Rep. Ron Ryckman, Jr., R-Olathe, is congratulated by his fellow Republicans after winning the race to become the next Speaker of the Kansas House.

Topeka ? Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., of Olathe, was elected speaker of the Kansas House on Monday, and Sen. Susan Wagle, of Wichita, won another term as Senate president.

But moderate Republicans, who scored big wins in the November general elections, showed their new strength by winning majority leader positions in both the House and Senate.

For the House, Rep. Don Hineman, of Dighton, will be the new Republican leader, and Sen. Jeff Longbine, of Emporia, will be the new Senate vice president.

Meanwhile, there will be a change in the House Democratic leader position as well. After an initial tie vote, Rep. Jim Ward, of Wichita, edged out the current minority leader, Rep. Tom Burroughs, of Kansas City, 21-19.

Among Senate Democrats, there were no contested races for leadership posts, although there will be some change in personnel.

Sen. Anthony Hensley, of Topeka, was re-elected minority leader, while Sen. Laura Kelly, also of Topeka, was named assistant minority leader, taking over from Marci Francisco, of Lawrence, who had held that job the last four years. Francisco instead chose to run this year for the job of caucus agenda chair.

Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, casts his ballot in the race for Speaker of the House. Rep. Ron Ryckman of Olathe won the job over his moderate challenger, Rep. Russ Jennings of Garden City. But moderates gained a number of other leadership posts in both chambers of the Legislature.

Those new leaders now face the task of steering the Legislature through what may be one of the most difficult sessions in recent memory as the state faces a looming $350 million budget hole for the rest of this fiscal year and an even bigger one looming next year, and an impending decision from the Kansas Supreme Court that may require the state to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on public K-12 education.

House Republicans

Although he’s generally seen as conservative on budget and tax issues, Ryckman won support from moderates as well, beating Rep. Russ Jennings, of Lakin, 57-28. The race for majority leader was much closer, with Hineman, the moderate candidate, edging out the more conservative Rep. John Barker, of Abilene, 44-41.

The majority leader’s race may actually be a more accurate measure of how much strength moderates will have in the House for the next two years, but Ryckman said he intends to work with all factions within the party, and with Democrats.

“I believe if you look at the members of our state and the members of our caucus today, they did select a broad variety of individuals that I believe have come here to do the state’s business and to get us on the right path to restore a little civility and accountability to our process,” Ryckman said. “It’s all-hands-on-deck, and if someone’s willing to find a way to get to a yes (vote), we’re definitely willing to listen.”

That would be a significant change from the leadership style of outgoing Speaker Ray Merrick, of Stilwell, who was known for punishing those who opposed him on key issues by taking away committee chairmanships or removing people from committees altogether. He was also known for limiting the number of bills that were ever fully debated on the House floor to avoid the possibility of amendments.

Ryckman, who turns 45 this month, also represents a generational change from Merrick, who is stepping down from the Legislature this year at age 77. In his private life, Ryckman owns and operates a commercial roofing company in Johnson County.

Hineman said Ryckman will need to be more open and cooperative with moderates because the 2016 elections produced significant changes in the House.

“It’s not a lurch to the left. It’s a shift to the center, or a return to the center,” he said.

Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, said he thinks the mix of moderates and conservatives in the leadership team reflects a more diverse GOP caucus, and he thinks Ryckman will need to take that into account as he starts making committee appointments. He said Ryckman has told members he plans to appoint a mix of moderates and conservatives to committee chairmanships and vice-chairmanships, and that he has vowed not to “stack” committees in favor of one faction or the other.

The race for speaker had been a three-person race until Saturday, when the current majority leader, Rep. Jene Vickrey, of Louisburg, bowed out of the race. That left only Ryckman and Jennings, who is finishing only his second term in the House, to compete for the job.

Ryckman was considered the favorite going into the race, even though both he and Jennings have only served two terms in the Legislature, because Ryckman had spent the last two years chairing the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Many of his colleagues gave him credit for steering that panel through the contentious special session earlier this year by producing a school finance bill that ultimately received bipartisan support and staved off a possible shutdown of public schools by the Kansas Supreme Court over funding equity issues.

Other House leaders chosen Monday include Reps. Scott Schwab, of Olathe, as speaker pro tem; Tom Phillips, of Manhattan, as assistant majority leader; Kent Thompson, of Iola, as majority whip; and Susan Concannon, of Beloit, as caucus chair.

Senate Republicans

On the Senate side, Wagle fended off a last-minute challenge on her right from Sen. Ty Masterson, of Andover, who has been chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which deals with budgets and appropriations.

As in the House, however, 2016 elections produced a significant shift toward moderates in the Senate. That was largely due to the fact that eight conservatives lost their seats to more moderate challengers in the Aug. 2 primaries, and there had been fear that Republicans overall might lose three to five Senate seats in the general election.

Sens. Ty Masterson of Andover and Susan Wagle of Wichita listen anxiously to the vote counts to learn which of them will serve as Senate President for the next four years. Wagle won the contest, 23-7.

In early October, about a month before the election, Wagle, a strong social and fiscal conservative, called a news conference and, standing with 25 other GOP senators and candidates, including both conservatives and moderates, acknowledged that she had heard the voters’ anger on the campaign trail.

She vowed that, if elected, they would address the state’s budget crisis in the 2017 session even if that meant reversing some of the tax policies that Brownback had championed and that most Republican senators had supported.

In the end, Republicans lost only one seat in the election, and many in the party gave Wagle a large share of the credit for that.

Masterson, however, represented a faction of conservatives who are reluctant to shift toward the center and who criticized Wagle for what they said were efforts to avert major debates by refusing to let certain bills come to the floor, charges that Wagle denied.

“I have never squashed debate,” Wagle said. “We need to recognize that we are a diverse group of people from all walks of life who have made a tremendous sacrifice to put their name on the ballot in a year that we know is going to be very difficult to govern.”

Wagle won the contest handily, 23-7. But, as in the House, more moderate senators also won leadership positions.

In addition to Jeff Longbine becoming the new vice president, Sen. Vicki Schmidt, of Topeka, was elected assistant majority leader, and Jim Denning, of Overland Park, a conservative who has since backed away from Brownback’s tax policies, was named majority leader.

House Democrats

The race between Ward and Burroughs for minority leader was a rematch of their contest two years ago. This time, though, House Democrats were riding high after an election in which they gained more seats than they have in any of the last several campaign cycles.

Democrats took over 13 new seats that had been held by Republicans in November while losing only one Democratic seat, boosting their caucus to 40 members in one of the biggest net gains they have seen in several election cycles.

Ward, an attorney from Wichita, is viewed as a firebrand in the House who is often more confrontational with conservatives than Burroughs had been. And with a larger caucus, he will also have more leverage to negotiate with moderate Republicans to form a working majority on a number of key issues.

Ward said his first priority will be to engage with the public in hopes of building more popular support for alternative policies. But he said the first task for Ryckman, Hineman and the other GOP leaders will be to put together committees and immediately confronting the state’s financial crisis.

“I don’t know how you can do anything without addressing the fact that we’re $350 million short,” he said. “After the February school payments are made it’ll be difficult to make payroll. We just don’t have the resources to do the minimum state services.”

Other Democratic leaders chosen Monday include Reps. Stan Frownfelter, of Kansas City, as assistant minority leader; Ed Trimmer, of Winfield, as minority whip; and Brandon Whipple, of Wichita, as agenda chair.

Rep. Barbara Ballard, of Lawrence, was re-elected to her job as caucus chairwoman, and Rep. Adam Lusker, of Frontenac, was elected policy chair, taking over that role from Rep. John Wilson, of Lawrence, who did not seek it this year.