Pictures with Statehouse pages.

That’s something the candidates for governor might want to think about as they collectively spend millions of dollars campaigning for the job considered the state’s most politically glamorous.

Kansas governors are in charge of a $9 billion annual budget. They are the top boss of thousands of state employees. Plainclothes security agents are constantly at their side. They travel the world, meet lots of important people.

But for as long as 30 minutes each day the Legislature is in session  some 90 days a year  they stand up like a cardboard cutout of Elvis to have their photograph taken with groups of children who come from all over the state to serve as legislative pages, the little assistants who fetch soda pop and such for members of the Kansas House and Senate.

The daily photo opportunity in the governor’s office is a Kansas tradition. And that’s not the half of it.

“In reality, there’s a lot of ceremony” involved with being governor, said former Gov. Mike Hayden, now the Kansas secretary of Wildlife and Parks. “I remember one candidate for governor saying, ‘I want to do more than just the page pictures,’ which is kind of a statement about the ceremonial side of the governor’s office, which takes a huge, inordinate amount of time.

“Everyone wants you in their parade, at their civic club. Governors find they are overwhelmed by the ceremonial public appearances almost to the point where it can  if you let it  cripple your ability to govern.”

A recent Graves day

Here’s Gov. Bill Graves describing a recent day at the office:

“I just did 30 minutes for the naming ceremony for the Charles Curtis building,” he said, “then a mock bill signing, then proclamations, then a public service announcement for the National Kidney Foundation, and I’ve actually got some courtesy visit from some guy from the Department of Commerce.

“These are all appropriate,” Graves said. “But nonetheless, that’s 2 1/2 hours today for things that if I wasn’t present, the world wouldn’t change dramatically.”

The Journal-World recently interviewed the current and three former governors. They all remarked on the warm-body aspects of the job that virtually anyone with a nice suit and reasonably developed grooming skills could do. None could see any way around it. Though Graves, known for his passion for efficiency, did find a way to trim the time required for page pictures.

“We sort of put the clock to it,” he said. “Gather in, sit down, meet the next group … there was a lot of time consumed. This year we started doing a standard (drill). Governor, flag, shake hands, turn, you smile, you say things. We shaved page pictures down from 20 minutes to less than 10.”

Bad timing

Gov. John Anderson, 85, is now a Johnson County attorney. When he was in office from 1961 to 1965, he got a massive dose of the ceremonial.

“Three weeks after I took office in 1961 was the centennial celebration of statehood,” he said. “I went to every festival and picnic, rode horses in parades. I enjoyed it, but it did get to be quite a burden. There are 105 counties in this state. Not all of them had a centennial ceremony, but a bunch of them did.”

But what about all that power?

Governors can only do so much. Some things  especially if they don’t cost money  they can do by executive fiat. But most anything of major significance requires approval from the Legislature. That’s kind of like herding cats. And the ceremonial side of the job usually intensifies precisely when the Legislature is in Topeka.

“All the organizations  Farm Bureau, KCCI, Motor Carriers, KIOGA  they all bring their members to town during the session. They want to meet during this very, very hectic, busy time,” Graves said. “There’s always a sense of relief when a session ends.”

And there’s not so much power anyway, Hayden said.

“The governor’s power is modest,” he said. “You do have the power of appointment; you can shape the heads and leadership in state government. You have the power of executive order in the absence of the Legislature. But in reality, it’s a partnership. In order to get legislation, you have to have the Legislature’s support. You are kind of the brakeman. You have the veto power. If you don’t work with them, they can raise all kinds of havoc for you as chief executive. They’re always difficult but always important.”

Master negotiator

Anderson was generally considered a master at working the Legislature. He would invite leaders from the House and Senate  chairmen of key committees  to his office for lunch daily during the session. As governor he pushed through legislation that consolidated thousands of school districts and brought Wichita State University, then a municipal college, into the state university system.

“I used to order in sandwiches and lemonade or Cokes day after day,” Anderson said. “I had hundreds of lunches over four years, and we’d sit and talk about the problems and the differences the two or three sides were having. If you work with people, talking and not having hairpulling or screaming, it helps to get problems solved. We did that a lot.”

“John Anderson worked them to death,” said Grover McKee, a Wichita businessman who was an aide to Gov. Bob Docking. “He made them come to these damn (lunch) meetings. Pretty soon they’d get to the point where they’d do anything to get out of the room and Bob Docking would do the same thing. He’d just flog that horse. One of Docking’s favorite tricks, he’d call the meeting and then his secretary would call him to the phone. Then Paul Pendergast (an aide) would go at it for two hours. Then Bob would come back. Also, he’d ask the sides to put their positions in writing.”

‘Greatest challenge’

Graves said working with the Legislature had only grown more difficult as the power of individual, rank-and-file members has grown. If it looked like no one was in charge of the Legislature last session, that’s only because no one was.

“I think the next governor’s greatest challenge is to build a working relationship with the Kansas Legislature,” Graves said, “and I believe that’s become harder to do because those old days when there was a strong House speaker, a strong Senate president, who kind of ruled with an iron fist, are gone. In the old days, if you could work your arrangement with two or three key people, your votes would fall in line. Now the Legislature is kind of like major league baseball, dominated by free agency. You have to go work the deal with 63 House members and 21 senators, and by the time everyone lays what they want on the table, it’s worse than a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.”

And forget privacy. There isn’t any.

Being governor requires “adapting to a life where you’re with someone every minute of every day,” Graves said. “Even at Cedar Crest (the governor’s residence) there’s security there every day. At night, if you want to wander downstairs in your PJs for a glass of milk, you have to remember someone will be there. It’s a pretty substantial adjustment.”

Good people

The governors said it was important to be surrounded by the right people.

“The difference between failure and success is hiring good people,” said Gov. John Carlin, now the national archivist in Washington, D.C., “and they’re hard to find.”

“If they do good, you get some of the credit,” Graves said. “But if your people make mistakes and get their names in the paper, it will reflect poorly on you as well.”

“I often found a nationwide search was necessary,” Hayden said. “I hired several Cabinet secretaries without ascertaining what political party they belonged to. As governor, often your success depends on the people who you surround yourself with. I made some good choices and probably some bad choices. I still see the good works of a number of people I appointed because they were the right person for the job.”

Is it worth it?

“If you’re looking for long-term effectiveness,” Hayden said, “there are two things you’ve got to have: the vision to see what others can’t see; then you’ve got to have the ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do. Many times the Legislature simply looks at the moment or at best the current session. Seldom do they take any long-term perspective. Almost without exception, no legislator wants to make the difficult decision.”

“It’s just the greatest job,” Graves said. “It’s just a wonderful, great experience. I’m going to miss it immensely.”