TOPEKA — Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda and Libertarian-turned-Republican Michael Ogle filed Monday to expand to seven the major party candidates drawn to the 2nd District vacancy created by the decision of GOP Congressman Jake LaTurner to not seek reelection.
Boyda, the Baldwin City resident who defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun in 2006, signed up to campaign in the Democratic primary against Matt Kleinmann, a community developer from Wyandotte County and a member of the University of Kansas basketball team that won a national championship in 2008.
“I have been asked why I want to be in Congress,” said Boyda, who joined a flurry of last-day filers at the secretary of state’s office in Topeka. “Congress isn’t just broken, its also become dangerous. So, why am I running? I cannot sit by and watch our country and communities be torn apart by distrust of each other.”
Boyda said her candidacy was an attempt to create a political movement drawing to the center people who struggled to speak across political, ideological and religious divides.
Ogle, who ran in 2013 for mayor of Topeka as a Libertarian, said he was inspired to make a run for the U.S. House because members of Congress had taken their eye off core obligations to promote liberty, domestic tranquility and preservation of the union.
“I want term limits,” said Ogle, who served as an officer in the U.S. Army. “Congressional term limits have to happen.”
On the GOP side of the ledger in the 2nd District, Ogle would be joined by former Kansas Attorney General and state Sen. Derek Schmidt of Independence, former Trump administration official Jeff Kahrs of Topeka, rancher Shawn Tiffany of Delavan and Chad Young of Lawrence.
Tiffany, another late addition to the GOP ballot in the 27-county eastern Kansas district, said he was running because weak-kneed politicians in the Republican Party had “enabled the socialist left and allowed them to push their extreme agenda on Kansas.
“It’s time to send a cowboy to Congress who will fight to stop the invasion at our southern border, end woke ideology and revive the values that make Kansas and America great,” Tiffany said.
U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the three-term Democrat in the 3rd District centered on Johnson County, won’t have an August primary opponent. In the November general election, she would face winner of a primary between Republicans Karen Crnkovich of Olathe and Prasanth Reddy of Lenexa.
First District Congressman Tracey Mann, the Republican elected to the U.S. House in 2020, attracted primary opponent Eric Bloom of Lawrence. The GOP winner would go up against Democrat Paul Buskirk of Lawrence. The heavily gerrymandered 1st District extends from Garden City in the west to Lawrence in the east.
“From what I see, our government today is self-serving and arrogant,” Buskirk said. “So many officials, appointed or elected, hold tightly to ideology, political party and their own welfare with little regard for governing ‘for the people.’ I want to change that.”
In the 4th District based in Wichita, U.S. Rep. Ron Estes of Wichita didn’t attract a primary challenger. He will be on the November ballot with Sedgwick Democrat Esau Freeman, who also didn’t draw a primary competitor. Estes has held that seat in Congress since prevailing in a 2017 special election.
Estes, who won full terms in 2018, 2020 and 2022, filed for reelection in February on the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
“More than a century after the end of the Civil War, our world is much different, but we face daunting divisions that are tearing our country apart,” Estes said. “While the word unity is often flung about to mask the user’s true intention of pulling opponents to their side, it would behoove us as a nation to look to Lincoln’s allegiance to this country, love for his fellow man, compassion for those who disagreed with him and devotion to God as a guide for restoring our nation and healing our land.”
