New legislator tells Patriots what they want to hear
Staff writer
Six days after the start of his first legislative session, newly appointed State Representative Greg Wilson of Abilene wasted no time touching base with his political base Sunday.
Appearing before 32 people at a meeting of Patriots for Liberty at Marion County Lake hall, Wilson reaffirmed his commitment to a wide array of fundamentalist conservative principles and his intense distrust of Democrats.
Noting that his assigned legislative office was “right next to” the office of Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, he quipped: “I hope I don’t run into her too often.”
As a new representative, appointed to fill a vacancy left when Scott Hill filled a State Senate vacancy, Wilson lamented the lack of clout freshman lawmakers have.
“Anybody who’s been there for a year or more has more of an idea and hears a lot more than I do,” he said. “They’re still, you know, figuring me out and seeing where I’m going to vote….how conservative I am.”
What the House actually debates is carefully controlled, he said.
“They make a brochure each night, and they call it the House calendar, and there’s one for every day,” he said. “Anything above the line...will be discussed that day, and then it will be voted on the next day.”
Items below the line languish without debate, sometimes for months.
“They won’t even come to the floor unless the speaker of the House lets them,” Wilson said. “He sorts them out.”
An audience member questioned the speaker’s authority to exercise that kind of control.
“You’re saying the speaker of the House decides himself?” she asked. “Where does he get that power from? I mean, does he have any input from anybody else?”
Tradition was Wilson’s answer.
“Over the years, that’s how they’ve done it,” he said. “So, I’m learning, too.”
Lobbyists attempt to exert considerable influence, Wilson said.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “I’m not a lobbyist guy. I’m not a fan. But every day there’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner somewhere. I swear, if we didn’t want to pay for a meal, we could get by eating free all day long.
“That’s one thing we have figured out. By the middle of the week, we couldn’t eat any more. We couldn’t go to the luncheons and everything. We started grabbing our sandwich in the basement.”
He expressed support when County Commissioner Kent Becker asked whether Kansas should call for a so-called convention of states to amend the U.S. Constitution.
Asked by another audience member about property tax relief, Wilson responded: “I’m for that! School funding and all of that — I’m very much for limiting it or stopping it from going up.”
But he added: “You can’t do very much about it. But I’m definitely on for wanting less real estate tax. I farm, and I know how much it’s gone up. It’s ridiculous.”
Most of the problem is with counties and cities, not the state, he said.
“There’s a lot of older people that are getting taxed out of their homes,” he said.
In response to another question, he was not aware of plans in Kansas for any Islamic communities adhering to Sharia law, a fundamentalist ethical code, but “we definitely need to have restrictions.”
Asked about farmland being sold to Chinese interests, he said he was unaware of any sales locally but “I’m willing to push some laws.”
Speaking of vegan meat substitutes — “fake meat,” as he called them — Wilson said: “I think that ought to be banned, and I talked to the speaker about that. He said, well, being Republicans, we don’t really like to ban things. I said, well, I think that’s something that should be banned.”
Calling Kelly a person who believes in “one world order,” he expressed support for legislation saying that international organizations have no jurisdiction in Kansas.
“The World Health Organization was trying to tell, you know, tell us what to do and what to take and vaccination mandates,” he said. “Kansas should decide what happens in Kansas.”
He also expressed support for returning to paper ballots.
“I’d say there’s a problem anywhere there’s a computer hooked up to a voting machine,” he said.
He favors banning cell phones in schools and discussed several other issues, frequently asking his wife, Marsha, in the audience to remind him of details.
The hottest issue, he said, was whether to allow licensing of anesthesia assistants, presumably to do work currently done by certified registered nurse anesthetists. He opposes the plan.
He also recounted how he had helped arrange a tour by some lawmakers of the Kansas School for the Blind before considering its appropriation.
Although not yet an official candidate for election, he worried that a challenge in the Republican primary from Abilene Mayor Brandon Rein, who lost out on the appointment Wilson received.
The Republican Party could be split, he said, resulting in Kylie Kilmer of Herington, a “terrible” Democrat “saying some nasty stuff,” winning by “sneaking in.”
“She’s got all the bad ideas,” Wilson said. “She’s talking about all the same stuff all the Democrats across the country are talking about — anti-ICE, anti-law enforcement. I mean all the ‘anti’s…. I’m telling you: She’s doing it. She’s the real deal…. We sure don’t want someone like her sneaking in.”
Wilson’s district consists primarily of Dickinson County but includes the northern and eastern thirds of Marion County.
Afterward, those attending watched a video urging people not to obey laws that might be contrary to God’s will.