Adkins worked with the Governor to cover his attempts at slashing the budget for early childhood programs and even went as far as excluding the rest of the agency’s board in budget discussions with the Governor. In this role, she praised Brownback’s economic roadmap as one that promoted “high quality early learning experiences.” Under Adkins’ leadership, the Cabinet suffered millions of dollars in funding cuts to critical early childhood programs.
Throughout Brownback’s governorship, Adkins praised his tax agenda – which resulted in the historic cuts to education that are still impacting Kansas families.
In addition to cutting millions of dollars from public education, the tax policy Adkins supported “tanked” the state’s economy and led to the state’s credit rating being “downgraded because of its budget problems.” In 2017, Vox reported that “Job creation and economic growth [in Kansas] is far below the national average. The state is facing a budget shortfall of about $889 million in the next two years.”
In fact, the tax cuts were so unpopular that in 2017 the republican-dominated legislature overrode the governor’s veto and rolled back the tax cuts.
Despite his disastrous record, Adkins called Brownback an “incredible governor” and personally contributed over $2,500 to the governor’s re-election campaign.
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