How are candidates in Kansas' 3rd District dealing with Trump, Biden? From a safe distance

That creates a challenge for the candidates running in newly redrawn districts like Kansas’ 3rd, which is made up of Johnson, Anderson, Franklin, Miami and parts of Wyandotte County.

The district has voted increasingly Democratic since Trump’s surprise victory in 2016. But new congressional lines, approved in 2022, turned it from a district that voted for Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton and Biden in the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, to one that voted for Romney, Trump and Biden.

The majority of the voters in the district live in Johnson County. Once a stronghold for business-friendly, establishment Republicans, the highly educated, affluent county has been increasingly voting for Democrats as Trump tightened his grip on the Republican Party.

“In a way, she’s facing a microcosm of what a lot of Democrats, including Joe Biden, are facing this cycle, which is needing the support of independents, of at least some moderates, of at least some even Donald Trump-skeptical Republicans,” said Charles Hunt, a political science professor at Boise State University.

A focus on policy

Davids’ has been trying to stitch together that coalition in two ways — emphasizing her support for abortion rights and highlighting the money she’s been able to bring to the district over the past two years.

She frequently holds events highlighting two large-scale federal funding bills passed in 2021 that are still helping to fund local projects – a bipartisan infrastructure deal and a Democrat-pushed COVID-19 relief bill that spent $1.9 trillion.

But in the past two years, with a divided Congress, those bipartisan deals have slowed. While Davids was able to secure around $15.8 million in the spending package for the 2024 fiscal year, it didn’t pass until this March, more than five months into the year.

Instead, Davids has turned to talking about partisan gridlock. She recently visited Finley Farms in Johnson County before hosting a press conference in which she stressed her desire for Congress to pass a farm bill, which is currently running on a temporary expansion.

At those events, even if Biden administration officials are present, Davids rarely talks about Biden himself.

...continued

swipe to next page