Kansas representative faces hearing over ‘racist’ remarks
Rep. Valdenia Winn, D-Kansas City, listens as the House Select Investigative Committee held its first meeting Wednesday, April 1, 2015, in Topeka, Kan. Six Kansas legislators are reviewing a complaint against Winn over her remarks during a committee meeting. (Thad Allton, Topeka Capital-Journal/AP Photo)
Topeka ? A special legislative committee will meet next week to hear a complaint by fellow legislators against Democratic Rep. Valdenia Winn, of Kansas City.
The House Select Investigating Committee is scheduled to meet at 8:30 a.m. on June 26, which is also the day the House and Senate return for the “sine die” ceremony marking the official end of the 2015 legislative session.
Nine Republican members of the House Education Committee signed a formal complaint against Winn for using “inflammatory language” during a March 19 hearing on a bill that would have repealed a law that allows some undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at Kansas colleges and universities if they meet other residency and admissions requirements.
“I have dreaded this day because this is a racist, sexist, fear-mongering bill,” Winn reportedly said, according to a transcript of an audio recording of the hearing. “I would like first to apologize to the progressively minded people of Kansas who are appalled that we are turning back the hands of time…um…regarding to, and I am going to use strong language, Jim Crow tactics, and once again making Kansas a laughingstock.”
Winn, who is black, also said that she wanted to apologize, “to the students and their parents whose lives are being hijacked by the racist bigots who support this bill.”
Rep. John Barker, R-Abilene, a member of the education panel who also chairs the House Judiciary Committee, objected to Winn’s remarks, saying, “She just referred to this committee as racist.”
Winn denied that she was calling individual committee members racists. She said she was referring to supporters of the bill, adding that the bill was an example of what she called “institutional racism.”
Barker and eight other Republican members of the education panel later signed a formal complaint, which was filed with House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell.
The investigating panel is made up of three Republicans and three Democrats. Under rules of the House, the panel can either dismiss the complaint or “make recommendations to the full House of Representatives for reprimand, censure or expulsion.”
According to an agenda for the hearing, the panel will spend five minutes listening to the audio tape of the March 19 meeting. It will then allow 10 minutes of testimony from the complainants as a group and 10 minutes of testimony from Winn.
Rep. Erin Davis, R-Olathe, who chairs the investigating panel, denied a report being circulated via email from the political group Women for Kansas, which alleged that each of the nine complainants would be given 10 minutes of their own.
Davis also said that even if the committee makes a recommendation, the full House would not be able to act on it until the 2016 legislative session begins in January.
But most observers say it’s unlikely the committee will make a recommendation because that would require a majority vote, and the three Democrats on the panel are unlikely to vote to reprimand, censure or expel a member of their own party.
“The Democratic Caucus fully supports Rep. Winn in this matter,” House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs, of Kansas City, said in an earlier statement. “This investigation is nothing but an attempt by the majority party to silence a minority voice that dared to speak up in opposition to discrimination. She has a constitutionally protected right to voice her opinion on this or any other issue, as do all Kansans.”







