Not everyone who has given money to Republican gubernatorial candidates is satisfied with where that money has ended up.

The race for the Republican nomination for Kansas governor has presented an intriguing opportunity to take the advice of Watergate’s Deep Throat to “follow the money.”

In the case of contributions to Kansas House Speaker Kent Glasscock’s campaign, the money has taken a decidedly circuitous route, and not all the contributors are satisfied with where it has ended up.

In July 2001, Glasscock announced he would be a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor. Money started being contributed to that effort.

Four months later, in November 2001, Glasscock announced he would abandon his bid to run for lieutenant governor with Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall. The move, apparently an effort to unite the moderate wing of the Republican Party, meant that all of the funds collected for Glasscock’s gubernatorial race were transferred to the Stovall-Glasscock campaign.

Five months after that, Stovall had a change of heart and decided she didn’t really want to be governor  or at least she didn’t want it badly enough to continue her campaign. That left both Glasscock and the money contributed to him and Stovall in limbo. The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission decided it would allow the campaign to decide how to divide or transfer those funds.

If, as many expected, Glasscock had decided to renew his own bid to become governor, there probably wouldn’t have been much controversy about the funds. But instead, Glasscock decided about a week ago to jump onto Wichita Mayor Bob Knight’s ticket as a lieutenant governor candidate. A spokesman for the Knight-Glasscock campaign said recently that the amount of Stovall-Glasscock funds that was transferred to the Knight-Glasscock campaign won’t be revealed until the next campaign finance reports are filed on July 29, but Glasscock has classified it as “a bunch.” The obvious result of this tangled campaign trail is that at least some money intended to support either Glasscock or Stovall now will be used to support Knight.

That may be just fine with some donors, but to others it seems like a case of bait and switch. They gave money to support Glasscock’s run for governor and ended up supporting the Wichita mayor. And at least one donor, Westar Energy, wants its money back.

There’s plenty of bad blood between Westar’s parent company, Western Resources, and Knight. The mayor and Western Resources have been at odds several times over electric rates for Wichita customers and Knight’s efforts to equalize rates across the state by raising them in other areas.

On Tuesday, Doug Lawrence, Westar’s vice president for public affairs, said the company couldn’t support Knight’s candidacy and wanted its money back. But he didn’t stop there. He also criticized Knight’s leadership style as “divisive and expensive for taxpayers and ratepayers,” not the kind of publicity a statewide candidate needs.

Knight tried to put the best spin on the situation, saying it was no problem to return the money and he wouldn’t be intimidated. “I don’t want their money,” he said. “I’m not for sale.”

It’s all well and good for Knight to try to position himself as an independent voice for Kansas, but more public withdrawals of support like the one staged by Westar can’t help the campaign. Losing $2,000 doesn’t hurt the campaign nearly as much as the negative publicity that came from the Westar announcement.

Knight and Glasscock might do well to contact Stovall-Glasscock donors and either confirm their support or offer to return their money, hopefully without the fanfare that accompanied the Westar request.

The revolving Glasscock campaign fund is just another example of what a muddled mess the Republican primary race has become.