Secretary of State candidate Jean Schodorf made a stop in Great Bend on Friday on a tour that started in north part of Kansas and crossed to the south, stopping in Wyandotte County, Hutchinson, Kingman, Hays, and Hutchinson.
“It’s a good overview,” she said. “People are free to tell you about issues in the race. I like that.”
“I’ll be a full-time secretary of state and focused on doing the job for Kansas,” the candidate said. “I’ll work on the 600 duties of the Kansas Secretary of State.”
“We’re going to bring integrity back to the Secretary of State,” she said.
Also, she brought up a backlog of business reports at the secretary’s office that are not being attended to. “Every day, we’ve heard about something going wrong in the Secretary of State’s office.”
She said Kris Kobach, the current secretary of state, works for Arizona, Texas, Missouri or Nebraska and the “Secretary of State’s office is in shambles. Kobach’s not attending to business for our state.”
“I believe in good old Kansas values,” Schodorf said. “Do the job you’re hired to do. Work hard.”
Voting in Kansas changed during Kobach’s term, requiring people voting for the first time in Kansas to prove they are a U.S. citizen requiring a birth certificate, passport, or military records and requiring a photo I.D. on election day. Kobach pushed the 2011 law.
She would like to simplify the registration requirement, saying thousands are on the voting suspense list. She said some people have difficulty accessing a birth certificate, bringing up college age students, who’s birth certificates are at home with parents and elderly people who were born at home and never received a birth certificate. Or, they haven’t gotten around to showing a birth certificate.
“It is a right to vote,” she said.
Schodorf represented the 25th District in the Kansas Senate for over a decade as a Republican. In the senate, she was as the chair of both the Education Committee and the Legislative Educational Planning Committee. She also served as vice chair of the Joint Committee on Arts and Cultural Resources and as a member of the Budget, Judiciary and Commerce Committees.
She was considerate a moderate Republican in the Senate, but was ousted from office in  2012 by more conservative Republicans along with Ruth Teichmann and Steve Morris.
 She authored several pieces of legislation in the senate, including increased penalties for drunk drivers and financial literacy training for school-aged children. She has worked to secure economic development initiatives for Wichita and south central Kansas.
As a state senator, Schodorf also worked with the Wichita Police Department to spearhead anti-gang legislation. She was also on the Wichita USD School Board for many years.
Jean’s father, Brigadier General William Kurtis, was one of the Marine Corps’ first 1,000 aviators. His initial assignment was to search for fellow Kansan Amelia Earhart.
She has a doctorate in communication disorders. She owns the property that the Laura Ingalls Wilder family once owned. She has made it into a museum.