Kitty Frank to Challenge Jim Barnett for state senate seat in November
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 02:25 p.m., June 12, 2008
Updated 02:25 p.m., June 12, 2008
Kitty Frank of rural Allen decided to run for Kansas’ 17th District Senate seat, based on a quote from Indian teacher Mohandas Gandhi:
“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” Frank quoted Gandhi as saying. “I was really waiting for somebody to run. I thought it was time.”
Frank, a Democrat, filed by fee on Monday.
She will face incumbent state senator Jim Barnett, a Republican, in the November general election.
“I didn’t think he was representing the issues and people I care about,” she said. “I didn’t hear things that I wanted to hear. I was hoping someone would step forward and challenge him.”
When no one did, Frank decided that she would, with health care and the public-education system at the forefront of her mind.
Frank’s husband is a carpenter, a trade that often does not carry benefits. Because of that, she said she sees health-care reform in a different way than Barnett, an internal-medicine physician who also considers health care a major issue.
“We did go 16 years without health insurance when we were raising the kids,” Frank said. “... My response would be that he works in the field of health care. He’s not a consumer. We spent a lot out of the health care system for most of the years.”
Frank and her husband, Ken, moved the family to Allen 23 years ago. They have two children, Sabra, 26, circulation manager at a library in Ft. Knox, Ky., where she and her husband live, and Zach, 23, an oil driller who works out of Eureka and lives in Emporia.
Frank graduated cum laude from Emporia State University with a degree in economics. She said she “really depended on grants” for her education.
“I was a non-traditional student with two babies and three part-time jobs,” Frank said.
She said she has a “sense of community and caring about each other, the struggles families have.”
She worked for several years for the Girl Scouts of the Flint Hills as a grant-writer for an assortment of pilot programs, including Healthy Girls, anti-bullying projects, science, math, and other special projects for girls. She also worked for a time as community development manager for the Girl Scouts of the Kansas Heartland out of Wichita, after the Flint Hills Council merged with Heartland.
She worked earlier at Newman Regional Health, where she measured and compared patient satisfaction and patient outcomes and worked with teams to try to improve results.
“So I actually did kind of get a dose of both sides,” Frank said. “There’s this huge gap in what health care thinks people understand ... and what I had experienced. ...
“I’m not sure a person who’s so totally entrenched in the system can see all the sides and be able to hear the other side as well,” Frank said of her opponent.
Frank has been a member of the North Lyon County Board of Education and ran for Lyon County Clerk four years ago. She was an intern with then-State Sen. Jerry Karr in 1990 during her final semester at Emporia State.
“And that’s when I decided that some day I would be back. I always knew that some day I would get involved again somewhere and try to get back to the state capitol,” she said.
Frank said she was grant writer and project manager for the development of the North Lyon County Youth Association, which has been in existence for 10 years.
“It’s about a half-million dollars in community development funds that I put together from lots of sources,” she said.
She also is active in the Chase County Drug-Free Action team, calling it “a project I really care about.”
Frank is developing a campaign committee and has not yet selected a campaign treasurer or chairperson.