Kansas has a paradox for lieutenant governors. They can have few duties but sudden responsibilities.

On June 1, presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced he had chosen Katie Sawyer as his lieutenant governor running mate, prompting an audible “Katie who?” among the masses of Kansas voters.

This is not a slam against Sawyer, who seems to have enjoyed a successful career as a staff member for U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall and in the newspaper business. To be fair, the refrain of “David who?” was probably equally loud when Gov. Laura Kelly picked David Toland as her new lieutenant governor in December of 2020 to replace Lynn Rogers, who left to be state treasurer.

The fact is the public doesn’t pay much attention to lieutenant governor selection announcements.

An exception occurred in 2006 when Democrat Gov. Kathleen Sebelius picked Mark Parkinson as her running mate. You see, Parkinson had been a former legislator and successful businessman, yes, but what made headlines and caused such a huge stir was that he was the former chair of the Kansas Republican Party who switched parties to run with Sebelius.

Parkinson — who is the subject of an extensive profile that I co-edited in the spring issue of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains — openly notes that the lieutenant governor’s job can be inherently irrelevant.

He tells the story of his wife, Stacy, asking what his constitutional responsibilities were. “I said, ‘Stacy, I have none.’ She looked me in the eye and said, ‘Mark, you are uniquely qualified.’”

Parkinson says that he asked Sebelius if they could meet once a week. “That allowed me to sort of know what was going on. I thought I was in the inner circle. I was not in the inner circle. Most lieutenant governors are not in the inner circle.”

Parkinson wanted something to do, though, and he took on the portfolio of energy policy, and later, doing an intensive dive into the state budget.

Although Parkinson jokes about being lieutenant governor — “I was really good at doing nothing. I was great at it!” — he says if you enjoy policy and not notoriety, it’s a good job. “I didn’t really ever like the royalty stuff; I liked the policy stuff.”

Parkinson came out of shadows in 2009 when Sebelius left office for a presidential cabinet position, and he became Kansas’ 45th governor.

Which brings us to the paradox of the lieutenant governor: no real formal power, few expectations and zero fanfare, but also someone who can be given the keys to the state at a moment’s notice.

This happens more often than you might think. Five lieutenant governors have taken over as governor in Kansas history, including two in the past 13 years. Parkinson served 623 days as governor while Gov. Sam Brownback’s lieutenant governor, Jeff Colyer, served 349 days in 2018-2019.

Katie Sawyer will be spending her time over the next five months campaigning for Derek Schmidt, so there will be little chance, nor even inclination, to determine her role in a possible Schmidt administration.

The state may be best served by the current trend of giving the lieutenant governor real work, such as Parkinson had with energy policy and Toland currently has as commerce secretary.

That experience would certainly come in handy if, as so easily can happen, she finds herself vaulting from obscurity to pre-eminence in the wink of an eye.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas has a paradox when it comes to its lieutenant governors