In this file photo from June 5, 2015, Kansas state Sens. Carolyn McGinn, left, R-Sedgwick, and Jeff Longbine, R-Emporia, confer during a brief Senate session at the Statehouse in Topeka. McGinn, a moderate Republican, is one of several who are being attacked by ads from the Main Street Kansas PAC.

Wichita ? A group making questionable claims about legislative candidates was funded by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee, according to campaign finance reports.

The chamber’s PAC contributed $61,500 to the Main Street Kansas PAC, a group that has paid for radio ads and mailers attacking moderate-leaning Republicans ahead of the Aug. 2 primary, according to documents filed this week with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

“The world’s gone crazy,” a man says in one radio ad paid for by Main Street Kansas PAC. “I read the other day that (Sen.) Carolyn McGinn voted with Hillary and Obama’s party 4,181 times.”

That number appears to be calculated from more than a decade of votes, The Wichita Eagle reports. The ad does not mention that the majority of legislative votes are on noncontroversial matters, such as naming a bridge or highway, and pass with broad bipartisan support.

During this past legislative session, the Senate took 278 roll call votes and more than 57 percent were unanimous, according to Senate records. The year before, the Senate took 337 roll call votes and nearly 55 percent were unanimous.

That means the most conservative Republican and most liberal Democrat in the Senate vote the same way more than half the time.

McGinn, R-Sedgwick, was one of the few incumbents to survive a primary challenge in 2012 when conservatives ousted nine moderate Republicans from the Senate. This year, she faces a primary challenge from Renee Erickson in District 31.

“I’m getting hit harder than I ever have by the Kansas Chamber and they’re disguising themselves because they’ve created multiple PACs to hide behind,” McGinn said.

The chamber is also the sole funder for Quality Schools For All Kansas Kids this election, contributing $20,000 to the group, which has made questionable claims about school funding in campaign post cards.

A post card from Main Street repeats the claim about McGinn voting with the Democrats more than 4,000 times and features a photograph of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. It also references Clinton’s email scandal and alleges that McGinn “SHARES THEIR VALUES.”

“I think it’s because they can’t control me,” McGinn said. “I think it’s because I’m an independent voice and they want a voice that they can control.”

McGinn has often broken with Republican leadership on tax and budget policy during the past four years and has voiced support for rolling back some of the income tax cuts passed in 2012. The chamber is one of the main groups pushing to preserve those tax cuts.

The chamber’s vice president of political affairs, Rebecca McCormack, serves as Main Street’s treasurer.

McCormack confirmed in an email that the votes “show the totality of her record” dating back to when McGinn joined the Legislature in 2005.

“McGinn has voted with Democrats with more frequency than almost any Republican Senator and in several years has been the Senator with the record of voting most closely with Democrats for the entire session. We believe her constituents should have an opportunity to know her entire record during the Republican primary for voting with Democrats and not be misled by the ‘R’ behind her name.”

McCormack sent an analysis from KanFocus, a legislative tracking service, to back up the claim. The analyses do show McGinn breaking from the Republican majority more often than most of her colleagues, but they also show she voted with the Republican majority 81.3 percent of the time in 2015.

No list of candidates

Main Street’s campaign finance report, which was filed this week, shows the PAC paid $60,800 to Virginia-based Pinpoint Media for radio advertising. It does not list which candidates the ads are intended to help, in possible violation of Kansas ethics law.

Carol Williams, the executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said that PACs are supposed to specify which candidates they’re spending on behalf of, but there is an exception for “issue ads,” which don’t have to be itemized.

She said she had not heard the radio ads and could not say whether they would be considered issue ads or candidate ads.

The radio ad against McGinn doesn’t explicitly tell listeners to vote for her opponent, Erickson, but it strongly implies that they should vote against McGinn.

“It gets worse. The same unions backing up Hillary for president want us to vote for Carolyn McGinn!” one man says to his friend in the ad.

“Well, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know,” the other man replies.

The group’s finance report also does not list the money it has spent on mailers.

Williams said that the commission would make inquiries with any PAC that it discovers failed to list a mailing on its report.

“A PAC is a PAC and any monies that go into that fund and out are disclosed,” Williams said. “You don’t pick and choose what you want to show.”

McCormack said in an email Tuesday evening that she is “working on updating these reports and have spoken with the ethics commission to confirm we are on the right track.”

Legislative races

Main Street paid for mailers in several legislative races.

Randy Banwart and Roger Elliot, two Republicans vying for open House seats, were attacked with identical mailers. They featured an elderly man with a pained expression on his face and a warning that the candidates “wanted to do nothing while Obama slashed $700 BILLION in Medicare funding.”

The mailer cites a Wichita Eagle article from April 2014 as its source. The article was about Gov. Sam Brownback’s decision to sign a bill that committed Kansas to an interstate health care compact as a way to escape the Affordable Care Act.

The article does not mention Banwart or Elliott.

It also does not assert that Obama slashed $700 billion in Medicare funding. The article quotes Brownback making the claim, which has been used by opponents of the Affordable Care Act repeatedly in recent years, and then quotes a Politifact analysis rating the claim as “half true.”

The Affordable Care Act did reduce Medicare spending, but the cost savings did not reduce benefits for seniors, according to Poltifact, a website that checks the veracity of political claims.

“They’re just trying to muddy the water with false information,” said Banwart, a projects manager for Spirit AeroSystems. He is running against Susan Humphries in the primary in House District 99 in east Wichita and Andover.

Neither candidate called for cuts to Medicare funding or increased taxes as the postcard suggests and neither was in the Legislature when the compact bill came up for a vote.

“We do believe the candidates referenced in these mailers failed to do anything to stand up to President Obama’s $700 billion cut to Medicare,” McCormack said in an email. “By either voting against or voicing opposition to the Health Care Compact, these candidates chose to not do anything or would have done nothing to address the numerous problems of Obamacare.”

The AARP and other senior groups have actually raised concern that the compact, which requires federal approval, would lead to cuts in Medicare if it became reality. Under the compact, states would receive federal health care funding as block grants.

Elliott, a retired banker running in the GOP primary against Jeremy Alessi in House District 87 in east Wichita, said he was collecting the misleading mailers, which he calls “nasty-grams.”

“When I need a laugh I always pull these out,” he said.