Koesten runs for Kansas Senate as moderate Democrat
By Marcia Montgomery
Associate Editor
Joy Koesten is running for a seat in the Kansas Senate “for one simple reason,” she said in an interview with The Chronicle. “To keep this Senate seat out of the hands of a far-right extremist who wants nothing more than to take us back to the Brownback days.
“In 2018, voters in Senate District 11 overwhelmingly voted to elect Laura Kelly as our governor. At the same time, moderate voices like mine were pushed out of the legislature with the help of outside interest groups,” Koesten said.
Koesten wants to represent District 11, which includes parts of Leawood and Overland Park. She is running as a Democrat, having changed parties in 2018 after serving two years as a Republican in the Kansas House of Representatives. Her opponent is Kellie Warren, who defeated her in the 2018 House race.
Passionate about serving the constituents in her district, Koesten said she loved everything about being in the legislature. “It was a privilege to serve and to represent our community.”
As a state representative, Koesten proved she can work across party lines to get things done. Moderate Republicans and Democrats worked together to overturn the Brownback tax experiment and appropriate funds for schools. She said she’s proud of those votes. They also worked in a bi-partisan way to keep guns off college campuses.
Koesten said the biggest challenge facing the district right now is the pandemic, getting children safely back in school and citizens safely back to work. Plus, restoring the economy, which is going to be difficult without help from the federal government. She wants to have reasonable public servants in the Senate who are willing to work with the governor to manage the budget in a mindful, strategic way, rather than just across the board cuts.
“The far-right leadership will want to slash the budget right back to the Sam Brownback days. It doesn’t matter that we have 7,500 kids in foster care; it doesn’t matter that we have families who can’t get medical care,” she said.
Education and commerce are also on Koesten’s agenda. She said we need to fund public schools to make sure we are preparing the next generation of workers for the state. We must create opportunities to grow commerce and invite other small business owners and large companies into Kansas to create jobs.
“We’ve got to have smart, dedicated public servants serving in Topeka who aren’t driven by ideology, who are driven by sensible approaches to getting us back on track,” she said.
She is mindful that Kansas is fortunate to have made some really hard decisions in 2017-18 when the House restored some of the balance in the tax frame.
“Had we not done that we would not have been able to manage as well as we have over this pandemic. But we are going to have such a huge shortfall in revenues come January, we will have to be careful about how we appropriate those dollars,” she said. “We have to be able to approach the budget in 2021 with a very keen eye toward the future and you do that by investing in education, infrastructure, health care, so many things.”
It means Kansas will have to tighten its economic belt and do some heavy lifting when it comes to generating new lines of revenue, Koesten said. But also, state Senators are going to have to be able to work across the aisle to have a collaborative group of public servants who are willing to work with the governor and her leadership to make the right decisions for Kansas.
One of the reasons Koesten switched parties, she said, is that there is no place in the Republican Party for a moderate or dissenting voice.
“It didn’t really matter that I wanted to represent my district, it didn’t matter what they wanted; it was what the leadership wanted,” she said.
As she campaigns this fall, Koesten said she tells people “my policy positions have not changed on anything; I’m still the same person I was two years or four years ago.
“But it’s so important that we break the super majority in both chambers so that Gov. Laura Kelly has the allies she needs to craft decent policy.”
During the two years she served in the Kansas House, Koesten said she voted against several bills favored by the far right, such as an adoption bill that gives faith-based adoption agencies the right to discriminate against LGBTQ couples, Muslims and Jews. She also voted against an abortion bill that would have “mandated that doctors inform women that there was a way to reverse a medical abortion.”
“There were just so may far right issues that I would try to fight against,” she said. “I voted with Republican leadership probably 87% of the time, but on these issues of lowering the gun age to 18 or abortion care, all of these wedge issues that they continued to put out to divide us, I just stood firm and said I’m not going to vote that way.”
Koesten believes this is “truly the most important election of our lifetime, not only at the national level but at the state level and people have to understand that state policy affects them quicker and more drastically than federal policy because it happens faster.”
“So having people be aware of these state races is incredibly important and we have some very strong candidates on the Democratic side who want to do the right thing for Kansas.”
Koesten and her husband Stewart founded their own business in 1996, a growth management firm. After three years of helping him get the company up and running, she went back to school and earned her Ph.D. in communication studies at the University of Kansas. She then began a 20-year career in higher education, serving on the faculty at Washburn University and all three campuses of KU.
The Koestens were members of Kehilath Israel Synagogue, where they raised their children, for about 35 years. Then when they moved south about six years ago, they joined Congregation B’nai Jehudah. Stewart Koesten is on the board of the Jewish Community Foundation and past president of Jewish Family Services. Joy Koesten served as a board member and trained advocate for neglected and abused children at Jackson County CASA.
They have two grown daughters, Leah who lives in the Nashville area and Natalie and her husband Thom who are raising their two children in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The Koesten’s two daughters and their two grandchildren attended preschool at Congregation Beth Shalom.
For more information about Koesten, go to www.joykoesten.com.
Koesten said her campaign is seeking more volunteers to make phone calls and send out texts to help get out the vote.
Advance voting by mail begins Oct. 14. Koesten said voting by mail is a safe way to vote but the sooner voters can drop their ballots in the mail, at a ballot box or at one of the polling places, the better.
Koesten suggests visiting votejoco.com, a site sponsored by area chambers of commerce who serve Johnson County, for more information about where to vote, to view a sample ballot, learn about candidates, etc.
For more information about Koesten, visit www.joykoesten.com.
