Despite having been publicly courted by Republican Secretary of State and Gubernatorial Candidate Jay Ashcroft for months, tonight, former Brownback advisor Art Laffer will be the featured guest at a fundraiser for  Gubernatorial Candidate Mike Kehoe. 

In March, Ashcroft released his tax “plan,” which enlisted “some of the well-known conservative economists and low-tax advocates that advised then-Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on a massive tax cut enacted in that state in 2012,” which helped result in “Republicans losing the Kansas governorship in the 2018 election,” the Missouri Independent reported.

Art Laffer was named as an “expert” that Ashcroft plans to “appoint” to a “task force” to “make recommendations” on Missouri’s budget and economy. Laffer was one of the architects of former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s dangerous and reckless “tax experiment” that tanked Kansas’s economy, underfunded public schools, and robbed the state’s highway fund to cut taxes for the most wealthy. Brownback’s disastrous “tax experiment” was so destructive and unpopular that the state’s Republican-controlled legislature came together to reverse it, and paved the way for Democratic Governor Laura Kelly to win her election. 

“It is nonsensical but unsurprising that two of our Republican candidates for Governor would fight for the support of someone with such a disastrous reputation for mismanaging Kansas’s finances,” said Missouri Democratic Party Chair Russ Carnahan. “We watched as Brownback gutted our neighbors’ public schools and tanked the economy to slash taxes for his wealthy donors and friends. We won’t let Jay Ashcroft or Mike Kehoe do the same here in Missouri.”

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Media Contact: 

Chelsea Rodriguez, Communications Director

press@missouridems.org