By STEPHEN KORANDA

Kansas Democrats scored critical wins in the last election. Now they’re struggling to transform those victories into Democratic-minded policies, and to hold on to the corners of power they’ve captured.

They meet in their annual convention this weekend to pick party leaders and search for consensus on strategies for governing and see if they can repeat last year’s election wins next year.

“It’s a time for Democrats to celebrate,” said Kansas House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer in an interview, “but we need to keep working and moving forward.”

In 2018, Democrat Laura Kelly won the governor’s race and Democrat Sharice Davids unseated a Republican incumbent to represent the Kansas City suburbs in Congress.

The 2020 election will put all the state legislative seats on the table and a prize Democrats have dreamed of for decades: an open U.S. Senate seat they like to think they can win.

Next year’s races could launch Democrats on a new path to political relevance in Kansas. Or it could leave the party withering into the triviality of the recent past, when Republicans held all the statewide offices, congressional seats and huge majorities in the Statehouse.

At the state Republican Party convention last month, Republicans made clear they’re eager to oust Davids from the 3rd Congressional District in 2020 and set up Kelly for defeat in 2022.

Yet some Democrats think the 2018 elections showed that the party can gain even more ground.

“That’s given folks a renewed sense of opportunity and optimism,” said Kansas Democratic Party Executive Director Ethan Corson. “It is a state that Democrats can win in and can be successful in.”

Republicans aim to make that hard. Kelly’s major budget and education proposals have so far fallen on deaf ears with Republicans, who still hold large majorities in the Legislature and the leadership jobs that come with that.

The initial stumbles haven’t discouraged Democrats, Corson said. He points out that Kelly’s still been able to accomplish things, such as signing an executive order barring discrimination against LGBT state workers.

“I don’t think anybody by any stretch ever thought it was going to be easy for the governor,” Corson said. “I’m still optimistic that she’s going to get those priorities accomplished.”

There’s a way to grease the skids for the governor’s agenda in the future: win more seats in the Legislature. Sawyer, the party’s top leader in the Kansas House, said that needs to be a major focus for Democrats.

“The next chair (of the party) needs to focus a lot on the Legislature,” Sawyer said, “to gain a few more Democrats so we can help the governor out.”

To do that, Sawyer said the party needs to build up its infrastructure into areas of the state where it’s all but disappeared, to raise money and to recruit candidates into more races.

Departing Democratic Party Chairman John Gibson, who decided not to run for another term, started that work. He boosted outreach and said now more than 75 of the state’s 105 counties have an organized Democratic Party.

Democratic state Rep. Barbara Ballard, from Lawrence, said that push needs to expand for the party to gain influence and win elections.

“If you make sure that rural areas are being included in this process, and not just all urban, then it says we are all in this together,” Ballard said.

To make inroads, Democrats will need a message they can sell. Gov. Kelly pitched herself as a consensus builder. She pushed priorities such as Medicaid expansion and education funding while working attract to moderate Republican voters.

According to Ballard, Kelly’s victory last year shows it’s a winning political position that Democrats should continue to use.

“You moved where you needed to move in order to get the job done,” she said. “Why would you want to change it?”

Democrats have had mixed fortunes in recent years. In 2016, they picked up around a dozen seats in the Legislature. They formed a coalition with moderate Republicans that helped roll back tax cuts and increase spending on schools.

In 2018, while Democrats won the governor’s office and the seat in Congress, the party failed to pick up any other statewide offices or House seats. After the election, three Republicans switched parties, leaving the GOP with an 84-41 majority in the House and 28-11 edge in the Senate. The Senate also has one independent member.

Republicans still dominate statewide offices, the Kansas congressional delegation and the Legislature.

At least three people have announced runs for chair of the Democratic Party.

Current party Vice Chair Vicki Hiatt said she’s already had a hand in expanding the party’s infrastructure and recruiting candidates. As chair, she would continue expansion into more areas of Kansas and focus on the fundraising needed to build the party.

She’d concentrate on protecting Davids’ congressional seat and shoot to win next year’s U.S. Senate race.

“We will be working really hard for the U.S. Senate candidate,” she said. “That will be a target.”

George Hanna, from Tecumseh, was a candidate for the House in the last election and said he’d focus on gains in rural areas.

“We all have a job to do — fundraise, develop an inclusive caucus process and find our new representatives,” he said in a Facebook post announcing he would run.

A third candidate, Chris Roesel from Johnson County, touts his experience running for local elected offices.

But the field of candidates is not limited. The Democratic convention will bring together hundreds of party loyalists from across the state. The leadership elections are open to all nominations and more than 200 party members will vote to pick the winner.

“Anybody can run,” Sawyer said. “Quite often it is pretty wide open.”

Stephen Koranda is the Statehouse reporter the Kansas News Service Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Unified Republicans blocked an attempt Tuesday by the Kansas Senate’s top Democrat to speed up work on education funding issues and advance Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s plan for increasing spending on public schools.

The new Democratic governor has urged legislators to pass a school funding bill by the end of this month to comply with a Kansas Supreme Court ruling last year that said the state’s current spending isn’t sufficient, even with increases approved last year. But with her target date of Thursday approaching, no legislative committee has taken a vote.

And, so, with the Senate debating an education policy bill , Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat and Kelly ally, proposed to add Kelly’s plan to boost education funding by $93 million during the state budget year beginning in July. His plan also would have guaranteed another funding increase the following year.

“We haven’t had any discussion about school finance,” Hensley said, adding that he was trying to make a “good faith effort” to meet the court’s demands.

But the vote was 28-12 against Hensley’s amendment, with every GOP senator voting no, including moderates who must support Kelly’s initiatives if they are to pass the Republican-dominated Legislature.

Senate GOP leaders said they’re committed to boosting spending on public schools. But they added that they want to make sure a school finance bill is properly vetted.

“We’re well on our way to getting this sorted out methodically,” said Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican.

The law enacted last year phases in a $548 million increase in education funding, but the Supreme Court said it was insufficient because it didn’t properly account for inflation in recent years. The court’s ruling in June was the latest in a series of decisions forcing lawmakers to increase spending, issued in a lawsuit filed in 2010 by four local school districts.

The Supreme Court has given parties in the lawsuit until April 15 to file written arguments about lawmakers’ response to last year’s ruling. The justices have set oral arguments for May 9.

“The Legislature has debated this issue for years and has a deadline to meet,” Kelly spokeswoman Ashley All said, adding that lawmakers should “focus on meeting needs of our children and schools.”

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans in the Kansas Senate have thwarted an attempt by the chamber’s top Democrat to advance Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s proposal to boost spending on public schools.

The Senate vote Tuesday was 28-12 against an amendment offered by Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka to a bill to clarify a law dealing with which programs for at-risk students can receive state funds.

The amendment contained Kelly’s proposal to increase education funding by roughly $90 million a year to comply with a Kansas Supreme Court ruling last year.

No legislative committee has voted on Kelly’s proposal. Republican leaders said they want a funding bill to be thoroughly reviewed.

The Supreme Court said a law enacted last year to boost education funding wasn’t sufficient because it didn’t adequately account for inflation.

The House Taxation Committee endorsed its expanded tax relief bill Monday on a voice vote, sending the legislation to the full chamber for debate, possibly later this week. The Senate approved its version earlier this month, but as a measure aimed at keeping individuals and businesses from paying higher state income taxes because of federal income tax changes at the end of 2017.Top Republicans in the GOP-dominated Legislature see income tax relief — and returning what they call an unexpected revenue “windfall” — as a top priority . But their plan would thwart the new Democratic governor’s plans to boost spending on public schools and expand the state’s Medicaid health coverage for the needy.

Kelly has urged legislators to wait until at least next year to pursue changes in tax laws, but she also said repeatedly during her campaign for governor last year that she wanted to lower the state’s 6.5 percent sales tax on groceries to help poor and middle-class families. The idea also has strong bipartisan support.

“That had been a hot button across the state,” said House committee Chairman Steven Johnson, an Assaria Republican. “That is one that has broad appeal.”

Kelly and her staff have called the GOP income tax relief proposals irresponsible, and Democrats have criticized the package as a corporate give-away. She hasn’t said explicitly that she would veto them, but her comments and those of her aides have lawmakers in both parties expecting her to do so.

“While the governor strongly supports reducing the sales tax on food, she knows it is critical that we first stabilize the state’s budget before we make changes to the tax code,” Kelly spokeswoman Ashley All said after the committee’s vote.

Rep. Jim Gartner, of Topeka, the Taxation Committee’s top Democrat, said Republicans are trying to box Kelly in by adding the provision to cut the sales tax on groceries to 5.5 percent, starting in October. Kansas is among only a handful of states imposing its full sales tax on groceries.

“I don’t think it’s going to make it any more palatable because of the mix,” Gartner told reporters after the committee’s vote.

The federal tax overhaul in 2017, championed by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, cut federal income taxes for individuals and businesses but included provisions expected to raise revenues in some states and lower it in others. Kansas’ tax code is tied to the federal tax code.

This year’s bill in Kansas would save its taxpayers $208 million during the state budget year that begins in July.

The cut in the sales tax on groceries would save consumers about $44 million during the state’s next budget year, but the committee also added a provision to help Kansas collect more sales taxes on internet sales.

A key part of the bill would prevent thousands of individuals from losing itemized deductions on their state forms. State law now prevents people from itemizing on their state returns if they do not on their federal returns, and the federal changes discouraged itemization. The change would save individuals about $50 million during the next budget year.

Even with the cut in the sales tax on groceries, most of the tax relief still would go to corporations during the next budget year — $137 million, or 66 percent of the total. The federal tax changes included provisions preventing corporations from sheltering income and assets outside the U.S. that would otherwise lead to Kansas and other states taxing foreign income.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas regulators have ordered Kansas Gas Service to return more than $17.9 million in tax savings to its customers.

The Kansas Corporation Commission said in a news release Monday that its order will mean a one-time bill credit of $22.78 for residential customers.

The agency says the savings are the result of a federal law that reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent in January of last year. The Commission had required utilities to track and keep separate savings from the tax cut pending its review.

Kansas Gas Service had asked to keep the savings to offset its service costs, but the Commission determined that was not in the public interest.