KCFreePress.com

Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder has three framed pictures hung on the wall behind his desk at the capitol. One is an 1886 map of Johnson County, including the Overland Park district he serves. The other two are prints of old views of Washington, D.C.

As Yoder, who serves as the chair of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee, spends late nights in Topeka working to allocate $13 billion to state agencies before the end of the legislative session in May — a task he says is personally rewarding, if sometimes thankless — he makes no bones about the fact that very soon he’d like to have an office in Washington where he could hang those Washington prints.

“It’s been a dream of mine to run for Congress,” Yoder said in an interview between committee meetings last week. “I don’t see being ambitious as being a personal fault. I think wanting to serve and putting yourself in the public forum where you’ll be criticized, be mischaracterized — to participate in that takes a lot of energy and a lot of courage.”

Eight years after coming to Topeka as a freshman state representative just out of law school, Yoder now chairs the largest and most powerful committee in Kansas government, and he also leads the fundraising race in the crowded field of Republican contenders hoping to replace retiring Congressman Dennis Moore.

The path that has put Yoder, 34, in the position to make a serious run at becoming the youngest Kansan elected to Congress since Dan Glickman (who was 32 when he took office in 1977) is one marked by clear ambition — and some of the criticisms such ambition often brings with it.

From modest background to prominence in state politics

Yoder grew up in modest circumstances, a “farm kid from rural Kansas,” as he puts it, in a town outside of Hutchinson. His grandmother was born into an Amish family, and he still has many Amish and Mennonite relatives. He was active in debate, forensics and tennis at Hutchinson High School before heading to the University of Kansas, where he quickly got involved in campus politics. He sought leadership positions throughout his time in Lawrence, serving as the president of the campus pre-law society, the president of his fraternity, and, during his fifth year, as KU’s Student Body President.

(“I want students to know that if they want to come talk to me about something, they can come to my office and I will be available to them,” he told the University Daily Kansan in the Fall of 1998, saying that he aimed to make student government more accessible to students.)

The KU student body presidency led to Yoder’s first foray in state politics. Then-State Rep. David Adkins, who left a position at KU Med Center in 2008 to become the Executive Director of the Council of State Governments, had served in the same role during his time at KU, and felt that having a member of the “fraternity” of former KU student body presidents working for him as a legislative intern would be a good fit.

Both Adkins and former State Rep. Dean Newton, who hired Yoder as an intern in 2001 after he’d left Adkins’ office, say Yoder exhibited a penchant for hard work and intellectual curiosity during his time with them — and neither are at all surprised that Yoder is in a position to make a run for Congress at the age of 34.

“[If someone told me back then that Kevin would be running for Congress in 2010], I probably would have thought, ‘What took him so long?’” Adkins said. “Kevin has always had a 'fierce urgency of now' about him. He knows exactly what he wants to accomplish, and he sets out and accomplishes it. If he were a bear out hunting salmon, very few fish would get away.”

Adkins said he saw in Yoder back then a quality of character that he thought would make Yoder a strong candidate for higher office.

“His core values are unmistakable,” Adkins said. “Every position he’s had, he’s used it to further what he thinks is good policy. And he applies passion and persistence. There’s never been any sense of entitlement in anything he does. He’s a Boy Scout. He’d be a character in the Andy Griffith Show.”

To be sure, that characterization is unlikely to be parroted as the campaign for the District 3 seat heats up. Yoder’s critics paint him as a political opportunist who has lets his ambition dictate his public stance on the issues. The comment sections of stories about Yoder on local Web sites are often sprinkled with references to Yoder’s involvement with the Democratic party during his college years — a chapter that has provided fodder for opponents from across the political spectrum.

“Kevin Yoder is a chameleon,” said Tyler Longpine, Communications Director for the Kansas Democratic Party. “He does very well at blending in with the current political trends. He was involved with the Democrats as an undergraduate. Then he ran campaigns as a moderate for the [Kansas] legislature. And now he’s running as a conservative. He’s been all over the map.”

One of Yoder’s opponents in the District 3 primary, the conservative Patricia Lightner, offers an even more stark assessment of Yoder’s political posture.


“He’s a liberal, when it comes down to it,” Lightner said. “And I frankly think people should be questioning where he’s really stood on all of the issues. This march to the right he’s been doing is just show for the primaries.”

For his part, Yoder points out that he’s not the first person to run for office to have shifted political allegiances. Ronald Reagan, Yoder notes, was also a Democrat early in his life.

“At age 18, I had a different view of the world than I did when I got out of college,” Yoder said. “I’d never paid a mortgage, I’d never paid a car loan. I’d never paid a lot of bills. I think when I first came up to the capital, I believed that state spending could solve a lot of the problems in our communities. But the more I participated in that, the more I realized that there was never really a limit to what we could spend. There was never a time when enough was enough. My views changed as I got older, and studied more history, and got more experience.”

With the budget deadline for the current legislative session looming, Yoder is spending more time holed up in his capitol office than on the campaign trail. But he hopes that when he starts campaigning actively, voters will respond to what he sees as a mix of experience and youth.

“I think we bring more energy and enthusiasm to the race and the district than anyone else,” Yoder said. “I think the Third District needs and energetic, fresh, new voice that has the types of ideas and the types of experiences that I bring to the table. What I do for a living right now is balance budgets. And that’s what Congress needs. It needs people that have that experience, and the ability to say no when spending is getting out of hand.”

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