Kansas' Future Lies in Bipartisanship

By Graham Bond and Peyton Weixelman

According to party leaders, the future of Kansas lies in bipartisanship. After speaking with both the Nationalist and the Federalist Chairmen, both members mentioned that bipartisan voting would be a big part of the upcoming campaign. Nationalist Chairman Tyler Boutte wished to address a couple significant issues during his time in office. He was asked a few questions about the upcoming elections, challenges his party plans to take on, and a few other details including his plans to interact with opposing state legislation.

“We’re gonna try to elect people to our state legislature and our state executive office and work with our senate and house representatives on both sides, not only the nationalists, so we enact legislation that benefits both parties,” Boutte said.

Boutte also stated education would be the backbone of the team’s campaign. As stated by Boutte, “We have seen huge cuts in education in the past few years, which is an issue we can address. And by creating appealing solutions to both sides we two parties can reach an agreement to take appropriate action.”

 John Price, Chairman of the Federalist Party, had similar words to say about the upcoming elections.

“We are intending to run a campaign that, while remaining to our core conservative values, is something more in the middle of the spectrum in order to attract as many nationalist voters as we can,” Price said.

The Nationalists, while trying to score some State positions, have no intention of losing track of their party’s core values.

“[Party leaders have been] talking about issues such as healthcare and social issues for people,” said Boutte. “We’ve seen in recent years a lot of cutbacks on education. Also, there’s a lot of issues going on socially with our schools, and that’s something that needs to be addressed because it secures our future.”

On the other side, the Federalists are still in debate about the future of their party within the next week. However, multiple Federalists are considering running in the gubernatorial race.

“So, at the moment we have several of our other leaders for the Federalist party who have declared their intent to run,” said Price. “So far, some of them have already brought forward many of their ideas. We also have several other individual members from different counties who have expressed personally to me their intent to run. Hopefully, we’ll be meeting with them tonight and within the next couple of days to speak and further develop our platform.”

According to Price, CJ Pfananstiel, Dalton White, and Dominic LiCastro, all county-level Federalist party leaders are planning to run in the upcoming election for Governor of Kansas.

All in all, Boys State is already moving at a quick pace; both sides are showing signs of willingness to find a common ground with the opposing party in order to gain as many future votes as possible, and the gubernatorial race is starting to receive much attention as the delegate wait in anticipation.

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