Kansans are entitled to ask what “successful” means in this context.

Trump’s “Fantastic Candidate” Who Mastered Bankruptcy

Ty Masterson likes to present himself as a successful small-business man who understands the real economy. President Trump has now endorsed that version of the story, declaring Masterson a “fantastic Candidate” with his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to be the next governor of Kansas and promising that “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN.”

The public record tells a different story.

Masterson’s construction company, Masterbuilt Homes, collapsed around 2006. According to Masterson himself, the failure was the fault of a former employee who made errors, mismanaged projects, and ran up unauthorized charges. The company went under. The debts did not.

In late 2010 Masterson filed personal Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Court records showed roughly $300,000 in assets against about $1.13 million in debts. Nearly $885,000 of that was unsecured. Among the commercial loans were approximately $209,000 to Corner Bank and $53,890 to Emprise Bank, plus more than $160,000 in credit-card debt. The case was closed in August 2012. Few creditors recovered meaningful amounts. Masterson later told reporters he continued informal repayments to a couple of banks and vendors even though the court no longer required it. That is the version of “personal responsibility” that survived the discharge.

Two years before the filing, while campaigning in 2008, Masterson publicly rejected the idea of bankruptcy. He said attorneys had advised him to declare it and walk away, but his convictions would not allow him to leave fellow businessmen “holding the bag.” He spoke of personal responsibility and declared that “the buck stops here.” The buck eventually stopped in federal bankruptcy court.

This history is not obscure. It was reported by the Associated Press, the Wichita Eagle, and the Topeka Capital-Journal when Masterson was elevated to chair the Senate Ways and Means Committee. It appears in Wikipedia. It continues to surface whenever his name is attached to higher office. Yet the same man is now marketed as the steady, successful hand Trump trusts to run Kansas.

There is a particular comedy in watching a president who once branded himself the ultimate deal-maker and successful businessman place his full endorsement behind a former home builder whose company failed, whose debts exceeded a million dollars, and whose creditors received pennies on the dollar. “He will never let you down” is a bold claim about a candidate whose business already did exactly that. The employee supposedly made the mistakes. The bankruptcy court made the debts disappear. The political class is now asked to treat the whole episode as irrelevant ancient history.

Kansans are entitled to ask what “successful” means in this context. Building houses until the company collapses and then filing Chapter 7 is one form of experience. Managing a state budget, negotiating with creditors of a different sort, and delivering on promises is another. The record shows Masterson has the first kind of experience in abundance. Whether that qualifies him as the “fantastic” choice Trump describes is a question voters can answer for themselves.

The facts are public. The endorsement is recent. The gap between the two remains wide open.