Archiver Fountain City Frequency

With everything else they must deal with…law enforcement, taxes and economic development…state legislators spend an enormous amount of time on transgender issues in education.

Why, is the most important question but also, are we done watching endless debates on trans students in statehouses?

On this episode, we hear from Missouri state Sen. Greg Razor, a Democrat from Kansas City and the only openly gay member of the state senate.

It’s hard enough being the parent of a middle school student. But now your child comes out as trans and you have to navigate the school district bureaucracy to make sure your child is safe. Add to that, many school board members lean towards anti-trans and that makes parenting even harder.

In this episode, we hear from Virginia Franzese from Leawood, Kansas. She has faced all of these problems and more.

There are few education topics more heated than transgender students. Should teachers use preferred pronouns? What restroom should trans kids use? And the question that generates the most heat: should kids be allowed to play sports on the teams they identify with?

In this episode, we ask two former school district superintendents how we got here. We hear from Cynthia Lane, former superintendent in the Kansas City, Kansas district and Bill Nicely, former superintendent in the Kearney, Missouri school district.

We start this season of Archiver in 1960 on the streets of Russell, Kansas right there on the plains about half-way between Kansas City and Denver.

It was a railroad town, an oil town but for our purposes, it’s Bob Dole’s town.

His first campaign for federal office featured four girls in homemade skirts called the Bob-O-Links singing on the streets of western Kansas. In between numbers they handed out Dole Pineapple juice.

“The thing that really strikes me about Dole is if you could somehow take the spirit of western Kansas, just kind of collect it up and make a person out of it, you would get Bob Dole,” says Michael Smith, a professor of political science at Emporia State University.

In our first episode we hear about his boyhood days in Russell, the World War II battle in Italy that grievously wounded Dole and how that shaped the rest of his life.

By 1960 Bob Dole had his sights on a much bigger political stage after his one term in the Kansas Legislature and five terms as Russell County attorney. There was a shake-up in the western Kansas political landscape starting in 1954 and by 1960 Dole saw his opening.

There was a bigger three-way fight for the Republican nomination for Congress from western Kansas that year. In the race with Dole was Keith Sebelius, future father-in-law of Kathleen, who would be elected the Democratic governor of Kansas in 2002 and someone who felt he was the heir-apparent.

He would finally win the seat eight years later. And Phillip J. Doyle a farmer and state senator.

Here’s how the Salina Journal described the last debate in its July 31st edition, just three days before the primary: “All played a game of catch with hot bricks as they strived for the electorate’s love, prejudice and votes in Tuesday’s primary.”

Purple prose? Sure. But accurate. Someone started a rumor that Doyle was dropping out before the primary. Sebelius charged Dole was in the pocket of big oil. Dole called the charges a sham. In the end, Dole squeaked by Sibelius by 982 votes.

In the general Dole breezed by his democratic opponent with 60 percent of the vote. Dole entered the House in 1961 with guns blazing. 

When Bob Dole was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives in 1961 it didn’t take the freshman congressman from western Kansas long to attack the Democrats. He opposed almost everything the new Kennedy Administration wanted.

In March, 1961 he voted against extending unemployment benefits and Democrats in Kansas immediately labeled him a reactionary. But he also latched onto a controversy involving a Texas con man called Billy Sol Estes. So big was the scandal that a minor rock star named Jesse Lee Turner even wrote a ballad about Billy Sol.

Here’s how the New York Times led Billy Sol’s obit on May 14th, 2013: “Billie Sol Estes, a fast-talking Texas swindler who made millions, went to prison and captivated America for years with mind-boggling agricultural scams, payoffs to politicians and bizarre tales of covered-up killings and White House conspiracies…was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Granbury, Tex. He died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.”

If you’re an ambitious freshman congressman, who wouldn’t want a piece of that?

Dole also opposed the Peace Corp and after he was reelection in 1962, he opposed federal funding to expand college classrooms. The Salina Journal on August 16th, 1963 labeled him the “Kansas Againster.”