Ty Masterson, Kansas Senate President and Gubernatorial Candidate, On Winning GOP Primary and Facing Democrat Cindy Holscher | 8-6-26
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34 segmentsThere's nothing like the American Express Platinum card. Find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points. Learn more and find out your offer at Americanexpress.com slash explorer dash platinum. Terms apply. the main two candidates in the Kansas gubernatorial race. Ty Masterson, with a dominant win on Tuesday night, joining us here as the Republican nominee on KCMO Talk Radio. Ty, good morning. Congratulations officially. Good to have you on the show. How surprised were you by your own margin of victory on Tuesday night? I mean, candidly, I was surprised myself. You know, you're always poll testing and stuff, and we always ran off the most pessimistic one. But even the most optimistic poll we had internally, it only had me up 15. So the win by 20, it was just, yeah, blew me away. And what really shocked was our margin in Johnson County. Yeah, no, you, I don't have it at the top of my head, but it was a double-digit win, I believe, in Johnson County. Is that right? Yeah, just shy of 20 points right there in Johnson. It's 19, 19 point margin. Wow. Okay. So what do you attribute that to then? I think really just to the message we had in the way we ran our campaign. I think it's, you know, I tried to stay pretty much all positive on me and not going, you know, negative on our friends. Because, you know, those are family fights. That's what I hate about primaries. It's like I told the story in my acceptance speech at the end or victory speeches. It's kind of like, I grew up with all brothers. And, you know, we'd have a fist fight amongst ourselves. But, you know, we had to come together because when you turned on the family, we were all together. So. In those times, you say things you regret. And so I tried to be not say anything I would regret. Well, I know yesterday there was a, the state party put on a unity luncheon. Do you feel like the band is back together, so to speak, or there's still some open wounds to heal? I mean, I think both are true, right? There's some open ones. I thought their timing of it was probably not ideal the very next day, right, to say after somebody just got smoked to go in and try to get him to say we're all the same team. But it actually felt good. There was somebody from at least all the major camps that came in, delivered a unity message. And it landed well. I think it all in all was good. And I do think, well, because it's, look at the race. I mean, the. Stakes couldn't be higher, you know, the lines couldn't be cleaner. I mean, I'm just so thankful. It's just the two of us in that choice and not, you know, all these third party things that, you know, would allow a lane like Laura Kelly had to win and never get 50% of the boat. Yeah. Did you hear from all the major candidates on Tuesday night or yesterday morning?
I did. I did. So Scott conceded pretty quickly and was really, really gracious than Vicki and then a little bit longer than Phil called me himself. Okay. And it was, yeah, all on the word. And they committed support, so I'm proud to have it. Okay, great. Now, you mentioned something there that I wanted to bring up, and that is we all remember four years ago, Derek Schmidt's the nominee. Laura Kelly's running for re-election, and out of nowhere comes Gomer, also known as Pyle, Dennis Pyle. I always forget his real name, but he shows up at nowhere and he throws the whole thing into chaos. There's no way that can happen now come November. It's going to be Ty Masterson, Cindy Holscher. There's no way to kind of change what the ballot's going to look like at this point, or is there still an opening for that? No, that timeline told on Monday at noon before the election for anybody to come in. third party like that. So it's straight up. And that's the problem. That allowed for that. That's how you get the same electorate electing Laura Kelly to the governor and Chris Kobach to the AG's race, right? Because you had the split on the governor's side. That's right. That's right. Okay. So now look ahead. You've got Cindy Holcher. I don't know if this is the candidate that you wanted or not. But as you see it, drawing the clear distinction between yourself and... Overland Park, Cindy Holscher, what is the clearest distinction between the two of you right now as you get set for this general election campaign? Oh, man, it is. You know, having served with her, you know, she's in the Kansas Senate there with me. I mean, we have, she has given us so much material and proof on where she's at. I mean, when you've got a Democrat candidate that our governor, Democrat governors, has called too extreme. That tells you where we're at. So we're just mowing through it. I mean, she has public postings and things that I think when the broader Kansas people see where she really is, this is going to be a fun race. She is the candidate I wanted. I was more concerned about Ethan Corson because being backed by Laura Kelly, who, you know, chairs the National Democrat Governors Association would have meant tens of millions of dollars pouring into Kansas. I don't know. You get to see if they. put that much money in behind Cindy. Now, of course, the top of the ticket for the Democrats is going to be Cindy Holcher and Adam Hamilton, who of course is running against Roger Marshall, who I know was with you the other night. So you mentioned, hey, you're happy with your 20-point winning Johnson County, but they're going to drive up some big numbers here with those deep Johnson County ties. How do you make sure that you don't end up like Derek Schmidt. God bless the congressman, but he got smoked in Johnson County four years ago and he had a tough time making up some of those votes around the state. Of course, Pyle didn't help. But how do you make sure that you at least fight here in this third district area specifically in Johnson County?
We'll put the same effort in in the general that we did in the primary in Johnson County. I think one of the mistakes back then was just writing it off saying I can't win it, so I'm going to go try to run my numbers up everywhere else. Well, I understand, in a general, I might not be able to win Johnson, but I just need to lose it by less to win the state. So we're going to put an effort in there. Yeah. Now, it also seemed like the reality is, you know, there are people who are Trump voters. You've got the Trump endorsement. But there are some Trump voters who only vote for Trump when he's on the top of the ticket and on the ballot. And with the Republican Party having more of these lower propensity voters around the country and Kansas having this gubernatorial election in a midterm year, how do you make sure that? those people understand what's at stake for the future of Kansas, and they don't sit this one out. I mean, you nail it there, Pete. That is our challenge on the Republican side, is just turnout in a non-presidential election. And you just saw in this primary, I think it was only 40% of Republicans showed up and like 50% of 6% of Democrats. We can't have that kind of thing happen in the general. We have to get out there and turn out the vote. So there'll be a lot of effort put into getting the vote out. You mentioned too, and you've talked a lot about it on this show and on the campaign trail. You've got, I believe it's six children. They all are calling Kansas home. And you're really doing this for them as much as you are, obviously, yourself, if not more for them than you are yourself. If you were to, you know, be in office, get elected and spend, let's say, two terms in the governor's mansion, what would you want your legacy to be defined by? Oh, man, multiple fronts. I want a more prosperous Kansas. I know that's a big term. We've got the property tax crisis. We've got a fix, and we've got a literacy crisis, and I end doing it for my kids. I mean, it's not exactly, I know people think it's a great title, but it's not a lot of fun to have somebody spend millions and millions of dollars calling it sleazeball. So that's a little bit of wading through that stuff. But I think I want Kansas to be stronger, safer, freer. I mean, we're going to do everything we can to do that. Is there a state that you? Or maybe multiple states that you say to yourself, hey, I like what this governor's done. I want to steal this or take this from this person, take that from that person. Is there a state or a couple of states that you've developed relationships with that you want to kind of pick and choose from what they've done well? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you get, I watch what Ron DeSantis does a lot. A lot of the stuff we've done on public safety has been through that. You know, he's turned Florida reliably red. Used to be a swing state. That's the goal for me, too. I want Kansas to be reliably red. I like what Sarah Mike Huckabee Bernie Sanders, then Arkansas. Oh, and then the Mississippi miracle going on down there in literacy and education. You know, they've gone from. 49th in the country to the ninth. And we're worried the bottom third. So, yeah, there are places that I'm watching because I don't want to try to reinvent something. I want to push something through that works. The goal is to actually be effective and move change as quickly as I can. And what are you going to do when your opponent hits you? Because I already heard her do it the other night in her acceptance speech. Hey, we've got to fully fund the schools, the special education. There has not been enough funding for that.
And they'll point to that as to why Kansas education numbers are not where they need to be when it comes to math and literacy. And listen, that sells well in places like Johnson County with some of these big school districts. So what's the best, not even defense, but what's the best way to put yourself an offense on that issue? going after the outcomes. I mean, what we've proven in Kansas is that money in and of itself doesn't solve the problem. We continue to plow more and more money in. You can look how we, what we spend on public education compared to all our surrounding states where our outcomes are at. And we have got to change the system. side of things. So we've got to get the outcomes. Like you are going back to Mississippi, and they jumped through what they did. It's got serious, excuse me, got real serious about literacy. And so I think that's an argument we can win because you're looking at the outcomes right now. She's looking at dollars. We're looking at outcomes. All right. Last thing for you. Ty Masterson on KCMO had a big win, of course, Tuesday night in the Kansas gubernatorial primary for the GOP. What is... The way to fix. Someone called in last hour and asked this, so I might as well ask you. The way that these ballot initiatives show up to regular people going into the voting booth. I mean, that thing the other day looked like it was from Windows 98 on an old Microsoft Word document. There's cross outlines that no one knows what's going on. Why do they look like that? And is there a way to simplify them for future ballot issues? Here's the problem there, and I hate that we're in this position. Our Constitution requires the entire amendment be published. And that's the legal change in the document. And so that is what has to go on. So we work to try to get an explainer, you know, a brief for the beginning. And so that's why a yes vote is so difficult on almost any amendment, because when there's anything contested, because every time you have to print the entire amendment on the ballot. And there's no way to change that. That would require a change in the state constitution. Itself, yeah. Wow. Okay. But you know what? I kind of like that idea. We should probably go down and fight that battle. Yeah. I mean, could you reverse engineer it where you figure out a way that the no side is what you actually want the outcome to be? Right. We're going to find out, Pete. All right. We'll see. Well, we'll talk to you plenty going forward, Senator Masterson. Thanks for the time. Congratulations on the win. And good luck as the campaign, the general campaign, gets underway here. Thanks, Pete. All right. You as well. Ty Masterson on KCMO Talk Radio. The U.S. soccer podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this men's world cup, I'm so happy to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup, and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. The U.S. soccer podcast. Presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite.
platform. Mike Drop, hosted by former Navy CEO, Mike Ridland. How would you characterize your prowess? I'd say my style is that I just kind of outwork everybody until I get there because I'm not a quitter. It's just you. It's yourself. Everything else is team-oriented. The motivation, it was a sort of anger at myself for being weak. That ends up being the driving factor. That anger, that pride, that ego, I think it's a muscle. It gets stronger. When you take that voice seriously, you start to change your life. Mike Drop, follow and listen on your favorite platform.