Yes We Kansas was founded by Overland Park city councilmember Logan Heley in 2018. Logan ran for the Kansas State Senate in 2016 in large part to bring a younger generation’s voice and perspective to Topeka. During his campaign, Logan learned firsthand the difficulties of fundraising for a competitive race as a young Democrat. He formed Yes We Kansas after his successful campaign for Overland Park city council in order to address the financial barriers that exist for Democrats whose voices are desperately needed in the legislature and at the local level.

Yes We Kansas contributed over $5000 to Democratic candidates running for state house, county commission, and mayoral positions in 2018 and 2020. We are so pleased that we’ll have 5 young Democrats representing us in the legislature this coming session. But there is still so much work to be done.

The average age of a member of the legislature is 61 (58 for the House, 63 for the Senate). Kansas’ median age is 37.

In order to have a more representative government, and one that is thinking about the needs of current and future Kansans, we must elect more young Democrats to the legislature. Millennials have experienced a generation-defining terrorist attack, a decades-long war, the Great Recession and housing market crash. Younger Millennials and Gen-Z Kansans experienced the consequences of the failed Brownback tax experiment which resulted in consistently underfunded education. Now, both generations will live with the consequences of a global pandemic and economic depression, and the deliberate design by ultra-conservative extremists to decimate our infrastructure which has led to thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs here in Kansas.

These generations will inherit the decisions made by government in these unprecedented times, and they deserve a seat at the table. That said, young people are not monolithic. We support candidates who are advocates for:

• Medicaid Expansion and other systemic reforms that would make healthcare more accessible and affordable/free

• The LGBTQ+ community 

• Reproductive justice

• Anti-racism

• Expanded voting rights

• Environmental justice

• Criminal justice reform

• A fair and humane immigration system

• Gun reform

• Investment in early childhood and mental health programs

While there are many strong, qualified leaders in our communities who would excel at legislating, our state’s system is designed to make it extremely difficult for young people to create meaningful change within government. Our legislature meets for only part of the year (January to mid-May) and legislators are only paid for that time in Topeka; typically, a legislator makes less than $22,000 annually. It is quite difficult to keep a job outside of the legislature that accommodates the legislative calendar as well as the other responsibilities required of an active, engaged legislator throughout the rest of the calendar year.

While Yes We Kansas cannot raise the legislative salary (though we support that!) or make our legislature year-round (which we also support!), we can help these candidates with their fundraising. In Johnson County, the average cost of a state house campaign was $27,783 in 2018; for a state senate campaign, it was $74,582 in 2016. First-time candidates face significant hurdles in fundraising; these are even larger for young candidates whose peers are early in their careers.

Our goal for 2020 is to support Democratic candidates in Johnson County who are under the age of 36 by contributing a maximum contribution to the campaign for the primary and general elections ($1000 total for state house candidates and $2000 total for state senate candidates). If we reach this goal, we plan to give as much as we can to as many candidates as possible under the current average age of the chamber for which they are running.