KC Buzz Blog

Morrison has payday lenders in his sights

    Paul Morrison's taking aim at payday lenders.
   The new Kansas attorney general announced the creation of a task force to look at ways of preventing predatory lending at the neighborhood lenders. The task force will make recommendations to the Legislature, possibly including caps on the interest rates the lenders can charge.
   Morrison said too many low-income residents can fall into a crushing cycle of these loans as the interest mounts.
   “These businesses tend to target the most financially vulnerable citizens in our communities,” Morrison said.
   Whitney Damron, a lobbyist with the Kansas Payday Loan Association, defended his clients, and said that without payday lenders, there would be no place for these people to go to get the short-sterm, small loans they need.
   Holly Petraeus will lead the task force. Petraeus has worked on efforts to stop predatory lending near U.S. bases. She is the wife of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the top officer at Fort Leavenworth who was recently tapped to command U.S. forces in Iraq.
   This was Morrison's first announcement made in his new office (the one formerly occupied by Phill Kline).
  One quick observation: Gone is the Bible Kline displayed prominently on the desk.

Posted by David Klepper

Source of anti-Morrison calls revealed

   Kansans have wondered about those phone calls they're getting that say incoming Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison is corrupt.

   Who's behind the calls?

   Turns out it's a California man who blames Morrison for legal problems dating to 1989.

   The man also owns a call center.

   The Lawrence Journal-World has the story.

Posted by Steve Kraske

Could OR stand for Overwrought?

    Here's a different take on Paul Morrison's landslide victory over Phill Kline in the race for Kansas AG.

   Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion group known for organizing blockades of abortion clinics across the nation, filed its version of the race on the Christian Newswire. The headline: "Morrison Slithers into Kansas AG's Office on Backs of Dead Babies"

    Perhaps they can be forgiven a bit of hyperbole. It's been a bad week at Operation Rescue.

   First, they lost Kline. Then they lost a referendum in South Dakota, where voters rejected a ban on virtually all abortions.

Posted by Kit Wagar

Morrison: Abortion records probe an 'open case'

    With anti-abortion groups frustrated by his victory, Kansas Attorney General-elect Paul Morrison said Wednesday he won't automatically drop a review of abortion records, though he's not opposed to having a "neutral" party intervene. Here's the full AP story.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Kline, Morrison await results at election parties

    Kansas Republicans will be watching election results tonight at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Topeka. State Democrats will be across town at the Ramada Inn.

   Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline will be at the Capital Plaza while his Democratic opponent, Paul Morrison, will attend a watch party at the Ritz Charles conference center in Overland Park before heading to Topeka around 8 p.m.

    U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore, a Lenexa Democrat, is hosting the Ritz Charles watch party.

   Voters who describe themselves as "pro-life" were enthusiastic about Kline after casting their votes today.

    "I vote for life," said Carolyn Seifert after voting at a Lenexa polling place. "Therefore, I voted for Phill Kline. There was no debate in my mind."

   Morrison had his voters, too.

   "I'm a person of faith, a practicing Christian, and I think he's (Kline) taken his agenda a little too far and imposed it on the rest of the population," said Jim Kelly, who voted in Johnson County for Morrison.

Posted by Jim Sullinger

Abortion clinics want Kansas court to take control of records

  Here's the latest on the request by Kansas abortion clinics into statements by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that he had obtained information about abortion records.  The clinics want the Kansas Supreme Court to seize the records from Kansas AG Phill Kline. He calls a request for a special prosecutor "frivolous."

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Topeka Capital-Journal endorses Kline

     The Capital-Journal ed board comes out for Phill Kline in the Kansas AG race but explains:

   "Kline, who wears his Republican conservatism on his sleeve, has ruffled feathers by pursuing records from abortion clinics and holding private meetings with conservative members of the Kansas State Board of Education. This endorsement acknowledges those concerns. We urge the attorney general to stick to his responsibilities as the state's chief law enforcement officer and avoid a political agenda he seems to pursue, at times openly and combatively. We don't believe that agenda serves well either law enforcement or the state of Kansas."

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Just checks please, no cash over $100

    As the election nears and tensions rise, a favorite campaign sport is nitpicking the opponent's campaign.

   A good example is the Kansas attorney general's race. Phill Kline, the Republican incumbent, found three instances in his opponent's campaign finance report in which a campaign finance law was broken.

   Democrat Paul Morrison's report had three instances in which cash donations of more than $100 were made, a technical violation of the law. When informed of the problem, Morrison said the money would be refunded.

   Not to be outdone, Mark Simpson, Morrison's campaign manager, found a $500 cash donation on the Kline report from a man in Leavenworth.

   Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said a lot of campaigns are ignorant of this legal provision and mistakes are common and usually rectified immedicately when they are pointed out.

   Williams said donations are easier to track when checks are involved. Cash is much harder to trace, she said, when the commission is investigating a complaint.

Posted by Jim Sullinger

Standing by her allegation

   Kelly Summerlin, the woman who accused Kansas attorney general candidate Paul Morrison of sexual harassment in 1991, issued a statement Friday about the incident. In it, she stands by her account of the alleged harassment and accuses Morrison of releasing "misleading and false information." Here's the release.

Posted by Kirk Weber

UPDATE: Here's Jim Sullinger's story in The Star Saturday.

Morrison finishes one debate only to start another

  The Topeka debate today between Paul Morrison and Phill Kline was contentious but nothing like Morrison would endure shortly afterward.

   He agreed, to his campaign's regret, to spend a few minutes on the Raubin Pierce and Megan Mosack program live on WIBW radio, Topeka -- a politically conservative talk show that confronts guests.

    For seven minutes Morrison faced combative questioning about threatening televisions stations that didn't pull a pro-Kline commercial and why he was criticizing Kline for seeking medical records from abortion clinics when he has subpeonaed thousands of medical records in criminal cases.

   As Morrison was trying to explain, the show's hosts kept trying to interupt him. It must have been high radio drama for the station's listeners.

   At one point, a clearly frustrated Morrison asked his inquisitors: "I just got out of a debate. You want to have a second one here."

   As Morrison left the interview, Pierce said the district attorney slammed the headphones on a table and stormed off.

   Morrison's campaign manager,  Mark Simpson, said he watched the interview and denied that it ended that way. He said the two talk show hosts have been promoting Kline's candidacy for weeks.

Posted by Jim Sullinger