This will be the week that we learn, or at least get our first hints, just how broad a political issue that the coronavirus is going to be about…let’s say…August, when we have our first pandemic-era elections.
Now they’re just primary elections in August when the parties have their primary elections to determine who is going to wind up on the November election ballot for their chance to represent us for the upcoming two years in the House and four years in the Senate.
But the May 21 one-day meeting of the Legislature that ends this session may become a key to just who runs the House and Senate next session, and what happens in the two-year-away gubernatorial election.
And, that presents a lot of opportunity for lawmakers to seek that headline on their campaign palm cards to show that they are the ones Kansans should vote for this fall.
There are some issues that have arisen because of COVID-19 that most of us never really thought about and which aren’t just party-line votes.
If you own or work in a store, should you be able to prohibit folks who don’t wear masks to enter your business? Now the simple answer is, of course. It’s your store, and there are well-thought-out antidiscrimination measures that we’ve lived with for generations. But this isn’t a simple antidiscrimination issue.
It’s safety. Both for the employees who work at the store and the customers who visit it. That’s an issue that lawmakers may find themselves dealing with—for one day.
But it goes further. If a store owner lets in customers who are without a mask, have they put their employees at risk? Probably. But what about an employee who believes he/she is protecting his/her own health, and the health of customers and the employee’s family? Can that worker be told to work or be fired? Or laid off during the pandemic?
You can’t make a stocker or a butcher or a clerk work in a building that is on fire., And that store owner is in most circumstances responsible for the safety of customers, and maybe those masks are a way to make sure that customers are safe.
Of course, there are the lawyers for those injured or even killed as a result of the coronavirus. Is that responsibility for the safety of customers and employees legally enforceable? Lawyers—for those injured or rendered ill because of store policies—believe that the store owners are. And lawyers for the owners, well, they and their clients don’t think so.
If signs outside a store say “no guns,” that’s one thing. If the signs say “no admittance without a mask,” is that a problem? Doesn’t seem like quite the same deal, but there are voters out there who are going to believe those mask restrictions are a big enough lifestyle/constitutional issue that they may just vote against a lawmaker over it.
And while legislative candidates have become accustomed to campaigning through a screen door, or a storm door that is opened just a crack so they can hand a campaign brochure to the voter, is it different if everyone has to be six feet away?
This upcoming one-day legislative session and the campaigning that follows will tell us something about the lawmakers seeking re-election. Or will voters even open that screen door to talk to a candidate wearing a mask? Or, not wearing a mask?
We may find out something at this short session next week…just what a pandemic does to rights, or at least courtesy—or the Kansas Legislature.
Yes, let’s watch…
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