08/06/2026
Taxpayers Deserve Answers About Vicki Schmidt’s Campaign and State Office
Kansas taxpayers deserve a clear accounting of whether Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt’s state office has been used to advance her campaign for governor.
The available public record does not yet prove an illegal campaign expenditure. It does, however, reveal a pattern serious enough to require investigation.
During 2026, the Kansas Insurance Department increasingly issued taxpayer-funded announcements centered on Schmidt personally rather than the Department’s work. Approximately two-thirds of the Department’s news-release titles through July identified “Vicki Schmidt” or “the Commissioner” as the actor—a substantial increase over prior years.
Even routine programs were personalized. Scholarship announcements that previously described students receiving awards from the Kansas Department of Insurance were reframed in 2026 as “Vicki Schmidt awards” or “Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt announces.”
The timing also warrants scrutiny. On July 29, just six days before the Republican primary, the Department issued an achievement-focused release promoting Schmidt’s annual report and quoting her about returning money to Kansans. Yet the report itself stated that it had been issued in January. Taxpayers are entitled to know why the Department waited until immediately before the election to publicize it.
The Department’s taxpayer-funded messaging also closely mirrors Schmidt’s campaign claims. Her campaign promotes figures concerning reduced business costs and money recovered for Kansans that are substantially identical to statistics developed and publicized by the Department.
There is also personnel overlap. Mandy Roe has been identified publicly as both Schmidt’s Department chief of staff and her campaign spokesperson. That alone is not unlawful. It does, however, make records concerning employee time, state equipment, email accounts, photographs, graphics, mailing lists and communications between the Department and campaign especially important.
Kansas law prohibits using public resources or compensated employee time for express campaign advocacy. The Department’s releases may avoid explicit phrases such as “vote for” or “elect,” making a direct statutory violation difficult to establish from the releases alone. But avoiding those words does not answer whether taxpayer-funded personnel, equipment, data or communications were coordinated with the campaign or provided it an in-kind benefit.
Schmidt should voluntarily release the relevant communications, drafts, publication schedules, metadata and resource-use records. If there was no coordination, transparency will resolve the issue. If state resources were used for campaign purposes, Kansas voters deserve to know before—not after—the election.
This is not merely partisan criticism. It is a basic question of whether an elected official’s public office remained separate from her political campaign.
Kansas taxpayers paid for the Department of Insurance. They did not pay for a gubernatorial campaign.
