Partisanship trumps patriotism as Kelly vetoes effort to protect military installations in Kansas from CCP

An effort by the Kansas legislature to protect the Sunflower State’s land from acquisition by subversive foreign powers was nixed recently after Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the Kansas Land and Military Installation Protection Act.

Like many state legislatures across America, the Kansas legislature recently took decisive, but carefully considered, action to restrict ownership of land inside their state by foreign adversaries. (Foreign adversaries are defined in the Code of Federal Regulations and currently consist of China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Russia and North Korea.) Currently, some 21 states have restrictions on foreign land ownership.

Both the duly elected Kansas House of Representatives and the Kansas Senate voted positively for the Kansas Land and Military Installation Protection Act to prohibit foreign principals from the countries of concern from holding any interest in certain real property in the state. The language of the Act prohibited a principal of a foreign adversary from owning land within 100 miles of a military installation.

The House voted 86-39 and the Senate 24-14. In Kansas the Republican Party has a supermajority in both chambers, but the bill was the result of extensive and patient study, with the legislature taking its action through careful, reasoned analysis, including holding a study committee on the subject over the summer of 2023.

The chief concern is China, which increased its holdings of US land from $80 million to $1.8 billion between 2010 and 2020. Not included in China’s acquisitions were attempts by Communist Chinese principals to acquire land adjacent to Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and tens of thousands of acres of land in the same county as Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas.

In the case of Grand Forks, the commanding officer of Grand Forks Air Force Base objected strenuously to the land acquisition, calling it a threat to national security, effectively killing the deal and clearing the way for legislation through the North Dakota legislature in 2023.

The acquisition of the land in Texas resulted in the Texas legislature blocking a major Chinese project and Governor Abbott signing the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act in 2021.

Common-sense national security concerns weren’t enough for Kansas’ governor however. For reasons known only to Kelly, she vetoed the Kansas Land and Military Installation Protection Act, choosing not to protect military installations in Kansas from Chinese surveillance, reconnaissance and spying and clearing the way for Communist Chinese principals to go ahead and acquire any land anywhere they please in the Jayhawk state, potentially putting the lives of our military heroes at risk.

Unfortunately, Kelly’s actions mirror a trend which as appeared in state legislatures across the country where Democrat governors have proven increasingly unwilling to sign legislation advanced by legislatures where Republicans hold a strong majority, even on topics which are fundamentally non-partisan and play no role in the on-going “culture war.”

For those with a memory of the Cold War, bipartisan leadership on issues of national security used to be entirely noncontroversial, and both Republicans and Democrats competed to show their support for American national security and willingness to stand up to foreign adversaries.

Decisions like this one are why citizens across America are increasingly questioning not only the judgment, but also the patriotism of politicians, who put political partisanship over national security.