Governor Laura Kelly delivered her final State of the State address in January 2026, marking the end of seven years in office. House Speaker Dan Hawkins provided the Republican response, offering his party’s perspective on Kansas’s direction. Together, these speeches reveal both genuine areas of bipartisan accomplishment and fundamental disagreements about credit, priorities, and the path forward. Assistance from Claude AI.
The Chiefs Stadium: A Shared Victory with Different Emphasis
Both Kelly and Hawkins pointed to Kansas’s success in attracting the Kansas City Chiefs as a major achievement, though they emphasized different aspects of this win. Kelly devoted significant attention to the stadium deal at the opening of her address, describing it as “historic” and “game-changing” news that would make Kansas a “sports and entertainment mecca.” She emphasized the bipartisan cooperation required to make it happen, specifically recognizing Lieutenant Governor David Toland and local leaders like KCK Mayor Christal Watson and Olathe Mayor John Bacon.
Hawkins mentioned the Chiefs victory more briefly, folding it into his broader narrative about Republican economic leadership. This difference in emphasis reflects a common pattern in the speeches: Kelly highlighted collaboration across party lines, while Hawkins credited Republican legislative majorities for Kansas’s successes.
Tax Relief: Agreement on Results, Disagreement on Credit
Perhaps the clearest area of policy agreement involves tax cuts, though the two leaders tell very different stories about who deserves recognition. Both speeches celebrated the elimination of the state sales tax on groceries, the elimination of state income tax on Social Security benefits, and increased child tax credits. These represent genuine bipartisan achievements that both parties can legitimately claim.
Kelly framed these accomplishments as products of working together across party lines, noting that Kansas cut “over $1 billion per year in taxes” through collaborative effort. She positioned these tax cuts within her broader narrative of fiscal responsibility, pointing out that Kansas transformed inherited deficits into surpluses while cutting taxes.
Hawkins, by contrast, attributed these same tax cuts specifically to “the Republican majority,” listing them as part of the “Better Way plan” that Republicans implemented. He added that Republicans “eliminated the state portion of your property tax for 2026” and “lowered state income tax rates” as part of their agenda to address cost of living concerns.
The factual reality is that both Democratic and Republican votes were necessary to pass these measures in Kansas’s divided government, where Kelly has served as a Democratic governor with Republican legislative majorities. The disagreement is not about whether these policies happened, but about who gets credit for them.
Education Funding: Bipartisan Support with Different Narratives
Both leaders identified public education as a top priority, though they approached the topic from different angles. Kelly spent considerable time celebrating the recovery of Kansas schools from the “disastrous tax experiment” of the previous administration and the challenges of COVID-19. She emphasized that Kansas has now achieved “record funding for our schools” and noted that graduation rates “are now the highest they have ever been.”
Hawkins also identified schools as “our number one budget priority, with billions invested each year,” but he quickly pivoted to arguing that “money is only one piece of the education equation.” This reflects a fundamental difference in emphasis: Kelly wanted to celebrate the restoration of school funding as a major accomplishment, while Hawkins wanted to shift focus toward accountability and non-funding reforms.
Cell Phones in Schools: Clear Agreement
One of the most specific areas of policy agreement came on the issue of cell phones in schools. Kelly explicitly endorsed “the bipartisan proposal to ban cell phone use during the school day,” thanking both Majority Leader Chase Blasi and Minority Leader Dinah Sykes for their work on the issue. She connected this to broader concerns about mental health in children, noting that “smartphones and social media have exposed our children to a world they are not ready for.”
Hawkins also strongly supported removing cell phones from classrooms, citing Florida’s 2023 ban and subsequent improvements in test scores and attendance. He called electronics in the classroom a distraction and argued that “getting cell phones out of the classroom is one meaningful approach we should adopt now in Kansas.”
This represents genuine bipartisan consensus on both the problem (cell phones harming student learning and mental health) and the solution (banning them during the school day). It’s the kind of specific policy agreement that can lead to actual legislation.
Mental Health: Investment versus Skepticism
Kelly devoted substantial attention to mental health, describing the gaps in Kansas’s mental health system when she took office and cataloging improvements made during her tenure. She pointed to the implementation of the 988 Crisis Hotline, the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic model, increased mental health services in schools, and plans for a new state psychiatric hospital in South Central Kansas. She emphasized that “even more must be done,” calling for more treatment beds, more professionals, and more crisis response in her budget.
Hawkins did not address mental health services in his response, focusing instead on other aspects of health care like hospital reimbursements, telemedicine, and prescription drug costs. This silence is notable given Kelly’s emphasis on the topic, and suggests that mental health expansion may not be a Republican legislative priority even if it receives some bipartisan support.
Water Resources: Agreement on Importance, Questions on Approach
Both leaders identified water as a critical long-term issue for Kansas, though they approached it differently. Kelly called water “a time-sensitive issue” and noted that “the future of our entire state is dependent upon the actions we take today.” She praised the bipartisan Water Task Force led by Representative Jim Minnix and Senator Kenny Titus, and called for establishing “a dedicated funding source, much like we have successfully done for our highways.”
Hawkins highlighted that he established the House water committee during his first term as Speaker, and noted that this committee “has already established long-term funding for the state water program, prioritized the revitalization of outdated infrastructure, and are implementing a strategy to ensure Kansas water resources are sustainable long into the future.”
Both leaders clearly see water as important, and Hawkins’s response suggests Republicans have already taken action on funding and infrastructure. The question is whether further legislative action will be needed this session, and whether Kelly’s call for a highway-style dedicated funding mechanism represents a new proposal or an endorsement of existing Republican efforts.
Government Spending: Fundamental Disagreement
One of the sharpest disagreements between the two speeches concerns government spending and program expansion. Kelly emphasized fiscal responsibility through balanced budgets, debt reduction, and a strong credit rating, all while maintaining and expanding services. She defended the creation of new initiatives like the Office of Early Childhood, describing how “we blended 20 programs into one” to create efficiency and better serve families.
Hawkins took direct aim at Kelly’s approach, stating that Republicans are “resisting massive new government spending programs like those repeatedly proposed by Governor Kelly. Enough is enough.” He argued that “you will never get government spending under control if you keep adding new programs,” and claimed that in the past year alone, “we reduced state spending by over $200 million.”
Hawkins also accused Kelly of covering up “waste, fraud and abuse in government welfare programs,” specifically criticizing her resistance to Republican efforts to remove “folks who are deceased or illegal immigrant enrollees from welfare programs.” This represents a serious accusation about program integrity and suggests significant disagreement over how to manage state benefit programs.
The Civility Theme: Kelly’s Central Message
The most distinctive aspect of Kelly’s speech was her extended meditation on civility in politics. She devoted substantial time to criticizing national political discourse, describing how elected officials at the federal level “treat one another in the most uncivilized ways imaginable” and have turned technology “into weapons for elected leaders to ignite chaos, and anger, and even violence.”
Kelly explicitly rejected this approach, arguing that Kansas’s successes over the past seven years came from “elected officials from different parties, with different ideologies, from different parts of the state, to come together, meet in the middle, and find common ground.” She noted that her administration enacted “587 bipartisan bills” by practicing civility, compromise, and consensus-building.
This theme of civility served multiple purposes in Kelly’s speech. It allowed her to contrast Kansas favorably with national politics, to claim credit for a collaborative approach even when working with Republican majorities, and to implicitly criticize those who she believes have brought Washington-style partisan warfare to Kansas politics. The fact that she devoted so much attention to this topic in her final address suggests she sees it as her central legacy and her most important warning for the future.
Hawkins did not directly address Kelly’s civility theme in his response, instead focusing on policy accomplishments and the Republican agenda. This silence might be strategic—engaging with Kelly’s civility argument could look defensive or could validate her framing of Kansas politics as at risk of Washington-style polarization.
Healthcare: Different Priorities
The two leaders approached healthcare from notably different angles. Kelly focused primarily on mental health services and special education funding, areas where she argued Kansas has made progress but needs to do more. She called on the federal government to fulfill its obligations on special education funding while committing state resources to fill the gap.
Hawkins concentrated on cost and accountability issues in the broader healthcare system. He criticized “enormous federal and state government funding pumped into the system” even as “costs keep skyrocketing.” He called for improving hospital reimbursements, enhancing telemedicine, creating oversight of the Rural Health Transformation Fund, and implementing transparency in hospital pricing. He also took a clear shot at proposals from “some” (presumably Democrats) who support “payouts to big hospital systems and programs based on buzz words instead of actual care.”
This difference reflects broader ideological divides: Kelly emphasized expansion of services and meeting needs, while Hawkins emphasized controlling costs and increasing accountability.
The Narrative Battle: Who Built Kansas’s Success?
Beyond specific policy disagreements, the two speeches represent competing narratives about Kansas’s trajectory over the past seven years. Kelly told a story of recovery and renaissance, describing how she inherited a state “in a world of hurt” with a budget “pieced together with gimmicks and funny money” and schools forced into four-day weeks. Through bipartisan cooperation and civility, she argued, Kansas achieved remarkable turnarounds in education, economic development, fiscal health, and national reputation.
Hawkins told a story of Republican legislative leadership addressing real-world problems like inflation and cost of living. While he acknowledged some bipartisan achievements (particularly on the cell phone ban), his speech primarily credited “the Republican majority” and “Republicans in your state House and Senate” for tax cuts, spending control, and policy improvements. He positioned Republican legislators as the true champions of Kansas families, implementing the “Better Way plan” despite resistance from the governor.
Both narratives contain truth. Kansas did recover from serious fiscal problems under Kelly’s governorship, and this required cooperation with Republican legislatures. Republican legislators did push for many of the tax cuts and spending controls both leaders celebrated. The disagreement is about emphasis and credit, which matters politically even when the underlying facts are not in serious dispute.
Looking Forward: Session Priorities
Kelly’s priorities for the 2026 legislative session focused on continuing mental health investments, providing free school meals to students on reduced-price programs, passing the cell phone ban, and addressing the water crisis comprehensively. These represent a mix of expansion (mental health, school meals) and bipartisan agreement (cell phones, water).
Hawkins’s priorities emphasized controlling spending, eliminating waste and fraud in welfare programs, implementing the cell phone ban, addressing healthcare costs and transparency, and tackling housing affordability through deregulation and tort reform. These reflect more of a cost-control and accountability agenda.
The cell phone ban appears likely to pass given explicit support from both leaders. Water policy will probably advance given bipartisan recognition of its importance, though details of funding and approach remain to be worked out. Mental health expansion and school meal programs may face more skepticism from Republican legislators, particularly if they’re seen as costly new programs. Healthcare cost controls could gain traction if Republicans can find bipartisan support for transparency and accountability measures.
The Bigger Picture: Divided Government in Action
These speeches illustrate how divided government functions in practice. When a Democratic governor must work with Republican legislative majorities, both sides can legitimately claim credit for shared accomplishments while maintaining distinct priorities and narratives. The tension between Kelly’s civility theme and Hawkins’s partisan credit-claiming reflects this dynamic.
Kansas has indeed achieved significant policy accomplishments over the past seven years, from tax cuts to school funding to economic development. The Chiefs stadium deal represents exactly the kind of bipartisan cooperation Kelly celebrated. Yet Republicans control the legislature and can credibly argue they drove much of the policy agenda. Both things can be true simultaneously.
The challenge for Kansas going forward—and the reason Kelly devoted so much attention to civility in her final address—is whether this model of divided government producing bipartisan results can survive in an increasingly polarized national political environment. Kelly clearly worries that “the ways of Washington have crept into our conduct here in Kansas,” while Hawkins shows less concern about this threat, instead emphasizing continued Republican leadership as the key to Kansas’s future.
The 2026 legislative session will test whether the patterns of cooperation both leaders celebrate (even as they disagree about who deserves credit) can continue to produce results on challenges like water resources, education, mental health, and cost of living. The areas of clear agreement—cell phones in schools, water as a priority, the Chiefs as a win—suggest bipartisanship remains possible on specific issues. The areas of disagreement—government spending, program expansion, welfare program integrity—suggest significant philosophical divides remain. How Kansas navigates these tensions in Kelly’s final year may determine whether her civility legacy endures or whether more partisan approaches gain ground in Topeka.