Lee A. Johnson has visions — nightmares, really — of judicial campaigns devolving into whether voters are attracted to candidates with legal experience and formidable intellects or those with “beautiful hair and nice teeth.”
“Do you want a constitutional scholar or a movie actor? An impartial jurist or someone who campaigns well?”
Johnson served on the Kansas Supreme Court for 12 ½ years, stepping down in 2019.
The Justice maintains that if a proposed constitutional amendment is successful, “a round-headed kid like me from Caldwell wouldn’t have a chance of getting on the Court.
“I was not active in politics or the Kansas Bar Association. I was not ‘connected.’ But I knew the law, and I wanted to serve.”
Johnson, 78, is also the brother of Iola’s Nan Yokum.
THAT SAME scenario is what keeps Carol Beier, also retired from the high court, working to inform fellow Kansans about the Aug. 4 statewide ballot measure that would not only have voters unilaterally decide who sits on the court, but also remove the safeguards that have kept politics as much as possible out of the equation.
“What we have now would be abolished,” said Beier, 67, who served from 2003 to 2020.
Far-fetched? Tell that to Wisconsin voters, where more than $100 million was spent in the 2025 election for a position on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, far and away more than any state has ever spent on a judicial election.
The bulk of the contributions were from outsiders. Elon Musk gave almost $18.7 million. Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity was good for $3.3 million.
“Big money has ruined us,” Janine Geske, a retired Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said in an interview with the Center for Media and Democracy in the aftermath of the election.
Beier and Johnson will be in Iola Thursday, May 14, to discuss the ballot measure and answer questions. The forum is at 6 p.m. in the Creitz Recital Hall in the downstairs of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. The Register is sponsoring the free event.
“It’s not a debate. It’s a conversation,” Johnson said. “We understand there are complaints about the current system, some of which are justified. We believe those could be addressed. Overall, however, we’re in favor of keeping the current system, and we’ll explain why.”
IF APPROVED, the amendment would change several practices.
First, it would remove the Supreme Court Nominating Commission whose responsibility is to vet applicants to the Court. The Commission typically spends months going over an applicant’s 100-plus pages of personal and professional information, winnowing the field to three, which is then submitted to the Governor for his or her final determination.
An important part of the nine-member Commission is that eight of its members equally represent Kansas’s four Congressional Districts, “ensuring it represents the state as a whole,” said Beier. The Commission is made up of five attorneys and four lay persons. Fellow attorneys from each District determine their representative member while the Governor appoints its lay members. The Commission’s chair is determined by members of the Kansas Bar Association.
