Democrats’ ad links Ty Masterson to Sam Brownback; Kansas GOP nominee claims it’s a ‘lie’

TOPEKA — The Democratic Governors Association’s latest ad for Kansas gubernatorial candidate Cindy Holscher alleges Republican nominee Ty Masterson claimed a key role in shaping income tax cuts that cast the state into a budget abyss rather than promote economic growth.

Holscher, the Democratic nominee, has sought throughout the campaign to link Masterson with former Gov. Sam Brownback, especially his tax reform catastrophe. Masterson, after reviewing the DGA’s commercial, declared it a “lie” and argued the DGA engaged in deceptive editing.

The new DGA digital ad pointed to video of a 2017 Kansas Republican Assembly meeting in which Masterson referenced authorship of tax legislation signed by Brownback in 2012 to lower individual income tax rates and shield more than 300,000 business owners from state tax liability. Brownback’s objective was to kill off the state’s income tax and spark a supply-side economic renaissance.

The DGA ad abbreviated Masterson’s statement during the Republican Assembly gathering, restraining his remark to say: “The Brownback plan, which by the way, I wrote.”

The DGA commercial included Masterson’s remark in 2023 on High Plains television that Brownback wasn’t the author of the 2012 tax legislation, but “just got blamed for it.”

Johanna Warshaw, deputy communications director of the DGA, said political connections between Masterson and Brownback should be clear to voters ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

“The Masterson agenda is the Brownback agenda,” she said. “No matter how hard Ty tries to distance himself from his role in the failed Brownback experiment, the truth is he wrote the disastrous plan — and he was caught admitting it on tape. Kansans across the aisle do not want to go back to the disastrous Brownback days of four-day school weeks and businesses fleeing the state.”

Masterson: It’s a ‘lie’

In response, Masterson said the DGA misrepresented his role in developing the 2012 income tax package. He said the DGA created a deceptive narrative by weaving together snippets from Republican Assembly and High Plains appearances that occurred six years apart. A key piece of video from the Republican Assembly was drawn from Masterson’s comments just over one hour into the forum.

Masterson said he specifically referred during the Republican Assembly to his idea from 2007 or 2008 to use a portion of state revenue increases to buy down the state’s income tax rates. At the Statehouse, such a mechanism has been called a ratchet.

Here is a longer version of Masterson’s quote, which includes text deleted by the DGA: “The original ratchet had nothing to do with the Brownback plan, which by the way I wrote back in 2008, maybe, or seven, I don’t know. All it did was, as long as you had growth in your revenues, a certain portion would ratchet your income tax down.”

Masterson, the Kansas Senate president who has represented Andover in the Legislature for 20 years, said the DGA’s ad perpetrated a “lie” and “they got caught.”

“They have video of me talking about my plan and saying it had nothing to do with the Brownback plan,” Masterson said. “So, they chopped up my own sentence and stitched together a fake video to change the meaning. When you have to doctor a video to make your opponent say something he never said, you’ve admitted you can’t win on the truth. Cindy Holscher’s allies are lying to Kansans, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed.”

Tax reform history

In terms of the 2012 tax cut, Brownback referred to the policy overhaul as an “experiment,” but he promised Kansans the changes would deliver an “Pulp Fiction”-style adrenaline shot to revive the state’s sluggish economy. It failed to inspire extraordinary growth in Kansas. From 2013 to 2016, Kansas’ gross domestic product expanded 4.8%. That was less than half the national average of 11.9% for the period.

The law did slash state revenue by nearly $1 billion. Without adoption of equivalent spending cuts, the result was multiple years of state budget shortfalls. The Legislature became desperate to balance the budget and ended up retaining what was to have been a temporary hike in the statewide sales tax. State lawmakers rapidly expanded the state’s borrowing, cannibalized the Kansas Department of Transportation’s budget and interfered with appropriations to K-12 public schools and social service programs.

Masterson served as chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee during this period and was partially responsible for advancing gambits aimed at preserving the Brownback tax agenda.

In 2017, a bipartisan coalition of legislators including Holscher but not Masterson voted to spike much of the Brownback tax program. The bill raised individual income tax rates and abolished the business tax loophole. Brownback vetoed the bill, but was overridden. Masterson characterized the repeal bill as “a piece of garbage.”

Holscher’s view

During the 2026 campaign, Holscher has sought to connect Masterson’s politics to the legacy of Brownback, who at one time was the most unpopular governor in the nation.

During the Kansas State Fair debate with Masterson, Holscher declared her GOP rival the equivalent of “Brownback 2.0.”

“Under Brownback, Kansas public schools cut Fridays and ended the school year early,” said Holscher, a state senator from Overland Park. “Kids lost learning time. Teachers permanently left the profession. It took our state years to recover. Ty Masterson championed that experiment. Now he wants to repeat it. Ty Masterson equals Brownback remastered.”

Global Strategy Group, which regularly works with Democratic candidates and the DGA, says Brownback has remained unpopular. The pollster says 64% of those surveyed viewed Brownback negatively, while 21% viewed the former governor positively.

The Legislature in 2025 adopted a ratchet for lowering individual and corporate income tax rates in Kansas, despite a veto by Gov. Laura Kelly. The trigger for adjusting rates was tied to whether the treasury received revenue above an inflation-adjusted baseline.