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Ranchers.net

Leaked Memo Fuels Kansas AG Concerns
by The Associated Press

September 15, 2006 - 9:00 pm ET

(Topeka, Kansas) GQ magazine declared he would do anything to stop abortion and called him the future of the anti-abortion movement. Planned Parenthood put him on a list of 15 Americans it saw as major threats to abortion rights.

Attorney General Phill Kline is frustrated that, as he seeks a second term, the national attention he has received for fighting abortion and championing conservative causes may overshadow his crime-fighting and other activities.

That has come to the forefront since a campaign memo he wrote in August, outlining an aggressive plan to court conservative Christians, was leaked anonymously to reporters. Kline's memo discussed political receptions held after services, directing his staff to get friendly pastors to invite "money people."

Democratic challenger Paul Morrison, the Johnson County district attorney, already was suggesting that Kline was pursuing a narrow, personal agenda as attorney general and has called Kline's memo cynical.

While Kline and his supporters believe he has received unwarranted attention for the memo, saying it demonstrates the tendency of news organizations to focus on his social views, it is those issues - particularly abortion - that have put Kline on the national stage.

"To a certain extent, he has sought out national attention," said Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist. "When GQ wants to do an article and asks to take your picture, you can say no."

Kline has received perhaps the most attention for a nearly three-year legal battle with two abortion clinics to obtain information from patient medical records. GQ profiled him in November; critics still contend he's on a fishing expedition that invades patient privacy, and Morrison has promised publicly to drop the battle.

Still pending is a federal lawsuit filed over Kline's legal opinion that health care providers and others are required under state law to report underage sex between consenting adolescents as potential evidence of abuse. A federal judge ruled otherwise, and Kline appealed.

Kline also supported the amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage, and he defended a law that allowed the state to punish illegal sex involving minors far more harshly if the participants are of the same sex, until the Kansas Supreme Court struck it down last year.

Also last year, Kline told some State Board of Education members that he would defend them in court if the board ordered stickers placed in science textbooks saying evolution is theory, not fact. The board didn't pursue it.

"I think it's Phill's personality," said Ryan Wright, executive director of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, a moderate group that is nevertheless supporting all GOP candidates. "Phill is charismatic and out in front. People either really like that, or they don't. With personalities like Phill, there's usually no gray area."

In the abortion records case, Kline said he needs information to determine whether the clinics are violating restrictions on late-term abortions and to prosecute rapists with child victims. Even before the Kansas Supreme Court said his access shouldn't be unfettered, a judge had restricted what he would see, and Kline has said he's never wanted to discover patients' names or disclose their identities.

"My position on the life issue is not born out of my faith but out of what I view the role of the government to be - to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable," Kline said. "I'm not doing anything but enforcing the law."

Supporters contend some of Kline's accomplishments have been forgotten.

In 2003, he intervened when the nonprofit Health Midwest hospital system was being sold to the for profit HCA Inc. Twenty percent of the assets of that $1 billion-plus sale eventually stayed in Kansas.

He also successfully argued the state's case before the U.S. Supreme Court in defending its capital punishment law.

Kline, pointing to the memo flap, said it's reporters who make his conservative politics an issue by focusing on them.

Fellow conservatives are as frustrated as Kline.

They note that a Johnson County group that has criticized him, Mainstream Coalition, has among its founders a retired minister and sponsored a meeting in January at a Lawrence church - something the media has not focused on.

"Morality appears to be higher on his radar screen than other politicians'," said State Republican Chairman Tim Shallenburger. "It does make him a bigger target from the left."

But Morrison suggests that Kline's preoccupation with a "personal agenda" has distracted him from fighting crime.

"The attorney general should represent the interests of everybody in this state, as opposed to those who share your beliefs," Morrison said in an interview.

Kline argues one reason abortion is an issue in the campaign because abortion rights activists and groups have targeted him for being willing to enforce restrictions.

He has been their target before, of course. In 2002, Dr. George Tiller, whose Wichita clinic is one of the two fighting Kline over access to patient records, contributed $153,000 to ProKanDo, an abortion rights political action committee. It then donated the same amount to a Democratic group, which sponsored radio ads against Kline on the eve of the election.

In July, ProKanDo had a fundraiser in Washington, and Kline said the group is certain to finance ads against him. Group spokeswoman Julie Burkhart, noted that Morrison didn't attend. The group hadn't contributed to Morrison's campaign through late July, but it still could help him directly, by financing its own ads or by giving money to Democratic groups.

"It's no secret that we are not fans of the attorney general, but we're raising money this cycle to benefit various pro-choice candidates across the state," she said.

This year, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's online magazine listed Kline as one of 15 "anti-choice extremists and political hard-liners," along with Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

On the same page was a link to material about "terrorists and extremist organizations."

"Who is being extreme here?" Kline said. "They want attorneys general who believe in abortion on demand without any restriction up to the moment of birth."

Stephanie Foster, the federation's vice president for public policy, said Planned Parenthood views Kline as the most active state attorney general in attempting to invade women's privacy and restrict abortion rights.

"We are certainly aware at the national level about Phill Kline," Foster said. "I think he's somebody has risen to the top in terms of a national awareness."

Beatty said Kline's case is an example of how a state politician who doesn't avoid - or even seeks - national attention on an issue can become defined by it.

"If you start getting that national attention, it can turn on you, too," Beatty said. "What you've accomplished can be overshadowed by other things."
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