IT CANNOT HELP Attorney General Phill Kline’s increasingly frenetic scramble for re-election that he has publicly lost the support of one of his esteemed predecessors.
Former Attorney General Bob Stephan resigned as Kline’s adviser on domestic violence policy. He also accused Kline of breaking a promise and questioned the attorney general’s behavior in relation to campaign fund raising.
Stephan said Kline broke a promise to him not to make convicted multiple murderer Reginald Carr an issue in Kline’s campaign against Democratic opponent Paul Morrison.
Morrison, the district attorney for Johnson County, spoke in favor of a bill that would shorten the time former convicts were kept under supervision after their release. The Legislature passed the bill in 2000. As a result, Carr’s probation on earlier convictions for drugs, theft and aggravated assault was shortened by one year. It would have ended June 1, 2001. But because of a mistake by the department of corrections, Carr was released from supervision in December 2000. Several weeks later, he committed his first murder.
Kline says the murders are linked to the law and to Morrison.
Stephan said that is “a ridiculous stretch of the imagination.”
Kline says he never promised Stephan not to make the Carr case a campaign issue. Stephan says Kline did make that promise.
Stephan also said he was upset that a church where Kline spoke this summer took up a collection that was then donated to a for-profit company run by Kline’s wife. Kline’s campaign pays the company for services.
Kline says it is all perfectly legal. Stephan says it is reprehensible.
Whom should people believe?
Stephan, a Republican, was Kansas attorney general from 1979 to 1995. His long tenure reflected his popularity with the voters. He was vigorous in promoting the rights of crime victims, strengthening laws against domestic violence and strengthening and enforcing open-meetings and open-records laws.
In Kline’s inaugural term in office, he has appeared to spend more time promoting his personal agenda and his own career than doing his job.
Bob Stephan has nothing to lose by telling the truth.
Can Phill Kline say the same?