TOPEKA, Kan. _ It took the Kansas plastic surgeon far longer than he had hoped, but Wednesday afternoon, Jeff Colyer finally found himself in charge.
Jeffrey William Colyer became Kansas' 47th governor, taking the oath of office in the Kansas Capitol rotunda after outgoing Gov. Sam Brownback's resignation became effective.
Colyer now must mend strained relationships with lawmakers left by Brownback and work with them to create a constitutional school funding system. The new system will likely affect how much money every public school in the state receives.
And he must do all that while campaigning to keep his job. Colyer will face a Republican primary in August, and several challengers say he's too close to Brownback.
Colyer, 57, has served as Brownback's lieutenant governor for seven years. For the last six months, he has waited for Brownback to win U.S. Senate confirmation for a post in the Trump administration.
Colyer has suggested he wants to create a different atmosphere than the one that came to prevail under Brownback.
"We're going to be working on changing the tone. We've got some difficult issues to deal with, and we're going to deal with them," Colyer said last week.
If he can't heal tensions with lawmakers, the chance of gridlock and conflict increase as the Legislature heads toward an April 30 deadline to tell the Kansas Supreme Court how it plans to respond to a ruling that schools are inadequately funded.
Brownback this month incurred the wrath of fellow Republicans by proposing a massive increase in school spending without laying out a clear plan to pay for it. Colyer hasn't said how he wants to solve the problem, whether he will provide his own solution or back Brownback's earlier plan for a $600 million boost over five years.
Initial signs suggest Colyer may already be thawing relationships with lawmakers.
Sen. Barbara Bollier, a Mission Hills Republican, said she was very optimistic with Colyer taking over.
"Already, even before he's moved in to the governorship, he and his staff have been way more communicative," Bollier said. " ... He keeps saying, 'I am going to listen to the people.' That is, I'm going to be different than my predecessor and I will really be listening.
"And my excitement about that is, the people are asking for Medicaid expansion. So he should be working and moving forward on some form of Medicaid expansion, which really excites me."
Since President Donald Trump nominated Brownback in July to become ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom until his confirmation last week, Colyer has stayed quiet about his own policy preferences, instead deferring to Brownback.
As Brownback's nomination crawled through the Senate, he allowed Colyer to take on more power than a traditional lieutenant governor.
Colyer chose the new secretary of the Department for Children and Families and was allowed to lead development of the governor's budget proposal, creating uncertainty over who was actually leading the state.
Again and again, he has promised a new tone while offering few specifics.
"I think there's a consensus from folks that we want to see more money in schools, but we want to see outcomes," Colyer said last week.
Colyer is not expected to immediately name a lieutenant governor. That means Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, is next in line to the office.
Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said he expects some time to pass as Colyer tries to formulate what he's going to do.
"I'm not sure coming out of the gate if we'll see a whole bunch of policy real quick, or whether we'll see something else," Hawkins said. "The one thing that I want to see is, I want to see leadership. We all want to see leadership. And I think that we'll see that."
Hawkins said he's excited about Colyer becoming governor.
"He's probably going to be a communicator. He'll probably be a little bit more friendly, hopefully, to the Legislature and listen to the Legislature because I think that's going to be important going forward, which is something that Gov. Brownback wasn't quite as good at. I don't think he really cared what we thought most of the time."
Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore, a Kansas City, Kan., Democrat, said almost every problem lawmakers face is related to damage inflicted by Brownback's signature tax cuts, which were largely rolled back last year.
Wolfe Moore said she hopes Colyer will listen to the Legislature more than Brownback did.
"Obviously, it would be better if the governor were more in tune with not only the Legislature, but the general public," she said.
At the very least, Colyer needs to court Republican primary voters. A handful of candidates want to deny him the GOP nomination for governor, including two statewide officeholders: Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer.
Several candidates are intent on painting the Colyer administration as a continuation of Brownback's.
Colyer is the second Kansas lieutenant governor in recent years elevated to governor. Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson became governor after Gov. Kathleen Sebelius resigned in 2009 to take a position in President Barack Obama's Cabinet.
Colyer and his wife, Ruth, have three daughters, Alexandra, Serena and Dominique, according to the governor's website.
