Kansas Sen. Chris SteinegerKansas Sen. Chris SteinegerYou know this debate about health care reform is getting serious when state senators are getting punched in the face in Kansas City, Kan.

Sen. Chris Steineger, a KCK Democrat, broke his silence today about the shiner he got after a debate about health care reform turned ugly last weekend.

Steineger said he and his wife stopped into Breit’s Stein and Deli, a watering hole popular with local politicos, for a pint at 7:30 Friday. After learning that Steineger was a Democratic state Senator, the man struck up a conversation

about efforts to reform the health care system. The man, Steineger said, apparently takes a dim view of these efforts, and things got ugly.

“He got angrier and angrier and it became a one-sided conversation,” Steineger said Friday, still sporting the remnants of a black eye. “It became more and more heated. He was bad mouthing me and other elected officials.”

Steineger said he and his wife decided to head home.

“I got up to leave and took about 10 steps and I turn around to make sure my wife is there… he had followed me and sucker punched me right there,” Steineger said.

Steineger shoved the man back against the wall. The man proceeded to throw another punch; this one Steineger blocked. Several other patrons intervened and separated the two men, but not before everyone fell to the floor to in a pile.

Steineger said he had had one beer before the fight occurred; he said he witnessed the man drinking at least two beers, and that he suspects he’d been drinking at the bar for a while before Steineger arrived.

“This guy just wanted to yell at somebody,” Steineger said.

He hasn’t filed a police report. The night of the fight he thought about it but decided not to make a big deal out of the incident. But he said he now knows the man’s name, and is still considering whether to file a complaint.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m still kind of surprised that it happened.”

Steineger wouldn’t provide the man’s name.