photo by: Shutterstock Images

At the last Kansas gubernatorial debate for the 2018 election, on Oct. 30, 2018, candidates were asked about several topics they had not previously addressed.

TOPEKA – The three major candidates for governor in Kansas squared off in their last televised debate Tuesday evening, offering their thoughts and ideas on a handful of issues that hadn’t been widely discussed during the campaign, such as their own campaign ads and their views about transgender bathrooms.

The debate, which took place in the studios of KSNW-TV in Wichita and was simulcast by its sister station KSNT-TV in Topeka, came exactly one week before polls close on Election Day, Nov. 6.

But it also came after nearly 200,000 early ballots had already been cast, either by mail or at advance voting locations throughout the state.

At such a late point in the campaign, some might have thought there were no issues left that the candidates hadn’t already discussed many times over. But Washburn University political science professor Bob Beatty, one of the moderators, found one when he asked whether the candidates thought Kansas should allow transgender bathrooms in public schools.

photo by: Associated Press

From left, Kansas governor candidates Greg Orman, Laura Kelly and Kris Kobach are pictured in file photos from August 2018.

Both Kelly and Orman said they did not think that was something the state should regulate. Kelly also brought up the example of North Carolina, which passed a law requiring students to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth, only to repeal that law a year later amid a torrent of pressure from the public and businesses.

But Kobach, the current secretary of state, took a different position, suggesting that the psychiatric condition formally known as gender dysphoria is the byproduct of political correctness and that it poses a safety risk to students from attacks by sexual predators.

“I don’t want my girls going into a bathroom and then finding a boy in the bathroom because he’s decided that that day that he’s a girl and he’s doing that as an excuse because he’s really a sexual predator and he’d like to invade the privacy of my daughter,” Kobach said.

The candidates were also asked to defend their own TV ads while responding to each other’s ads.

Kelly defended her ad accusing Kobach of saying public schools are “overfunded,” something Kobach has flatly denied ever having said. She said that was based on his statements criticizing incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer for signing a bill this year that phases in a $500 million increase in annual school funding each year.

Kobach, meanwhile, defended his ad accusing Kelly of having supported legislation that he says increased residential electric utility bills in Kansas by $600 a year. He said that was based on a 2005 law, which was repealed in 2015, requiring Kansas utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Kobach said that law was responsible for driving up utility rates. Kelly disputed that claim and said utilities have already exceeded the 20 percent goal on their own.

Orman, meanwhile, defended his ad referring to the current political system in Kansas as “corrupt,” citing state policies that allow no-bid contracts, a lack of transparency in many government functions and laws allowing lobbyists to donate money to political campaigns.

Recent polls have shown Kobach and Kelly locked in a virtual dead heat, with about 41 percent of the vote each, with Orman trailing in a distant third place with about 10 percent.

There was no mention in the debate about news that occurred earlier in the day when Orman’s campaign treasurer, former Republican state Sen. Tim Owens, resigned from the campaign and endorsed Kelly.

Many Democrats had viewed Orman as a potential spoiler in the race because polls showed him drawing more votes away from Kelly than Kobach. Orman said he is not bowing out of the race, but Democrats are hopeful that Owens’ departure could tilt the race in Kelly’s favor.