The Kansas governor’s race was a nail-biter with incumbent Laura Kelly eking out a 1.4% cushion over Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Of the 976,276 votes counted, Gov. Kelly was ahead by fewer than 14,000 when the race was called Wednesday afternoon.
For those who quip their vote doesn’t count, this is proof positive it does.
The race for Attorney General between Republican Kris Kobach and Democrat Chris Mann was also decided midday Wednesday. This time, the Republican won, by a 2% margin.
AT FIRST glance, Kansas’ rural regions remain decisively Republican compared to its urban centers.
Despite recent Republican gerrymandering efforts to dilute Congresswoman Sharice Davids’ district, the Democrat handily won reelection against Republican Amanda Adkins to represent District 3 in Congress.
Votes for Gov. Kelly heavily outweighed those for Schmidt in Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka and Manhattan. Only in Wichita did Schmidt come close.
In Allen County, Schmidt had a 30-point cushion.
As the urban and suburban centers of our state continue to expand, the political imbalance will likely grow as well.
A DEEPER dive into Tuesday’s results, however, show the state overall is moving in a more moderate direction.
All Kansas Supreme Court Justices were handily re-elected, for example, indicating that the effort to cast them as “activist liberals” was way off mark. The powerful Kansas for Life organization recommended the ouster of five of the six justices, taking exception to the high court’s 2019 decision to protect a woman’s right to abortion. Only Justice Caleb Stegall, appointed by former Gov. Sam Brownback, passed their smell test.
Also, it appears the constitutional amendment to give state legislators — who currently hold a Republican supermajority — the power to veto decisions by the executive branch with a simple majority vote will be defeated, again by the slimmest of margins. As of Wednesday morning, the difference was about 6,000 votes.
THE BEST news is that the vast majority of the tens of millions who cast ballots Tuesday did so in a safe, civil and transparent manner. We didn’t wake up to headlines of violent mobs attacking poll workers. And, yet again, there was absolutely no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Elections in America are well-run and trustworthy.
For more than 200 years we’ve assumed that democracy would prevail here in the United States. Today, we value it all the more.
— Susan Lynn
