TOPEKA — U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt was persuaded by coffee shop chatter and November exit polling that voters were motivated in 2024 by a desire to elect politicians who could effectively do the basic work of governing.
“It wasn’t so much that folks want this or that,” Schmidt said. “It’s that they want something to happen, to show motion, which they then can judge as to whether it’s progress or not. That’s consistent with … a lot of the coffee-shop talk around the 2nd District.”
On the Kansas Reflector podcast, Schmidt said it was safe to assume the clock on the GOP would start ticking in January as soon as Republicans regained the White House with President-elect Donald Trump and assumed leadership of the U.S. Senate in addition to the U.S. House. It was reasonable to think that window of opportunity for an all-GOP D.C. could close with elections in 2026.
“We don’t have to solve every problem, but we have to make progress on many of the things that we’ve talked about,” he said.
Schmidt, 56, won a competitive August primary and coasted through the November general election in the eastern Kansas district. He was chosen by voters to replace U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican who declined to seek reelection. Schmidt ocused his campaign on support for Trump and a commitment to border security, inflation reduction through lower government spending and relief from federal overregulation.
Schmidt was no stranger to politics after 12 years as the state’s attorney general and a decade in the Kansas Senate. He narrowly lost the 2022 governor’s race to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
‘Unified government’
In Washington, he has been appointed to the House Judiciary Committee. He’ll be the only former state attorney general in the 435-member House. He also was chosen to serve on the House Armed Services Committee. Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth as well as the Kansas National Guard’s refueling wing in Topeka reside in his congressional district.
“Armed services is very important for the district, as well as obviously, for the country,” Schmidt said. “We face a time when, you know, America’s positioning around the world is a bit challenging, a bit in flux. That’s an area I can help fill a gap that would be very good for the state and for the 2nd District in particular.”
He said his previous work as majority leader of the Kansas Senate and as leader of the attorney general’s office from 2011 to 2023 would serve him well at the U.S. Capitol. That background could speed his learning curve in terms of legislative fundamentals. It ought to help with dynamics of interacting with people who come at issues from different perspectives and in anticipating consequences of public policy in terms of the federal bureaucracy and courts.
One clear distinction would be the thin majority Republicans hold in Washington compared to the large GOP majority that has existed in Topeka, he said.
“At some points, it may be down to one vote. That’s difficult, holding everybody together,” Schmidt said. “But the flip side of that is we’ll have unified government with Republican control in all three areas.”
Immigration, border
Schmidt’s campaign mirrored calls by Trump and others to bring order to national border crossings and to create more robust physical and law enforcement barriers to illegal entry into the United States.
There should be greater public awareness the past 3.5 years included the largest migration of people into the United States in history, Schmidt said. That’s part of the reason immigration gained so much traction among voters in 2024, he said.
