UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, April 20,1994
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Finney signs a book for Ethan Fincham, 10, at Whitson Elementary School in Topeka. She spoke at the school to promote literacy.
FOR FRIENDS AND FOES ALIKE, IT'S JUST 'JOAN'
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people, but some say she is not what the common people want representing them.
“When you see all the other governors around the United States, you don’t think, ‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful that we’ve got a governor like her,’” said Nick Haines, Kansas Public Radio Statehouse bureau chief. “She doesn’t really stand out as being someone that we can really say ‘Hey, look what Kansas has. We have Gov. Finney.’”
Jabbing with journalists
Joan Finney Governor of the state of Kansas
It was in March when Joan Finney called a press conference to discuss her proposals for reforming Kansas health care. Joined by House and Senate Democrats, she addressed her key points and then opened the floor to reporters' questions.
She speaks in a broken syntax, those who inhabit the Capitol's halls say, her statements often disjointed, her word choice more than a little imperfect.
"Iknew I would win. No doubts.I just knew it. I've known for many years that I would someday be governor."
"We stopped using a damn thing she said three years ago," said a State-house reporter. "Everything she said was such crap; we had to paraphrase it anyway."
most angry, rattling off terse comments that explode on her opponents like computer-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles.
"Why is this legislation coming out so late in the session?" a reporter asked.
"Should this have come out sooner in the session?" he pressed. "Are Republicans going to help pass it? What do these bills do?"
However, her fits of anger, at least in public, are rare, and the press is compelled to use "Finney-speak." It's something reporters prefer not to do.
They do call her "grandma" behind her back and mock her statements and positions back in their Statehouse press offices.
It was becoming clear that the governor's simple answers underlined her limited understanding of the bills.
She began deferring questions to key legislators, but after each legislator finished, the reporters directed more specific, more probing questions back to the governor. It was clear that Finney did not have all the answers.
After a particularly abrasive question, Finney looked over to State Rep. Tom Sawyer, the House Democratic leader. "I think we'll let Tom take this one," she said.
They vilify her,she says.
Forget her all-bul-declared war against former House Speaker Marvin Barkis. Never mind her long-running feud with Attorney General Bob Stephan. Since Joan Finney became governor, she has fought her longest running battle with the press.
Before long, Joan Finney had retreated to the back of the wood-paned room. She never approached the lectern again. Soon, with her staff in tow, she walked out, cutting the press conference short.
Finney can be at her best when she is
"I personally try to avoid doing things with Gov. Finney because, as far as a radio perspective is concerned, it is very difficult to get anything cogent and articulate from her." Haines said. "It is difficult to get consistent ideas from her that we can use."
This hate- hate relationship between Finney and the press has brought relations between the media and the chief executive to a low point. Often it appears to her as if the media go to extra lengths to expose her mistakes.
"If youre a reporter, youlike to make a governor look silly," said Martin Hawver, publisher of a newsletter on Kansas politics and state government. "It is a trophy you can put on your belt."
But it has not always been so, some reporters say.
But her claims of equanimity seem only half true. She knows too much about what people are writing about her not to have read the papers.
"I read the Wall Street Journal for news and the Topela Capital-Journal strictly to find who died and who's getting married," she says.
"She has, in many ways, received an easy ride from the media," Haines said. "They hid for a long time the mistakes she made — the sort of Dan Quayle-like boobs. They never necessarily reported on those things. She has not had a difficult time as far as the media are concerned."
But Finney can and does cite instances of the media snapping at her heels.
They report on her changing hair colors and her short skirts. A reporter even noted she wore two different shoes on a plane, she says.
They have written stories about her casting aside her security-driven cars in favor of a leisurely jog to work, albeit a good five miles from her residence to the Capitol. A complete distortion of the truth, she says. She was only walking down her long driveway to wait for the driver, she claims.
She has invited students from the state's two leading universities to the governor's mansion at Cedar Crest to entertain them with an hour's worth of stories about her confrontations with
But the attacks don't bother her.
In fact, the governor claims to read only one newspaper thoroughly, a paper not even from Kansas.
"I don't pay any attention to it," she says. "The people don't pay any attention to it. I don't know what some of these journalists are smoking."
the "Republican-dominated press."
Even the collegiate newspapers seem to rankle her on occasion.
"When I said I wasn't going to run, someone over at the KU paper wrote an editorial that said 'good,'" she says. "This one professor said that history will prove them wrong, so we'll have to wait for history, but I don't know where they are coming from."
A change in party plans
T the first gentleman says he is hardly the governor's closest
I policy adviser, but on that evening in 1974, when she was faced with one of her most difficult political choices, she sought his advice.
That was the year that changed Joan Finney's political destiny, the year she faced the proposition of jumping from the Republican to the Democratic Party.
Although she knew it was a decision she probably should make, she anguished over the possible fallout from friends she had made in the Republican Party.
In 1972, Finney sought the Republican nomination for a Kansas congressional seat. She had been a long-time aide of former U.S. Sen. Frank Carlson and thought that she was ready for the job. But influential Republicans, led by U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, supported a candidate against her in the primary. She lost.
"I just told her 'You make up your mind or get out of politics for good.' Spencer Finney said. "It didn't bother me that she wanted to change because she just didn't fit with the Republicans."
Joan Finney has crossed lines in Kansas society that no woman before her had ever approached. She says it has not been easy being first.
Two years later, she wanted to trv
again. This time the Republican leaders were more direct. They told her not to seek the seat; they had picked someone else for it — a man.
She lost.
Joan Finney began to question whether her values were correctly placed with Republicans.
"There were a lot of changes in the early '70s, particularly related to women, and the Republican leadership had asked me to step aside so they could run a man for Congress," Finney says. "That kind of made me think, and I had many friends in the Democratic Party."
She always had received offers to join the Democratic Party, and Gov. Robert Docking had just extended another — to run for state treasurer.
Finney mulled the decision to jump, but she was torn at the thought of hurting Carlson, who had become more than a employer. He was her political mentor$^{a}$
"I didn't want to hurt Sen. Carlson because he was such an important person to me," she says. "He said that they were using me to enhance their ticket, which they were. But the Democratic Party was where average people were, and Spencer and I were average citizens. We were not wealthy people."
It was a decision that was difficult for Joan Finney to make, but she jumped parties nonetheless. It was a decision, she says, for which the press has never forgiven her.
"I could do no wrong with the journalists as a Republican," she says.
"Now, the media try to paint me as crazy."
Being a woman has opened her up to more criticism, she says, and, in fact, some whispers in the Capitol's halls have said that her performance and perception across the state have made it more difficult for other women in the future.
However, some of Finney's
strongest defenders come from her former party.
"It remains to be seen what long-term effects her term will have," Kassebaum said. "However, it would be very unfortunate if people judged Gov. Finney and other women on anything other than the ability we have brought to the office.
"If people didn't vote for her because she was a woman or because they could not relate to her, then they diminish her and every other woman."
Her husband says he has seen the bias throughout the years.
"Because she is a woman, they give her a difficult time," Spencer Finney said. "All governors are going to be criticized no matter what they do, but it seems as if they single her out."
That accusation makes Bud Burke's head spin.
The Olathe Republican points to 14 women senators who he says makes his side of the Legislature sensitive and respectful of all people.
"We have respect for women and men based on their ability to perform the job," he said. "This governor doesn't want to talk about particulars of legislation because she hasn't had that experience and expertise."
Four years,mixed reviews
In January 1905, Joan Finney will stand on the steps of the Kansas State Capitol and watch her successor sworn into office. She says that she will leave office satisfied with her job as governor. But, for many, the swearing-in will represent the end of a long vacation for state government.
"She has had her defining moments as a governor," said State Rep. Ed McKechnie, D-Pittsburgh. "In terms of her success, they have been tremendous. The disappointment is that there is potentially a lot more that could have been done just on the little things that have gone through day in and dav out."
Joan Finney's legislative record is long and distinguished, she says. Others say her four years as governor has been a text-book case of what not to do.
Nothing riles Finney more than attacks or insinuations that her administration has been adrift.
"Where have I failed? What mistakes have I made?" she asks.
She points to lowering property taxes with a new school-finance program,passing worker's compensation reform,advancing discussion of health care reform and supporting higher education, for which she says has been generous.
It is the attacks from the universities, the criticism that she is not a supporter of higher education, particularly at
the University of Kansas, that she does not understand.
"It would have to be verified — you could ask the chancellor — but I have given that university more money than anyone else has," she claims. "And a major deal I funded was $18 million for Hoch."
However, critics point out that many of the victories Finney claims were reforms started in the Legislature and that gave the governor a free ride.
"I'd be interested to know what she thinks she has accomplished," Burke said. "She openly criticizes the Legislature because we haven't adopted her pet projects, but, fact is, the things she has taken upon herself to initiate have failed. We have steered our own course in the Legislature."
Even her own party voices some exasperation over her four-year term. "Democrats have been demoralized since the first year because it has been very difficult, and the only time you can get in to see the governor is during page pictures," McKechnie said. "She has been disjointed; she has been disconnected from the process. She has not provided a tremendous amount of leadership."
Some of the traits that Joan Finney has brought to the office are respected by legislators, however.
"I have never heard Joan Finney tell a lie," said State Rep. Clyde Graeber, R-Leavenworth. "The governor is always good on her word."
However, McKechnie said that Republicans were the ones most happy to see Joan Finney not seek reelection, not Democrats, who have been frustrated with the slow legislative process.
"The Republicans don't respect her; they fear her," he said. "The greatest sigh of relief in the state came from the Republican Party when she decided not to run because, even though they don't like her, and even though they don't respect her, she has built one helluva record — not a single general tax increase in four years."
A governor named Joan
Sitting at a table in Doug's Grill and Kettle, a Topeka diner, surrounded by the people of Kansas, the governor eats a chicken curry salad and sips ice tea — no sugar. The waiter approaches to see if the service is acceptable.
He calls her "Joan," not "Governor." That's OK with her.
"I like people to call me Joan," she says. "I don't mind being called Gov. Finney either, but the people, they are my friends, and you call a friend by their first name."
Her chief of staff and daughter, Mary Holladay, has work for the governor to sign at a dinner sponsored by the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.
★
Gov. Finney listens to the concerns of a constituent before leaving her office for lunch. Finney often takes time to hear directly from the state's citizens.