Episode Three:  The Machine

$217,350. That is the annual salary the Wichita State University budget book lists for the director of a maker space called GoCreate. The Director’s name is Ty Masterson. He is also the President of the Kansas Senate. He has no college degree. He has no employment contract with the university, and the Ethics Director at Santa Clara’s Markkula Center, put it this way…

“A decade of drawing a six figure salary with a Koch branded university program, while also chairing a Koch funded advocacy group nationally, creates a pattern voters deserve to weigh in on. Voters deserve to know where the money is, where the bills come from, how to request notices about legislative conference committee meetings, that are open to the public, and where to find the open meeting information and location details.”

In Episode Three we take apart the Machinery, starting with the man at the top of the Senate, Ty Masterson.

In 2010, Ty Masterson filed chapter seven bankruptcy. According to The Wichita Eagle, he owed $209,000 to Corner Bank, $53,890 to Emprise Bank and more than $160,000 in revolving credit card debt. Total unsecured debts over $800,000 dollars. His construction company, Master Built Homes, Inc. had failed in 2006. Two years after the discharge, Wichita State University hired him, not as a professor, not as an administrator with a degree, but as the Director of the GoCreate a maker’s space, funded in part by an $11.25 million pledge from Koch Industries and the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation.

$3.75 million of that pledge was earmarked specifically for GoCreate. Ty Masterson’s GoCreate Director salary rose in 2022 to $113,000. In 2023, it rose to $135,000. In 2025, it rose again to roughly $161,000. In the 2026 university budget book it showed his salary rose yet again to a whopping $217,350. Over ten years, the Kansas City Star found Ty Masterson has been paid more than $1.1 million by Wichita State or its affiliated funding streams. The 2022 job description required only a high school diploma and nine years experience.

Asked how often he shows up, Senator Ty Masterson told a Kansas City Star reporter…

“It is highly fortunate that since it’s in the administrative side of things, that I don’t have to be on site…some weeks I do 2 to 3 days of in-person work, and some weeks I won’t.”

Republican candidate for Kansas Governor rival, Phillip Sarnecki, calls it a no show job.

A former State Senator, Mark Steffen, has filed a complaint with the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, alleging Senator Masterson campaigned during Wichita State work hours. While all of that has been happening. Ty Masterson has served as national chair of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch funded organization that ships model legislation to statehouses across the country. He remains on the ALEC’s board.

For most of that decade American’s for Prosperity Kansas (AFP), Koch’s grassroots operation run by Liz Patton, did not endorse Ty Masterson in the 2024 state elections. AFP Kansas congratulated 28 endorsed candidates, Masterson’s name is not on the list. That silence ended on June 17th, 2026 when AFP Kansas decided to endorse Ty Masterson. State Director Liz Patton called him, “a proven policy champion”. Six weeks later, this investigation began to go live.

Somewhere between the last unendorsed cycle and the endorsement for Governor, sits a single vote, Senate Bill 98, and the 20 year tax exemption for the largest data centers on Earth.

1401 K Street, Northwest Washington, DC, suite 502, that is the registered headquarters of NetChoice, a trade association organized under section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. Not a charity, not a citizens group, a business league. Contributions to net choice are not tax deductible.

NetChoice’s President and Chief Executive is a man named Steve DelBianco. According to the most recent Form 990, filed with the Internal Revenue Service, DelBianco’s base compensation is $425,958. His general counsel, Karl Szabo, makes $361,000. Steve DelBianco is also the National Chair of the ALEC’s private Enterprise Advisory Council, the same organization Ty Masterson chaired last year.

NetChoices members include NetChoice member companies that operate data centers on and around the Kansas border. With more than $1 billion dollars invested in the Kansas City Metro alone (Apple is not one of them). In its own written testimony before the Kansas House Committee on Taxation on March 6th, 2025. NetChoice stated “NetChoice members, Google, and mMeta platforms have data center campuses in the state”.

That testimony did not arrive by accident. The Kansas Legislature’s own Conference Committee Report Brief on Senate Bill 98 says the substantive language, the sales tax exemption for hyperscale data centers, originated in Senate Bill 51, and that Senate Bill 51 was “introduced by the Senate Committee on Commerce at the request of a representative of NetChoice”. The Representative of NetChoice, on the ground in Topeka, is a registered lobbyist named Brad Smoot.

NetChoices, own written response to the House Taxation Committee, dated March 10th, 2025, is signed by two people. Steve DelBianco, President and CEO, and Brad Smoot listed as NetChoices Legislative Council. In 2025 NetChoice added a second registered Kansas lobbyist and prominent Topeka attorney, by the name of Larrie Ann Brown. That name was not on the 2024 rolls. That name appears in the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission’s directory for the first time in the year that the bill became law.

This is not the first bill NetChoice has requested. NetChoice has provided expert testimony in more than 100 state legislative hearings and through its litigation center, funded by more than 30 of its member companies it currently has more than 25 active lawsuits nationwide challenging state level online safety, age verification, and content moderation laws in Texas, Ohio, California, Florida, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Minnesota, and Georgia.

In Kansas, on this bill, NetChoice’s testimony was in favor, and it was joined in writing by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce is not a small player. Its President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Stafford, installed on February 10th, 2026, personally testified as the chamber’s proponent witness on this bill.

The Chamber’s Board of Directors includes Mike Morgan of Koch Industries, Nicco Chacon of NextEra Energy Resources, James Brungardt of Sunflower Electric Power Corp, Laura Lutz of Evergy, John Estus of Amazon, Patrick Vogelsberg of Kansas Gas Service, and Ron Coker of Burns and McDonald, the engineering firm involved in the edged Kansas City Data Center, which is a subsidiary of Koch Real Estate Investments. The Chamber’s registered Kansas lobbyists are Eric Stafford, Christie Kriegshauser, and William Wilk.

Koch’s registered Kansas lobbyists are Gavin Kreidler and Mike Morgan. Evergy’s are Scott Jones, Jason Klint, Laura Lutz, and Michael O’Donnell. That’s before you add the industry specific hires. The Kansas Power Alliance, ITC Great Plains, Kansas Gas Service, Kansas Electric Cooperatives, every one of them a registered proponent of Senate Bill 51 or Senate Bill 98.

Kansas law does not require lobbyists to disclose their contract fees, but it does require them to disclose the meals and gifts they buy for legislators. And in the January 2025 recipients report from the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, the report, covering the exact weeks the bill was moving, one name stands out. Total itemized lobbyist expenditures on the president of the Kansas Senate, Ty Masterson, $1,258.73. The largest single total for any legislator named in the dossier.

Inside that total a $40.95 dinner from NetChoice lobbyist, Larrie Ann Brown. An $18.66 lunch from Koch’s lobbyist, Gavin Kreidler. Two $100 Kansas football tickets from Evergy’s lobbyists. Line items from Centene Corporation, ITC Great Plains, Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Kansas Gas Service, Kansas Railroad Association, and Security Benefit Corporation.

On Senator Jeff Klemp, $689.38. Evergy, Kansas Chamber twice, Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Kansas Gas Service, ITC Great Plains twice, Americans for Prosperity, Cicero Action, Comcast, and Cox. These are not campaign contributions, these are the small courtesies the dinners and football tickets that Kansas law does require to be reported.

What Kansas law does not require to be reported is the retainer paid to the lobbyists themselves? That number stays private. Only the meals show up.

And then there is the question about meetings being open to the public. Under Joint Rule 3 of the Kansas Legislature, and under a 1993 opinion from the Kansas Attorney General a Legislative Conference Committee is legally open to the public, legally open! Whether the public actually knows where and when to attend an open meeting, is a different question. Kansas law only requires advance notice of a meeting to people who have specifically requested it. If you did not know to ask, the meeting was legally open but functionally invisible.

On the last day of the 2025 session, April 11th, both chambers replaced their original conferees. On the Senate side, Mike Peterson, Rick Kloos, and Ethan Corson were swapped for Larry Alley, Stephen Owens and Mary Ware. On the house side Francis, Essex, and Helgerson were swapped for Shawn Tarwater, Adam Turk and Stephanie Sawyer Clayton. Six new conferees, one draft in, another out. Same day. Same afternoon. Both chambers voted before the sun went down.

The House adopted the Conference Committee Report 85 to 37. The Senate adopted it 26 to 8, with six Senators absent. Governor Laura Kelly signed the bill on April 24th, 2025. The bill created one more body, a three member Kansas Fusion Center Oversight Board, which must approve or reject any data center project seeking the exemption on critical infrastructure security grounds.

Its Chair is Kansas Attorney General, Kris Kobach. Its Vice Chair is Adjutant General David A. Weishaar. Its Third Member is Lee Taffanelli, appointed by the Attorney General. Lee Taffanelli is the Chief Executive Officer of Kansas Electric Cooperatives, the same Kansas Electric Cooperatives that filed written proponent testimony in favor of Senate Bill 51. The bill later folded into Senate Bill 98.  The Board that must approve every data center under this law includes an executive whose organization publicly asked the legislature to pass the law.

Now come back to Kansas Senate District 5. In 2024, freshman Senator Jeff Klemp raised $108,646 for his election campaign. The largest single donor was the Kansas Republican Senate Committee. After that, the top of the donor list reads like a Leavenworth County phonebook.  Retired schoolteachers, small local construction companies, the Klemp family, a beer wholesaler, an eye doctor. In 2025, the year he voted yes on Senate Bill 98, Klemp’s outside donor list changed almost completely. Every Leavenworth County individual small donor was gone.  In their place:

• Invenergy of Chicago, a grid scale power developer active in the data center Build out, $1,000.
• NextEra Energy Resource Development of Juno Beach, Florida, it’s parent subsidiary sits on the Kansas Chamber Board, $500.
• Plus power of The Woodlands, Texas a battery storage developer whose projects are paired with data center loads, $500.
• Sunflower Redevelopment, LLC Care of former Posinelli Lawyer John Peterson and John DeHardt of Kessinger Hunter, the entities that own the DeSoto retired Sunflower Ammunition Plant site, now Astra Enterprise Park being marketed for large scale data center development, $250.

And on the same 2025 report, Jeff Klemp himself put $18,000 of his own money into the campaign. 40% of every dollar in that filing came from Klemp or from Energy Sector Donors he had never had before.

On May 24th, 2026, Donald Trump endorsed Ty Masterson for governor of Kansas. Eight days later, on June 1st, 2026, Ty Masterson picked his running mate for lieutenant governor. He picked Jeff Klemp.  Trump did not endorse Ty Masterson because Ty Masterson was popular. Trump endorsed Ty Masterson because Ty Masterson had spent a decade at the head of an ALEC Koch Chamber pipeline. And because Ty Masterson delivered on the floor of the Kansas Senate, on the last day of the session, in a room that was legally open, but functionally invisible to the public. He got the votes that Kansas’s largest lobbyist group had been asked to deliver.

The endorsement was not the story, the endorsement was the receipt.

In his own words, on the day Ty Masterson named Klemp as his running mate, he said…

“The Trump endorsement was the ticket. I didn’t have to pick gender, or demographic, or the political games they play. I could actually pick the guy who was the right man for the job.”

$217,350 a year for a job with no employment contract and on the Senator’s own account, some weeks with zero on site work.

$11.25 million from Koch to a Kansas university and $3.75 million of it inside the GoCreate maker’s space, where he draws his check.

$425,958 a year for the man in Washington whose organization asked the Kansas Senate to write the bill.

A committee, whose meetings the public can openly attend, but only if the public knows to ask in advance to be notified of when and where the meetings will be.

A conference committee repopulated in the last hours of the session, and a bill passed the same afternoon.

A freshman senator whose donor list swapped Leavenworth County for a national energy grid, an endorsement, and a running mate pick eight days apart.

That is not a scandal. That is a machine.

Next, Episode 4…The Consequences.

This is episode three of a five part investigation. We are going to name the players, the lobbyists, the politicians, the out-of-state money. Because Kansas did not lose its water, its land, its power grid and its property tax base by accident. It lost these things in a single afternoon behind a Gut and Go legislative hat trick.