Elected officials attending included State Senator Virgil Peck, State Rep. Dale Helwig, State Rep. Ken Collins, Kansas Insurance Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Vicki Schmidt, State Senator Caryn Tyson, State Rep. Chip VanHouden, State Rep. Ron Bryce, U.S. Congressman Derek Schmidt, and Dan Goddard, who is retiring from the Kansas House. Republican candidate for governor Stacy Rogers and independent gubernatorial candidate Dr. Sharilyn Ray were also in attendance. Don Alexander, president of Southeast Kansas, Inc., served as emcee.
Gimmie Jo Jansonius, Kansas’s USDA State Director for Rural Development, spoke first, followed by Dr. Thomas Newsom, president of Pittsburg State University, and Kyle Page, a carpentry training instructor with Crossland Construction. Newsom discussed Pittsburg State’s growth, noting that this fall’s freshman class will exceed 1,000 students, the largest incoming class since 2013, and described a housing facility opening this August: the university plans to remodel the Best Hotel in downtown Pittsburg, originally opened in 1926, into a dorm for 60 students. He also cited Block 22’s recent impact, saying it generated $2.3 million in sales tax revenue for the state of Kansas and $1.3 million for the city of Pittsburg last year.