Kansas voters may give Kelly leeway on raising new revenues

photo by: Nick Krug

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Laura Kelly smiles at her crowd of supporters as she takes the stage for her victory speech on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018 at the Ramada Inn in downtown Topeka.

TOPEKA — Kansas Gov.-elect Laura Kelly has pledged publicly to avoid increasing taxes but may have some leeway with voters.

She and other officials were waiting Friday for a new fiscal forecast for state government.

A majority of Kansas voters were at least somewhat supportive of increasing taxes to provide additional funds for public schools, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of about 139,000 voters and nonvoters.

The survey, conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, included 3,963 voters and 780 nonvoters in Kansas.

Fifty-eight percent of voters said they strongly supported or somewhat supported raising taxes to boost education funding. A majority of them backed Kelly.

Forty-one percent strongly or somewhat opposed a tax increase. Roughly two-thirds of them backed conservative Republican Kris Kobach.

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