Posted on 07/08/2012 2:17:41 PM PDT by kathsua
State Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, says information on what she calls a "fake" web site is wrong or misleading and she has contacted the Kansas Democratic Party.
The content on the website, http://janpauls.org, is authorized by and paid for by the Kansas Democratic LGBT Caucus.
It is one of the caucuses affiliated with the Kansas Democratic Party, but "we don't control them," said State Democratic Party chairman Joan Wagnon.
Wagnon said it was unusual for a caucus affiliated with the party to take aim at an incumbent Democratic legislator. But Pauls holds views and has taken actions - such as her efforts to thwart removal of a homosexual sex ban in statutes - that has angered gay-rights supporters and has run counter to the party platform.
"It creates a dilemma," Wagnon said, because other activists in the party, such as labor, support Pauls.
Hutchinson Democrat Erich Bishop is challenging Pauls in the Aug. 7 primary. Republican Dakota Bass is running unopposed in his primary. Both Bishop and Bass have been active in the Hutchinson chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition.
"We are not involved in the primary," Wagnon said of the state party. It will be up to Hutchinson voters to settle the Pauls-Bishop contest. The Kansas Democratic Party will back the winner of the Democratic primary, Wagnon said.
Efforts to reach Ryon Carey, head of the Kansas Democratic LGBT Caucus, were unsuccessful Friday afternoon. The website lists David Dove as treasurer of the caucus. Dove said he did not set up the site.
The site does not mention Bishop or Bass.
Pauls said the site's name - janpauls.org - does not convey it will be a "hit" site.
She also took exception to the site's statements that she "voted to raise your taxes on food and other necessities" and supported a bill "suppressing voting rights."
The sales tax hike, pushed by former Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson, was intended to get revenues for schools and people with disabilities and transportation, she noted, and Democratic leadership in the Senate and House voted for the voter identification bill, too, she pointed out.
The website says she "waged a war on women." Pauls said she is pro-life.
She did not dispute the site's reference to her public censure in 1989 by the Kansas Supreme Court when she was a Reno County District Court judge.
Wagnon agreed with Pauls that the website was misleading on the sales tax and voter I.D. votes, and Wagnon said Pauls does not hate women.
However, Wagnon was initially silent on the site's claim that Pauls "supports Fred Phelps' bigoted views." Pauls took exception to that point, too, citing her involvement in legislative attempts to curb Phelps' picketing at funerals.
Kansas Equality Coalition Executive Director Thomas Witt, a critic of Pauls, thinks the legislative record speaks for itself. For example, he noted, she voted to hike the sales tax - "the most regressive tax," Witt emphasized. And while she can say the governor wanted it, she cast the ballot, he said.
Pauls said flyers handed out in Hutchinson also contain a photo that has been manufactured, showing Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and Pauls. Pauls is minus a jacket in the picture, and Pauls said she would have been wearing a jacket if she was with the governor.
Homosexual Democrats have two shots at Pauls. One is running against her in the primary. The other changed parties so he could run against her in the general election.
The sad part is that, from her record, she sounds like she’s to the right of our presumptive republican candidate for POTUS.
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