TOPEKA — A Kansas Republican Party leader accused a Democrat’s campaign of tainting a congressional race and violating federal election law because of her ties to a nonprofit she co-founded.
The complaint filed Wednesday by Kansas GOP executive director Rob Fillion alleges Katy Tyndell, a Democrat who is running in the 4th District against Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, used her nonprofit’s email list to promote her campaign, coordinated with the nonprofit to sponsor a debate and solicited an endorsement from a public figure who appeared at nonprofit events.
“I can’t speak for Ron Estes or tell you what he is worried about,” Tyndell said, “but I’ll let the timing speak for itself.”
She said the Kansas GOP’s allegations are false.
Tyndell is one of four founders of Leading Kansas, which designated itself as a nonpartisan 501(c)4 nonprofit. It is billed as a civic engagement organization. One of Tyndell’s fellow founders is Noah Taylor, who ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
Tyndell said she stepped away from her leadership role at the nonprofit when she launched her campaign and has been “extremely careful” to keep the two separate.
“I have not used Leading Kansas’ email lists, Slack channels, social media, programming, or other organizational resources to run my campaign, and we have taken care not to put campaign materials into Leading Kansas communications,” she said.
A news release from the Kansas GOP said Fillion requested the Federal Election Commission immediately investigate Tyndell’s campaign to determine whether it accepted forbidden in-kind contributions and cease the campaign from doing so in the future “before it further taints” the race.
“Instead of building her campaign on her own, she used Leading Kansas’ resources to reach voters and advance her candidacy,” Fillion said. “That is not civic engagement. It is an illegal in-kind contribution. It is an attempt to inject undisclosed dark money into a federal race and to treat a nonprofit she controls as an arm of her campaign.”
The complaint pointed to March 29 and April 20 emails from Tyndell’s Leading Kansas address “announcing her congressional campaign and soliciting continued engagement while she remained tied to the group.” Tyndell said those emails were “completely ordinary” communications from the beginning of her campaign to say she was stepping back from her leadership role with the nonprofit.
“If the Kansas Republican Party genuinely believed there was some serious violation, it is curious that they waited until Sept. 30 — months after these events and coincidentally the very day I’m scheduled to host a large town hall event in Sedgwick County — to raise it,” Tyndell said.
The complaint also called out a July 17 candidate debate sponsored by Leading Kansas and an endorsement from Michael Fanone, an officer who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and appeared earlier this year at Leading Kansas events in Wichita and Lawrence. It accused her campaign of linking Leading Kansas programming in Facebook posts to her candidacy.
Kansas GOP’s vice chair, Andy Hooser, accused Tyndell of using Leading Kansas as “a slush fund.”
“Democrats never stop lecturing everyone else about dark money and ‘saving democracy.’ Then they turn around and run their own candidate using a dark money group she still controls. This is the Democrat playbook: one set of rules for them, another for everyone else,” Hooser said. “The law applies to Democrats too.”
Tyndell wrote commentary for Kansas Reflector before she declared a run for public office. Kansas Reflector does not publish commentary from elected officials.
“It’s unfortunate that Ms. Tyndell, who has contributed to the Kansas Reflector, seems to be using her influence in dark money groups to prop up her campaign, but that’s best left to the FEC to investigate these serious allegations brought forward by the Kansas Republican Party,” the Estes campaign said in an emailed statement.
The Kansas GOP filed a similar complaint against the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, and his United Methodist church, Resurrection. The state Republicans accused Hamilton, who at the time hadn’t officially filed to run for office, of improperly using church resources to “advance his political ambitions.”
The outcome of that complaint, which was also filed with the FEC, is unclear.
This story previously appeared on the Kansas Reflector.
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