By Andy Ostmeyer
aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com
FRONTENAC, Kan. — State Sen. Jim Barone, D-Frontenac, will not seek re-election, he announced over the weekend.
Barone was first elected from the 13th District, which takes in Crawford and Bourbon counties and part of Cherokee County, in 1996, and was re-elected in 2000 and 2004.
“It was a great 12 years,” Barone said Monday, “but 12 is enough. The six-hour round-trip drive to Topeka gets awfully old.”
Asked if he had any plans to run for another office, Barone said, “Never say never.”
Then he added, “Nothing in the foreseeable future.”
Barone worked for 30 years as a manager for the former Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. before retiring.
In a letter, Barone cited the “historic tradition of this Senate District, the spirit of a citizen legislature not professional politicians, and my personal beliefs.”
He noted that states with term limits do not allow senators to serve more than 12 years, and that only one state senator from the district served more than 13 years. E.F. Porter served from 1900 to 1916.
Barone is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee.
“We certainly appreciate his assistance and loyalty to PSU throughout his tenure,” Howard W. Smith, assistant to the Pittsburg State University president, said Monday.
He recalled Barone’s role in obtaining funding for the Kansas Technology Center and more recently Barone’s help in establishing grant money to boost enrollment for the school’s nursing program.
But Barone has been embattled on a number of fronts in recent years.
Last summer, Democratic leaders in the Senate removed Barone from the Ways and Means Committee in advance of the legislative session.
Barone’s clashes with party leadership also resulted in his demotion in 2006 from ranking member of the budget committee to the Elections and Local Government Committee.
Barone has filed a lawsuit against the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission in an effort to find out why he failed a routine background check last fall. Barone has said he has been in the dark about what caused him to fail the check in October, when the commission was reviewing his license-renewal application for his post as president of The Racing Association of Kansas Southeast, the license holder for the dog-racing track in Frontenac.
Barone had served on the TRAK Southeast board for more than a decade, and passed background checks in 1995 and 2000.
Two men, both Republicans, are currently running to replace Barone in the 13th District. They are Jacob LaTurner, of Pittsburg, and Bob Marshall, of Fort Scott. The filing deadline is Tuesday.
Andy Ostmeyer is the metro editor for The Joplin Globe.
‘Trousergate’
Some of Sen. Jim Barone’s colleagues in the Senate in February wanted to strip him of a leadership position within the party. The motion came after Barone allegedly was caught leaving a retreat for Democrats with sensitive polling data stuffed down the back of his pants. The incident was referred to in Topeka as “trousergate.”
“This incident is beyond the pale, in my opinion, because the instructions for everybody were the poll wasn’t to leave the room,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said at the time.
Barone said the effort to dismiss him was political.
“This is just part of the continuing rhetoric to discredit me and my work up there (in Topeka),” Barone said at the time. “There is obviously, and has been for some time, an agenda to diminish my perceived effectiveness.”
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