Kay O'Connor 9th District Kansas Senator Biography

Kay was born in Everett, Washington, in 1941 and raised on a 160 acre homestead north of Fairbanks, Alaska. She was married to Art in 1959 and they have 6 children, 13 grandchildren, and 6 great grandchildren.

Kay graduated from Lathrop High School in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1959. She has been a homemaker and mother, as well as an employee in various offices and in management positions. For more than six years prior to being elected to the legislature, she was the office manager and full charge accountant for a nationwide general contracting and construction company.

First elected to the Kansas House of Representatives 1992, Kay has served on Government Organization & Elections, Health & Welfare, Education, and Appropriations committees in the House and on the Joint Legislative Educational Planning Committee. She was a 1991 participant in the Fundamentals of Catholicism seminar at Notre Dame University and completed the Kansas University Economics Institute for Kansas Leaders at the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy in 1999.

Senator O’Connor was the 2001 recipient of the Kansas Republican Assembly’s Courageous Conservative Award. She is currently serving on Senate committees as Vice Chair of Elections and Local Government, member of Judicial, Federal and State Affairs, and Joint Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.

In her hometown of Olathe, Kay is director of St. Philippine Duchesne Choir at Blessed Sacrament Parish which hosts the "Kansas City Latin Mass Community." She serves as Executive Director of Parents In Control (PIC), a national non-profit organization promoting parental control of educational decisions for children, and is also an Advisory Board member of Sojourner Truth, an alternative school for Kansas City students who have been expelled from the public schools. In her spare time, the senator is currently writing a book titled, "School Choice for Dummies," and hopes to have it ready for publication soon.