Michael Capps (politician)

Michael Capps is an American politician. He is a member of the Kansas House of Representatives for the 85th district.

Career

In 2016, Capps ran for the Kansas House of Representatives for the 95th district against incumbent Democrat Tom Sawyer. Each was unopposed in the primary. Sawyer won with 54.4% against 45.5% of the vote for Capps.[1]

The Sedgwick County Republican Central Committee appointed Capps to fill the remainder of the term for the 85th district after the resignation of Chuck Weber, effective July 14, 2018.[2] Not long after his appointment to the vacant seat, allegations of child abuse surfaced. The Kansas GOP cut ties with Capps after it was revealed that he was found guilty of child abuse in 2017. The party asked him to withdraw from the November election to retain his District 85 seat. "Unfortunately, he has chosen to remain a candidate," the party's letter said. "Mr. Capps has been made aware that his decision to stay in the race is not supported by the Kansas Republican Party." The Kansas Department for Children and Families had found Capps guilty of child abuse but the state had overturned the decision for technical reasons.[3]

2019

Capps was sworn in to serve a full 2-year term as a Kansas State Representative on January 14. 2019. Prior to the start of the 2019 legislative session, Capps pre-filed his first piece of legislation, HB 2025[4], aimed at including a person who has filed a petition for adoption in the definition of an interested party in the child in need of care code. While HB 2025 never emerged from committee, Capps spoke frequently during the 2018 election campaign on the importance of reforming the Kansas Department of Children and Families. Capps also introduced HB 2285, a bill creating the Kansas legal tender act; providing for sales exemption from and modification for sales of specie legal tender. This will was ultimately consolidated into other legislation passed in the 2019.

In addition to legislation sponsored by Capps, he joined colleagues in co-sponsoring X bills, including:

  1. HB 2110[5], Amending the Kansas no-call act to restrict text message solicitations and certain uses of automatic dialing-announcing devices.
  2. HB 2165[6], Providing membership in the KP&F retirement system for security officers of the department of corrections.
  3. HB 2274[7], Requiring notification to patients that the effects of a medication abortion may be reversible.
  4. HB 2288[8], Creating the Kansas student and educator freedom of religious speech act.

While sponsoring or co-sponsoring a total of 6 bills, Capps also co-sponsored 6 House Resolutions, including:

  1. HR 6005[9], Congratulating and commending the members of the 2019 Kansas teach of the year team.
  2. HR 6007[10], Congratulating and commending Angela Hamilton of Sedgwick County EMS.
  3. HR 6009[11], Honoring the Kansas Farm Bureau.
  4. HR 6010[12], Recognizing February 7m, 2019, as JAG-K day at the capitol.
  5. HR 6013[13], A resolution strengthening the sister-state relations between Kansas and Taiwan.
  6. HR 6022[14], Honoring Korean War veterans from Kansas.

Capps' complete voting record for 2019 included a total of 164 votes.

2018

In 2018, Capps ran for the seat in House District 85, giving his address as 3103 North Governeour, Wichita, with a mailing address of 6505 E Central Ave #110.[15] He had filed to run for seat 97, but after Weber resigned, he said he lived at the Governeour street address, a home which had been scheduled to be sold at auction on June 27, 2018. Democrats complained it was not Capps' true address, but the state Objections Board, composed of Lieutenant Governor Tracey Mann, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Secretary of State Kris Kobach, all Republicans, refused to uphold the complaint.

Capps received 54% of the vote to 46% for Democrat Monica Marks.[16] In 2018, Capps was endorsed by the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas, Kansans for Life, and the National Rifle Association. The Kansas Policy Institute gave him a 94% fiscally conservative evaluation in 2019.

2019 Wichita Mayor election

During a hotly contested Wichita, Kansas mayoral runoff nonpartisan election to be held on November 5, 2019, in an attack on the challenging candidate, a Democrat, a salacious video appeared on-line.[17] The anonymously produced and circulated video made a claim of sexual harassment against the challenger that had in fact been copied, word-for-word from an actual claim, made against an anonymous Republican state senator in a Kansas City Star article two years earlier. Although elaborate covers had been implemented in Wyoming and New Mexico to conceal the identities of the perpetrators of the smear, an investigation by the Wichita Eagle revealed that the producer of the defamation was Capps. It had been filmed a downtown Wichita office building that Capps shared with another alleged ally of the incumbent mayor, a Wichita City Councilman.[18][19] After Sedgwick County, Kansas Republican party chair Dalton Glasscock publicly called for Capps to resign, Capps then claimed, less than two days before the election, that Glasscock had actually approved the production of the ad, an allegation which Glasscock denied.[20]

When an Eagle reporter went to the home in the wake of the October 2019 accusations about the fabricated attack video against Brandon Whipple, an unidentified young man living there said he was "house sitting" and hadn't seen Capps, "in a while."[21]

gollark: Generate the outcome deterministically from the hashes of the inputs or something.
gollark: Perhaps this technology could somehow be adapted to the raffle.
gollark: That would make it explicitly net negative.
gollark: There are three outcomes, roughly:- it is fair, you win: you gain the total money- it is fair, you do not win: you lose what you spent- it is biased/evil/infohazardous and you lose money: you lose what you spent
gollark: We can calculate the expected value of this quite easily.

References
  1. 2016 General Election Official Results, Kansas Secretary of State. Retrieved November 6, 2019.
  2. GOP appoints Michael Capps to empty Kansas House seat; Democrats push for grand jury probe, Wichita Eagle, Chance Swaim, July 21, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  3. Kansas GOP Cuts Ties With Michael Capps After Child Abuse Accusations Surface, KCUR, Stephen Bisaha, August 31, 2018. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  4. "HB 2025 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  5. "HB 2110 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  6. "HB 2165 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  7. "HB 2274 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  8. "HB 2288 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  9. "HR 6005 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  10. "HR 6007 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  11. "HR 6009 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  12. "HR 6010 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  13. "HR 6013 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  14. "HR 6022 | Bills and Resolutions | Kansas State Legislature". www.kslegislature.org. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  15. Candidates for the 2018 General (unofficial), Kansas Secretary of State. Retrieved November 6, 2019.
  16. Kansas House of Representatives District 85, Ballotpedia. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  17. Mystery company targets Whipple with allegation originally made against Republicans, Wichita Eagle, Dion Lefler and Chance Swain, October 17, 2019.
  18. Political smear ad accused Kansas Democratic lawmaker of sexual misconduct actually involving Republican, Washington Post, Katie Shepherd, October 30, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  19. Rep. Capps can’t explain why his firm's listed as creator of anti-Whipple fake-ad site, Wichita Eagle, Dion Lefler and Chance Swain, November 1, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  20. GOP lawmaker accuses county Republican chair of approving ad against mayoral candidate, Wichita Eagle, Dion Lefler and Chance Swain, November 3, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  21. Sedgwick County Republican Party calls on GOP Rep. Michael Capps to resign over video , Wichita Eagle, Dion Lefler and Chance Swain, November 1, 2019. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
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