ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
There are many who have thrown their name in the ring for the U.S. Senate from Kansas, and among those is Sandy Spidel Neumann.
As Neumann tells it, she is no stranger to hard work.
“I’m not a politician. I’ve spent the last 40 years in corporate America, the last 22 of which at Ameriprise Financial, which is a Fortune 250 firm. I entered into the fray after seeing Roger Marshall’s town hall in Oakley, and I was appalled by his behavior, so I said ‘You work for us, and we need to show you that.’ I know how to from my corporate background and running projects and delivering results,” Neumann said. “I know how to manage situations and people that need to be managed, and it appears as though he needs to be managed. So that was why I came into the fray. I was looking to pivot from the corporate world. I turned 60 last year, and I was thinking ‘What have I done in my life?’ You hit those milestone birthdays, and you also start thinking ‘What can I do more?’ and ‘How can I make more of a difference?’ I’ve served on boards. I’ve done a variety of things in terms of giving back to the community, and so trying to do something along those lines. And like I say, I was becoming a little more distraught with how the political environment was, and how it’s delivering for Kansans. And then when I saw Roger Marshall ... I already thought he was ineffective in terms of what he was delivering. He hasn’t delivered a Farm Bill and it’s been four or five years. In looking at that, and then seeing his behavior in Oakley – which hit national news – and the people in that room reminded me of my cousins who farm in Burlingame. I remember very clearly thinking ‘You don’t get to push people around you, don’t you’re not the one with the power. We’re the ones with the power. It’s we, the people who elect you to represent us, not to represent your own views, but to represent the people and what they need.’ And that’s just what I wasn’t seeing, and I thought, ‘You know what? I can do a much better job of this.’ I will actually deliver for the people of Kansas.”
Neumann added she has a full list of goals and expectations for the office should she be elected.
“The first would be agriculture, we’ve got to do something for our farmers. You don’t need a degree in economics, which I actually have, to understand the tariffs are causing much more harm than good. Tariffs are actually just a tax on the end consumer, which the companies pass that directly through – or, if they contract their business and don’t hire more people because they have to absorb those costs,” Neumann said. “And when they do it haphazardly, it’s really much more of a grift, because they’re doing it and telling their billionaire buddies what they’re going to do, and people trade in front of it, so they’re profiting from it, and that’s a problem. We need to reimplement USAID for the farmers as well as a humanitarian feeding the hungry throughout the world because that’s a really important market for our farmers. The tariffs in and of themselves closed major markets in a year where grain yields were so high and the Chinese markets so important to the farmers. We need a new farm bill, and there’s no reason why people on both sides of the aisle can’t get together and get that done, it’s been way too many years. They just keep renewing the old one, and it needs to get done. I would loop in ICE procedures in here – I know that seems a little far-fetched, but foreign labor means so much to the farmers and immigrant labor. And with ICE itself, the concept is good as a law enforcement entity, but now how it’s being implemented with their procedures and goals in terms of wearing masks and violating due process, which is not tolerable at all, along with the arbitrary goals on how many people they need to deport. I would also go into health care, and a lot of that is undoing some of the heinous policies that have come in in the last nine months.”
Improving healthcare is also among those goals, Neumann said.
“We need to restore Medicaid funding to keep our rural hospitals safe. Kansas has the most rural hospitals that are set to close in any other state due to those Medicaid fund funding cuts, and that’s just inappropriate,” Neumann said. “In terms of restoring the ACA subsidies, we’ve got to make health care affordable as we work to improve it and make it better. We do need to look at a single-payer system similar to a Medicare for All concept, but that needs a lot more study and a lot more work to get that done. We also need to keep the government out of women’s health care. We also need to work on prescription drug prices. What the problem is with drugs, a lot of times it’s not necessarily the pharmaceutical companies being as greedy as consumers might think – there’s a lot of in that supply chain between the R&D process, and when the consumer actually gets it, there are a lot of people involved in distributing it, packaging it, doing X, doing Y, that are getting a cut. So we need to streamline some of that. I saw a recent study show that 23 percent of people have skipped a dose of their medicine because of unaffordability, and that’s just not acceptable.”
Reinstating the Department of Education as a cabinet level position is also a priority for Neumann.
“Educating our children and our society as a whole is mission critical to a thriving democracy. We also need to restore funding for special needs programs since everyone is impacted by that,” Neumann said. “I would never take guns away from people – I understand the gun culture in Kansas, and I understand if you have a rifle in your in your pickup when you’re out working on the farms, but we need common sense gun regulation to keep our children safe in schools and our educators safe as well. We can still do that and do it in a way that helps kids get through this and educators as well.”
A final goal would be tackling affordability, Neumann said.
“We saw President Trump recently saying how things were affordable when we know we go to the grocery store how the price of everything is up. And my bonus element here is just eliminating the grift, we need measures in place that can help with this, like enacting age limits and term limits across all three branches, so Congress, executive and the Supreme Court,” Neumann said. “We also need to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices so each district has its own justice. We need to restore the power of the purse to Congress, the president should not be implementing tariffs or trying to get the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Again, he had just purchased millions of dollars of bonds and trying to lower interest rates, but when interest rates go down, the value of bonds goes up. The U.S. Constitution should is what we take an oath of office to, not to the president. There’s a lot to fix, and throughout my career, I’ve been tapped to go in and fix stuff.”
So far, Neumann said, the campaign trail has been a good experience.
“People want change. People are discouraged with what they’re seeing. They’re seeing all kinds of unnecessary negative impacts on their lives with that big what I would call abomination of a bill that was passed. There were so many things in it that hurt, from decreased funding for Medicaid, which is going to cause rural hospitals to close, and the other ripple impacts,” Neumann said. “One of the things we see is we don’t have leadership right now, Roger Marshall among them, who will look beyond the initial impact to what it’s going to cause you cut the Medicaid funding. It’s going to cause rural hospitals to close, which means it’s going to take longer for people to get to the necessary health care they need. That means people are going to have more adverse impacts, including deaths and not only just human death, which in and of itself, is horrific, but it’s going to cause those small communities to die as well, because the good jobs that are associated with those hospitals are also going to go away. And that’s just one of the things, when you look at Medicare, the ACA premium tax credits and what that’s going to cause. I was just looking at numbers recently, and they’re expected to triple, maybe even quadruple, for seniors, and it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t pull the rug out from under people when you’re trying to fix something. The ACA is not perfect, but nothing at that level would be. The best thing to do is take a look at what’s working, what’s not working, and then make necessary changes while keeping the underlying infrastructure in place as you optimize. Not only did Roger Marshall vote to cut the ACA premium tax credits in the abomination of a bill, but he recently voted again not to renew them when he had an opportunity to do that as a stopgap measure. And I think that’s, you know, malpractice at best. I get energy from people. I love being out and talking to people, and I’ve been all over the state, and will continue to go to each county, talk to as many people as I can, and really connect with people where they are. I want to hear what’s important to them.”
Neumann also offered encouragement for people to follow her campaign.
“They can follow sandyforkansas.com, or they can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky – if there’s a social media channel, I’m likely on it,” Neumann said. “People can also email me at
Overall, Neumann said, a change in representation for Kansas is much needed.
“It’s time for people to take a step back and think ‘Who can best represent my interests?’ and ‘Who votes to help me?’ not what letter’s behind someone’s name,” Neumann said. “If you would ground your senator for how they communicate to you, then they shouldn’t be your senator. Look at who’s going to benefit you? Who’s really going to help you, who’s going to help your community thrive? Who’s doing things that benefit people, and not their own selves, and not, you know, putting money in their own pocket. All I’m seeing is the grift of, you know, throwing money in their own pockets and in their billionaire buddies. And that just got to stop. That’s not how Kansas operates, and that’s not how I operate.”
