Politics can be nasty, but lately the talk in Kansas has been especially ugly toward one uniquely accomplished but “controversial” native son. The Kansas City Star, the most influential newspaper in his community, calls this fifth-generation Kansan a “reckless crusader” and “slimeball” and caricatures him as a cannibal and child molester.
Seems there are no limits to the abuse heaped on Phill Kline, district attorney for Johnson County in Olathe, Kan.
In 36 Star editorials on Kline between 2003 and 2008, 32 have been critical and only two positive.
Kline apparently crossed the Star when, as attorney general in 2003, he began investigating Planned Parenthood, a major contributor to candidates the Star has endorsed, including Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Then, on Oct. 17, 2007, as a district attorney, Kline brought 107 misdemeanor and felony complaints against Planned Parenthood — the first time since Roe v. Wade in 1973 that the nation’s largest abortion agency has been charged with a crime.
Planned Parenthood appears to be concerned. It has sued Kline, asking the Kansas Supreme Court to order the return of patient records obtained from an Overland Park abortion clinic. The records allegedly reveal that the clinic staff falsified documents to hide evidence of child rape and performed illegal late-term abortions.
If Planned Parenthood is found guilty, it faces more than $2.5 million in fines. It could also lose more than $300 million a year in federal funding.
But the patient records incriminating Planned Parenthood remained under court seal at presstime, giving the Star the freedom to speculate on Kline’s motives. And the paper is spilling a lot of ink in exercising that liberty. Citizen’s search of the Star’s online news archive in early June found 669 files on Kline and abortion.
One egregious example of the Star’s warped view was a Dec. 14, 2007, opinion entitled “Let the curtain fall on this tragic comedy.” Star columnist Barbara Shelly said Kline had waged “legal warfare on abortion clinics and teenage sexual activity.” She concluded: “The drama has been riveting. But around Kansas, people are saying they want both of these characters [Kline and the Attorney General who had just resigned over a sex scandal] off the stage. As Shakespeare said in his play ‘Henry IV’: Away, you moldy rogue, away!’”
The average Kansan reading that column might get the impression that Kline has been primarily a single-issue opportunist who had no interest in his other duties. And maybe that’s just what the Star intended. But it wouldn’t be true.
Running the extra lap
Kline was born in Kansas City, just nine miles from where his great-great grandfather settled and built a wagon shop in 1870.
The third of five children and raised by a single mother, Kline admires her perseverance and tenacity. Janet Kline told Citizen the exact moments when she saw those same qualities in her son — the day he came home later than normal from running laps at his high school track.
“I said ‘Where’ve you been?’ and he said, ‘I started on the way home, and I cut off one of the laps, and I thought about it and I had to go back and run two laps to make up for it.’
“Now that’s discipline,” Janet said with a satisfied smile.
After graduating from Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, Kline attended Central Missouri State University on a wrestling scholarship. With degrees in political science and public relations, he enrolled at the University of Kansas School of Law.
“I fell in love with the law,” Kline told Citizen. “The law should be a reflection of who we desire to be as a people. The bedrock is based on virtue and values — in other words, based on truth. Law has to resonate with the truth.”
While still enrolled in law school, he made his first run for the Legislature, winning his party primary, but falling short against an incumbent in the general election. He earned his law degree a year later, and became a fulltime litigator with Blackwell Sanders, a Kansas law firm.
In 1992, he ran again for the Kansas House of Representatives and won. As chairman of the House Tax Committee, he became a champion of tax reform as well as crime victim rights. Because of his efforts on behalf of the developmentally disabled and mentally impaired, Kline received a “Legislator of the Year” award.
During his tenure, Kansas abortion laws came up for review. Kline recalls a pivotal moment during the hearings when a Methodist Archbishop testified.
“He testified that those who oppose abortion are ungodly because they are not extending grace,” Kline said. The archbishop’s “spiteful, blunt, broad, baseless condemnation of the other side” galvanized Kline.
“My faith caught up with me,” he said.
In 2002 he won election as Kansas Attorney General, and under his leadership state and federal authorities launched a regional cyber-crimes laboratory that has helped put 100 child-sex predators behind bars — an achievement the Star overlooked in a lengthy 2003 story on the lab. Kline successfully prosecuted a Newton couple that had sexually abused mentally impaired adults for decades — a breakthrough featured in a three-part series in the Topeka paper but with no mention of Kline’s role in the Star.
Instead, the Star seems obsessed with Kline’s prosecution of Planned Parenthood, often repeating without rebuttal the abortion agency’s charge that Kline is “politically motivated.” The Star’s “Midwest Voices” section is even more biting.
“He’s a source of endless entertainment, as long as you’re a fan of car wrecks,” wrote Star columnist Mike Hendricks about Kline on May 18. “Our boy Phill is practically a one-man demolition derby.”
Citizen visited with Hendricks at his home in Lenexa. The columnist said he likes Kline and that he doesn’t think the Star is “out to get him,” but admitted he and others in the media see Kline as a one-trick pony.
“As both attorney general and district attorney, he said that his main focus would not be abortion, and then it turned out to be the focus of his terms in office.”
If anyone involved is focused on abortion, it’s the Star. And it’s been rewarded for its efforts. Planned Parenthood gave the paper a Maggie award (named for founder and eugenicist Margaret Sanger) in 2006 “for editorials supporting reproductive justice, family planning, and the right to confidential health care.”
Kline shakes off the Star’s criticism of him and its advocacy for Planned Parenthood.
“I’ve learned — through experience — not to define the success of my actions by how the world defines success,” he told Citizen. “People who made a difference are often not seen as successful.”
Freelance writer Barbara Curtis conducted interviews and provided key passages for this story.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read more about all that Phill Kline accomplished as attorney general and district attorney. You’ll find a 14-minute video detailing Kline’s successful prosecution of Arlan Kaufman, who performed “nude therapy” on mentally impaired patients in his care for several decades.
