Senator Tom Holland announced his candidacy for Kansas governor on Feb. 17 in Topeka near Lowman Hills Elementary School.

“I’m running for governor because, now more than ever, Kansas needs a problem solver in the governor’s office,” Holland’s Web site said.

Before he announced he was running for governor, Holland asked Martha Harris, Baker University professor of business and economics, to be the official treasurer of his campaign committee.

“Everyone has to have someone that reports on the donations to the campaign and how the money is spent,” Harris said.

Harris met Holland while working on other campaigns, although she’s never done any accounting work for other campaigns before.

“Being from Baldwin, we kind of kept crossing paths,” she said. ?

Harris will not have any campaign appearances; she said she will strictly be in charge of keeping track of the money.

“It’s strictly accounting for revenues that come in and what the expenditures are made for,” she said. “I don’t have decision-making responsibilities. I won’t actually be deciding how much to spend on advertising or this or that. (Holland) has a staff that will do all of those types of decisions. I’m just the bean counter.”

Although she is not doing much work for the campaign right now, she expects the work to pick up soon.

“I’m assuming that the pace will pick up pretty dramatically here on down the line,” she said. “Now, I really haven’t had very much to do.”?

Holland is running against Republican candidate Sam Brownback.

“The people of Kansas deserve a problem solver who knows how to create jobs and rebuild our economy,” Holland said during his announcement. “Not dig us deeper into the debt, gridlock and partisanship we’ve seen in Washington.”

Election day is Nov. 2, and after that day Harris has to submit a report of all the revenues and expenditures to Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh.

"It'll be a new adventure," Harris said. "I think it'll be very interesting to see kind of how all that works."<br/>