TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – Republicans expected the political comeback of a former Kansas attorney general in Tuesday’s elections would keep an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in GOP hands as the party faced a tougher challenge in an attempt to oust the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation.
Republican Derek Schmidt sought the second congressional district seat of retiring two-term Republican Jake LaTurner. Schmidt, who served three terms as attorney general, suffered a narrow loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race and faced Nancy Boyda, marking her own comeback as the last Democrat to hold the seat.
In the 3rd District in the Kansas City area, Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids faces Republican Prasanth Reddy, a doctor and former vice president of two medical research companies. Most of the district’s voters are in suburbs that have been friendly to Davids.
In the state’s two other districts, Republican Reps. Tracey Mann and Ron Estes were expected to comfortably win reelection.
Democrats have previously held the 2nd District seat, but not since Boyda served a single two-year term and lost her race for re-election in 2008. LaTurner won both of his terms by about 15 percentage points and likely would have cruised to victory again , but he announced in April that he wanted to spend more time with his children.
Schmidt is often friendly in public, and he worked early in his career for two moderate Republicans, U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker and Gov. Bill Graves, before serving in the Senate and being elected attorney general in 2010. That has created lingering distrust among hard-right Republicans.
But Schmidt easily won a five-person primary this year — in part because former President Donald Trump declared in a social media post of support that Schmidt was “An American First Patriot” and, “HE WILL NEVER DISAPPOINT YOU!”
In the 3rd District, Davids gained national attention when she unseated a Republican incumbent in 2018 as a Native American, lesbian and former mixed martial arts fighter. Republicans still call her the most liberal member of Congress. Her outspoken support for abortion rights helps in her district, but she also positions herself as a business-friendly and pragmatic centrist.
The key to a win in the 3rd District lies in the outskirts of Johnson County, the state’s most populous county. Trump’s support there has declined since his victory in the 2016 presidential race, hurting Republicans, while Davids’ victory margins have grown.
The first district Mann represents includes the liberal enclave of Lawrence in northeastern Kansas, home to the main campus of the University of Kansas, but his influence could weaken the GOP’s strength in the rest of the district, which includes the western third of the state and covers much of central Kansas. . Mann is a former lieutenant governor of Kansas who won his two previous terms without issue.
His Democratic opponent was Paul Buskirk, an academic advisor and student-athlete advisor at the University of Kansas.
South-central Kansas’ 4th District is centered in Estes’ hometown of Wichita, and he is a former two-term state treasurer. He has held the seat since winning a special election in 2017 to replace Mike Pompeo, who was appointed CIA director by Trump and later US Secretary of State.
His Democratic opponent is Esau Freeman, a painter and labor leader best known for his advocacy for the legalization of marijuana.
