Kansas GOP candidate for secretary of state fined $93,000 for breaking federal labor law

TOPEKA — Kansas secretary of state candidate Pat Proctor blamed zealous bureaucrats for assessing his restaurant businesses $93,000 in penalties after failing to comply with federal wage and overtime laws.

Proctor, a Leavenworth member of the Kansas House, a retired U.S. Army colonel and recipient of a doctorate from Kansas State University, said he ran into trouble with the U.S. Department of Labor because he didn’t understand fundamentals of labor law. He had been in the restaurant business for approximately 10 years when the department raised the issue with him in 2016.

“One day, here comes the labor department in, saying, ‘Hey, you owe all these people money because you didn’t record their hours,'” Proctor said during an interview with KMAN radio host Mike Matson. “Here comes this bureaucrat into the restaurant with some regulations that we didn’t know about, and it cost us.”

In Kansas, the secretary of state is responsible for oversight of elections and manages business records filed by companies throughout the state.

Proctor said the original complaint alleged Baan Thai Restaurant Inc., which he co-owned with his wife, should have paid 31 salaried employees $93,008 for work performed from 2014 to 2016. The labor department said Proctor’s obligations included $79,133 for unpaid overtime and $13,875 for failure to comply with the $7.25 federal minimum wage. In total, he was cited for 41 violations.

In the KMAN interview, Proctor said he couldn’t recall whether compensation paid his staff was negotiated down to $68,000 or $78,000.

Proctor is the Republican Party nominee to replace Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for governor rather than run again in 2026. Proctor’s Democratic Party opponent in the general election is Jennifer Day of Lawrence. The Nov. 3 ballot also includes Scott Morgan, the Lawrence nominee of the United Kansas Party.

“If Pat Proctor can’t pay his own employees, how can we trust him to run our elections?” Day said. “The fact that Proctor withheld tens of thousands of dollars from dozens of his employees — depriving workers of fair wages — shows he has no regard for the people of Kansas and that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

Day, who owns a real estate investment business, said the candidate elected secretary of state should be a standard bearer in terms of elections and business filings. Those duties start with being accountable for personal mistakes, she said.

“As a small business owner myself, I know how important it is that these offices be run with integrity,” Day said. “My opponent has proven that he won’t put Kansans before his own interests, and it’s a record Kansas voters deserve to know about.”

Proctor co-owns Baan Thai restaurants in Leavenworth and Manhattan and recently opened Noodles of Asia in Leavenworth.

In the KMAN interview, Proctor said kitchen staff in his restaurants from 2014 to 2016 were paid salaries above the minimum wage. He said the federal government claimed he should have kept records of his employees’ time on the job because working more than 40 hours per week was overtime requiring bonus pay. Proctor said he didn’t track the hours worked by those restaurant employees, which deprived them of income.

Proctor said if elected secretary of state he would reconfigure the office’s website and deploy artificial intelligence to provide information to business owners about federal, state or local requirements for operating companies of all types. He said the Kansas Legislature should pass a law exempting Kansas companies from regulatory fines if the website proved inadequate to prepare company owners.

“If the government is going to make me do something, in my mind, it’s the government’s responsibility to make sure I know I have to do it,” he said.