Mark Steffen

Steffen is an anesthesiologist and pain specialist who promoted medications deemed contraindicated for sufferers from COVID-19 by the United States Food and Drug Administration, including Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. [3] On January 26, 2022, Steffen admitted his practice had been investigated by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts for the previous 18 months. He contended that Dr. Steve Stites, the chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, who was critical of politicians who oppose vaccination and masking, was "the Kansas Dr. Fauci," accusing Stites of spreading "propaganda."[4]

In January 2021, Steffen introduced SB187, a bill designed to levy heavy penalties against media corporations that censored political posts. It died in Committee in 2022.[5][6]

On January 26, 2022, he appeared before a Kansas Senate committee to tout his purported COVID-19 remedies. He demanded that a "panel of physicians and scientists from both sides of this issue," be convened.[4] Steffen appeared to concede he traded his vote to overturn the legislature's Kansas congressional redistricting map in order to provide the minimum necessary margin for passage of a bill that would terminate a health board investigation into his medical practice.[7] He joined another Republican senator in switching their votes to provide the supermajority necessary to override Democratic Governor Laura Kelly's veto of the body's hyperpartisan redistricting after the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee fast-tracked a COVID measure that protected unapproved off-label prescribing and forced pharmaceutical dispensing of the drugs in a "gut and go" bill. He refused to answer a reporter's inquiry regarding a possible quid pro quo that tethered the redistricting vote and his COVID bill, but he responded to the charge during a later interview with Pete Mundo, a conservative talk radio host, saying: "Well, I did that to make some progress on some other fronts." "Sometimes that's the way politics works."

Steffen had pushed for various public health policy changes. To that end, the existing content of House Bill 2280 that it had sent to the Senate was removed and wholly replaced by language from Senate Bill 381 by the committee, substituting the language Steffens sought. Mundo asked him: "So there was a part of you that felt to get Senate Bill 381, which got out of committee yesterday, to get it there, you felt like you essentially had to hold up your vote on redistricting?"

"Well, I don't know if it was that blunt," said Steffen. "I was able to meet with the right folks to express all those concerns and we came to a mutual agreement,"

A spokesperson for the Senate's GOP leadership denied what had happened, saying: "Discussions were had about issues that Senator Steffen cares about, as President Masterson confirmed yesterday." "However, any implication about a trade or a deal is inaccurate and nothing in his interview said differently."

Senate President Ty Masterson had compared the talks to a negotiation, telling reporters: "You can make what you will out of that. There was no quid pro quo, but it would be unfair to characterize it as some kind of insider deal."

Steffen had supported the map two weeks earlier, but following Kelly's veto of the gerrymandering, he switched to opposing the map that Masterson favored, saying its effect was "dumping the Lawrence liberals" into the 1st Congressional District. He contended: "...insidious redistricting will kill off the true conservative character of the Big First."

Steffen's bill forced pharmacists to fill prescriptions for ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and other off-label drugs ostensibly for treatment and prevention of COVID-19, protecting prescribers from liability should their prescriptions harm patients. It would further stop the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts from disciplining healthcare workers for all and any reasons associated with the coronavirus pandemic and included anti-vax elements expanding comprehensive religious, moral, and ethical-belief exemptions from school and daycare mandates regarding childhood vaccination requirements. The committee voted on the provision avoiding any public testimony. Republican Senate leadership facilitated the bill's progress, with one member moving for a "gut and go," a procedural strategy in which legislators take a bill that has already been passed by one chamber, then removing all of its original text and replacing the deleted content with that from a different bill in order to facilitate passage of the latter while avoiding the opportunity for testimony from the public. Hours later, Steffen switched to supporting the redistricting map along with Senator Alicia Straub, another endorser of fringe COVID-19 treatment protocols.

In January 2023, Steffen filed the first bill of the legislative session, SB1. It would have subjected online social media to fines of up to $75,000 per instance for platform censorship of user posts, with the Kansas Attorney General given the latitude to bring such cases on behalf of Kansas residents, under the authority of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.[8]

Two months after a group of young adults met with Steffen at his state senate office in March 2023, he told Republicans at Hutchinson's Riverside Baptist church, that his visitors had appeared "horrible," and "a mess." One of those March attendees, a Muslim woman who observed many Bibles in his office asked how he might represent the interests of constituents of her religion and those of a Jewish woman who was with the group. "I would be happy to try and convert you," he responded. He denied the substance of his response to a reporter who inquired about the exchange. He also claimed that "There was (sic) transgenders and, you know, they were proudly telling me they were homosexuals, lesbians." However, his visitors said there had been no such discussion about sexuality or gender, nor did the recording of the encounter reflect his account of the meeting. He complained to the church group that his staffer had, "let me down," when she allowed the group to enter his office. After the recording of the March meeting surfaced, however, he subsequently admitted he had lied about what had happened there.[9]

In April 2023, the House and Senate overrode Governor Laura Kelly's veto on a jail bill that incorporated opposition to what had been characterized as "women's bill of rights" legislation. Steffen said, "Sometimes, unfortunately, we as a Legislature have to be the last line of defense when parents have lost the way, when a health care system has lost its way." "Only when confusion, chaos, frankly evil, reigns in society is this sort of occurrence allowed."

Democratic legislators, including Representative John Carmichael and Senator Ethan Corson referred to such efforts by the proponents as engaging in, "culture wars."[10]

• Vote Smart Mark Steffen
• Mark Steffen at Ballotpedia