Derek Schmidt
Derek Schmidt is the 44th and current Kansas Attorney General. Schmidt previously served as a member of the Kansas Senate, representing the 15th district, and as Senate Majority Leader. Before serving in the legislature, he was Special Counsel to Governor Bill Graves.
Schmidt defeated then-attorney general, Democrat Stephen Six in the November 2010 elections.
Early life and career
Derek Larkin Schmidt was born on January 23, 1968 in Independence, Kansas, the only child of Barbara and Bill Schmidt. He attended the University of Kansas where he received a BA in Journalism in 1990. In the United Kingdom he obtained his Masters in International Politics from the University of Leicester. He attended the Georgetown University Law Center where he received his Juris Doctor. While attending classes at GULC, Schmidt served as an assistant, first to former United States Senator Nancy Kassebaum from Kansas, then to Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.Legislative career
Schmidt was elected to the Kansas Senate in 2000. He defeated Virgil Peck Jr. in the Republican primary and Democrat Joshua Shelton in the general election. He was re-elected to represent the 15th District in 2004 and again in 2008, both times without opposition. He resigned his senate seat after his election as Attorney General.Agriculture Committee
Immediately upon taking office in January 2001, Schmidt was appointed to serve as Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a rarity for a freshman senator. He remained chairman until he was later elected Senate Majority Leader by the Senate Republican Caucus in December 2004.Senate Majority Leader
In the race for Majority Leader, Schmidt defeated then-Senator Tim Huelskamp.While serving as Majority Leader, Schmidt also served as Vice Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In both capacities, Schmidt provided leadership on public safety legislation and oversaw the passage of Kansas' version of Jessica's Law, which provides for a life sentence in prison for certain sex offenders who prey on children.
Legislation
During his time in the Kansas Senate, Schmidt also supported:- Increased state funding for education
- Increased eligibility of children for health care
- Nuclear-powered energy
- Tougher punishments for repeat felons
- Legislative spending restraint
- Sponsored repeal of a state ban on for-profit prisons, which measure lost
Major donors
The top contributors to Schmidt's 2008 Senate campaign, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics: Kansas Association of Realtors $2,000, Kansas Contractor's Association $1,500, Watco Industries $1,500, Koch Industries $1,500, and Kansas Chamber of Commerce $1,500.Attorney General
2010 campaign
Schmidt was the Republican nominee for Kansas Attorney General, defeating Ralph DeZago in the Republican Primary on August 3, 2010. He won the general election against the incumbent, Democrat Steve Six and took office on January 10, 2011.A major issue in Schmidt's first campaign for attorney general was based on Six's decision not to join with the state of Florida and 24 other states on appeal in support of the plaintiff in the proceedings challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Six contended that “the cost of getting involved” would exceed any gain realized by Kansas if the ACA was repealed.
2014 campaign
Schmidt won re-election after defeating Democrat AJ Kotich in the 2014 Kansas elections. Schmidt received 564,766 votes, more than any statewide candidate except State Treasurer Ron Estes.Tenure in office
Kansas Bureau of Investigation
In 2010, Schmidt campaigned on reinvigorating the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and supporting its needs. In July 2011, he appointed Kirk D. Thompson the 14th Director of the KBI. Soon after, they created the KBI’s first Child Victims Unit and expanded KBI’s cybercrimes capacity by creating the nation’s first transitional Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory.Schmidt led the successful effort to secure funding and construct a new Forensic Science Center for the KBI. The new forensic laboratory was dedicated in 2015. It is on the campus of Washburn University of Topeka, and as a part of the new partnership, Washburn established a new forensic science degree program.
In 2018, the Kansas Legislature approved Schmidt’s request to hire new KBI field agents and to establish an Internet Crimes Against Children Unit at the bureau.
Consumer Protection and Financial Crimes
In 2016, Schmidt created a new Fraud and Abuse Litigation Division to prosecute financial crimes and elder abuse.Coronavirus response
In April 2020, Democratic Governor Laura Kelly instituted orders to restrict the rapid spread of COVID-19 that limited public gatherings to a maximum of ten persons. As this would have applied to Easter Sunday celebrations in churches, the Republican-majority Legislative Coordinating Council reversed her order and Republican AG Schmidt opposed it as a violation of the Kansas Constitution and Kansas law. Schmidt issued a memo calling the order likely unconstitutional and urged law enforcement not to enforce it. Of the first eleven loci of contagion in Kansas, three had already been traced to religious gatherings. The Kansas Supreme Court reinstated Kelly's orders on April 11, in expedited proceedings.Federalism
Schmidt has made challenging what he has contended was illegal federal overreach a priority throughout his tenure as attorney general. Schmidt, along with the attorneys general of several other states, challenged several federal regulatory actions, during the Obama administration. Schmidt and his colleagues were successful in blocking many of these regulations, particularly those proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.One of Schmidt's first acts attorney general for Kansas was to join the states that oppose the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on constitutional grounds in the case of Florida et al v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. An Appeals court later ruled that the addition of those 25 states was not necessary for Florida to have standing to challenge the ACA. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that case by upholding most of the ACA as constitutional, while striking down a portion of the law which would have mandated states to implement Medicaid expansion.
In July 2017, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led Schmidt and a group of Republican Attorneys General from eight other states joined by Idaho Governor Butch Otter in making a threat to the Donald Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama. One, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III, subsequently reversed his position and withdrew his participation from the proposed suit on August 31. Slatery went further to urge passage of the DREAM Act. The other Attorneys General who joined in making the threats against Trump included Steve Marshall of Alabama, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Lawrence Wasden of Idaho, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Doug Peterson of Nebraska, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.
U.S. Supreme Court Arguments
Schmidt has argued and won two cases involving the death penalty at the United States Supreme Court. In 2013, he successfully argued Kansas v. Cheever. In 2015, he successfully argued Kansas v. Carr. In the upcoming term, the Court has granted three petitions for writ of certiorari filed by the State of Kansas and will hear oral arguments on each case in the fall of 2019. Two are death penalty cases, Kahler v. Kansas and Kansas V. Glover. The third involves jurisdiction in a forged identity document case, Kansas v. Garcia.National Leadership
In 2017, Schmidt's colleagues elected him to serve as president of the National Association of Attorneys General.During his tenure as NAAG President, Schmidt joined U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in announcing the largest elder fraud enforcement sweep in U.S. history, and conducted a town hall meeting on consumer protection with Director Mick Mulvaney of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
State Objections Board
Despite numerous judges across the U.S. having rejected challenges to the natural born citizenship of Barack Obama, since before he was elected president in 2008, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach persistently demanded proof of citizenship before allowing Obama's name to appear on the 2012 Kansas presidential ballot. In September 2012, while leading the three-person State Objections Board, and supported by its other members, Kansas Secretary of State Jeff Colyer and Schmidt, Kobach requested additional evidence that Obama was actually born in Hawaii. In September 2012, the three heard arguments on a claim from a Manhattan, Kansas, resident that President Barack Obama was not eligible to be president because his father was from Kenya. The resident, Joe Montgomery, also questioned whether Obama has a valid birth certificate. As head of the Board, Kobach requested additional evidence that Obama was actually born in Hawaii. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Board said it lacked sufficient evidence as to whether or not Obama was eligible to appear on the Kansas ballot as a candidate in the 2012 presidential election. They stated a need to review his birth certificate and other documents from Hawaii, as well as Arizona and Mississippi before they could respond to a complaint alleging that the president was not a "natural born citizen." "Given the cursory response from President Obama, the Board is merely attempting to obtain additional information before making a decision," said Kobach's spokesperson. In an editorial, The New York Times characterized the actions of the Kansas authorities as having "reignited long-running conspiracy theories that the president was not born in the United States." CNN reported that "the Kansas ballot measure is one of several examples of the birther movement's still-persistent presence."In 2018, after allegations that appointed incumbent and child abuser, Republican Michael Capps, did not live as required in the electoral district in which he was running, a complaint was submitted by the Democratic party to the board. The board, by then composed of Kobach, Schmidt and new Lieutenant Governor Tracy Mann, found the complaint to be invalid and allowed Capps to stay on the ballot and he won the election. Capps received 54% of the vote to 46% for Democrat Monica Marks. When a Wichita Eagle reporter went to the home in the wake of the October 2019 accusations about a fabricated attack video made by Capps against Wichita mayoral runoff candidate Brandon Whipple, an unidentified young man living there said he was "house sitting" and hadn't seen Capps, "in a while."