- Coming up on "IGI", the 2024 Kansas election results are in and our panel of experts is here to break down who won, who lost, and how it all happened.

Stay with us.

(laser cracking) (gentle music) (upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "IGI".

I'm your host, Washburn University professor of Political Science, Bob Beatty.

After months of campaigning and millions of dollars in spending the 2024 Kansas elections are over.

Who were the winners and losers, and what will it mean for 2025 in the Sunflower State?

Well, we've got a dynamic duo of experts to help us figure it all out.

So, joining me from the Kansas Reflector is senior reporter Tim Carpenter and from Washburn University Political Science lecturer Bill Fiander.

But first, let's look at Kansas' Federal results.

At the presidential level, of course, we have Donald Trump defeating Kamala Harris 57% to 41%.

In the 1st Congressional District, we have Tracy Mann defeating Paul Buskirk 69% to 31%.

In the 2nd Congressional District, Derek Schmidt defeating Nancy Boyda 57% to 38%.

In the 3rd District, Sharice Davids defeated Prasanth Reddy 53% to 43%.

And in the 4th District, Ron Estes defeated Esau Freeman 65% to 35%.

So, lots to talk about.

I wanted to go right to Tim Carpenter on that 2nd District race, because Nancy Boyda, former congresswoman, was last person, Democrat, to hold the seat.

She surprised some by winning the primary against the newcomer Matt Kleinmann.

And Tim, I know you covered her campaign.

It was not close.

Derek Schmidt won easily.

So, I did have some questions.

People asked me, you know, what sort of campaign did Nancy Boyda run and why wasn't she able to get closer?

- First of all, you gotta remember that this was an open seat.

- Yes.

- Jake LaTurner, our congressman in the 2nd District, decided not to seek reelection.

So yeah, Derek Schmidt, former Kansas Attorney General, after served a dozen years in that job, lost the governor's race, and then thus ran for Congress.

Nancy Boyda enters the picture after being absent for 15 years and wins the nomination.

So, I think what happened was Derek Schmidt had a heck of a lot more money, he had much better name recognition, and he adhered himself to Donald Trump.

On the other hand, Nancy Boyda didn't really deliver a coherent message as to why she should be elected to this office from Kansas in that district, that Eastern Kansas district.

She lacked resources.

And so, I think the messaging problem extended even to trying to get free coverage from the news media.

There just didn't seem to be a savvy media campaign behind her effort.

And she got trounced.

- This was one of the unusual races in which there was no television ads from Nancy Boyda.

And so, the Derek Schmidt campaign didn't feel a need to do any ads either.

We've seen 2nd District races with Paul Davis previously and some other races where it's pretty intense.

But the decision by the Boyda campaign not to do that, you know, was it doomed whether he did it or not, or what was the motive behind that?

- Nancy Boyda likes this idea of publishing a newspaper.

It's sort of like a quaint 20-year-old idea that seemed to have, maybe she attributed it to part of the factor that she beat Jim Ryan, an incumbent Republican, years ago.

I just don't think that's today's marketplace.

And I also don't think Derek Schmidt felt threatened.

They didn't need to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at ads, because it was unnecessary.

- Let's move to the 3rd District.

This is the district where the Democrat won.

Of course, that is Sharice Davids.

And in terms of looking at this race, Sharice Davids actually, overperformed Kamala Harris in Johnson County, which is voter rich, and which is much of her district.

She actually overperformed Kamala Harris by six points.

And what is really interesting to me about this race is something I saw in some national articles after the election in which the articles featured Democrats who won, you know, because Kamala Harris lost the Republicans won the US Senate and the US House, but there were some Democrats that won.

And they didn't particularly look at Sharice Davids, but her campaign fit into that pattern of how they were able to win.

And one thing that she did, Sharice Davids, was respond on issues such as the border, the fentanyl crisis, and inflation, with an actual response of what she had done to do something about this.

So, we'll talk about this, but let's take a look at Sharice Davids' TV ad that she ran in her district on the subject of inflation.

- The Price Gouging Prevention Act.

It's a mouthful.

It's meant to put more food on your table and keep more money in your pocket.

I'm Sharice Davids, increased grocery prices sometimes with less in the package are hurting Kansas families.

It's called greedflation and I'm working to stop it.

I approve this message from stopping price gouging to capping drug costs like insulin at 35 bucks.

Helping Kansans cope with high prices is my highest priority.

- So, I just thought that was very effective.

You know, when people say, "Oh, inflation, it's awful.

What did she do about it?"

Well, she had an answer.

And so, that was my take on this election.

Bill, you know, how is it that Sharice Davids is able to overperform and what's she doing up in the 3rd District to stay in there?

- I think you have to look at her as well as who's in the district, who's voting.

She's very likable.

She's not extreme.

She meets people where they are.

She was in the grocery aisle.

She was in the doctor's office, you know, fighting, which literally, that's her background.

So, I think she plays very well.

I also look at the geography there, and it continues to urbanize and growing populations suburbanized, if you will.

The Johnson County, interestingly enough, also elected their first Democrats sheriff in over, not over, under almost 100 years, and first ever African American sheriff.

So these, whatever she is tapping into, it's part her, but I also think it's part of that electorate.

You had some, and I'm just detouring slightly here, but that if you pay attention to the sheriff's race, there were some extreme views coming from the Republican side that actually, were repudiated in the primary.

So, you had some fairly moderate, if you will, that goes in there.

So, it's a little so her, so those could be echoes of what she kind of campaign she was running.

But the folks in Johnson County are definitely a lot more tempered than maybe we give them credit for.

- Yeah, and I'm gonna get your take, Tim, but one thought I had is that we know a couple years ago, the Republicans majority in the Kansas legislature actually, changed the 3rd District to make it more Republican.

And in doing so, they changed other districts.

They changed the 2nd District and Lawrence went into the big 1st District, but it looks like that it really had no impact on the 3rd District, but actually, might have made the 2nd District sort of now unwinnable possibly for a Democrat.

I don't know.

But talk about the 3rd District, but we can also comment on that if you want.

- Yeah, the Republican legislature did a bunch of gerrymandering and they precisely tried to undermine Sharice David's ability to get reelected.

She got more votes than she did previously.

So, that didn't necessarily work.

In the 2nd District where Derek Schmidt won, I think it's maybe true that, if you say you don't have Lawrence in that district then that makes it much harder for a Democrat.

And that was the whole idea.

The Republicans wanna own everything and they're having a big problem trying to get rid of Sharice Davids.

And I just don't think that's likely.

I think she appeals to people on various levels.

You mentioned the economy, the backbone of that race was abortion rights.

It was two years ago and it was this year, despite the effort of her Republican opponent not to ever talk about it.

- And yeah, so to be fair, there's some Democratic states where, you know, they wouldn't mind having every single congressional district Democratic in Kansas.

The Republicans who outnumber the Democrats.

Yeah.

Obviously, very much would like all four seats.

- Whatever party's in charge, it's gonna play around with the map so they can win.

- Which is why some countries- - It is inevitable.

- they have gone to proportional representation.

But that's another show, right?

Let's move to the Kansas legislature.

Bill and I watched it go on, Tim covered it for the Kansas Reflector.

And, of course, the situation was the governor and the Democrats really hoped to break the super majority of the Republicans, which is that 2/3 majority.

That if they vote party line, they're allowed to override, they could override Laura Kelly, Laura Kelly's vetoes.

Very frustrating for her, of course, when she vetoes legislation.

And we were talking earlier, Tim, and what she's done in the past is sometimes be able to pick off a Republican or two, but they were not effective despite the millions of dollars on both sides that were spent.

They were not effective in getting rid of that super majority.

In fact, the Republicans looks like they're probably gonna gain a couple seats in the Kansas Senate and gain possibly three seats in the House.

And what I saw was the Democrats targeting seats that Laura Kelly had done well in two years ago.

And that also the abortion amendment two years ago had gotten a strong no vote in targeting those seats and those people.

But the Republicans countered by saying, their candidates saying, "Oh, actually we're bipartisan, you know, we worked with the governor and countering that argument."

So, example of that, and then Laura Kelly's response is in this senate race for Kellie Warren, Republican Kellie Warren, up in Johnson County.

- As a Blue Valley mom, I know education is an investment in the future of Kansas.

That's why I worked with Governor Kelly to end the school finance lawsuits.

Now, our schools have been fully funded for six straight years.

- This is Governor Laura Kelly.

For three years, Kelly Warren blocked our common sense plan to immediately eliminate the sales tax on food.

She cut funding for our public schools and spearheaded the ban on abortion without any exceptions.

Kellie Warren puts partisan games above what's best for Kansans.

Join me in supporting Karen Thurlow, the real middle of the road leader.

Karen will put you first.

She will reach across the aisle regardless of political party to deliver for Kansas' families.

- All right, we'll start with Tim, you know, obviously, we're discussing some of the strategies, but on the other hand, is it just there was no way this was gonna work in sort of this maybe this Trump year.

So, you covered a lot of this, your take on that?

- Well, I think the Governor put maybe a couple million dollars in trying to get rid of the super majorities.

I think the Republicans fought like crazy to deflect her, and they were successful.

There's no way to sugarcoat this.

The Republicans prevailed in this legislative battle, and I think the Governor her super PAC targeted maybe five drop ads in maybe five Senate races.

Republicans won all of those.

And so, she's gonna have to deal with a bolstered super majority.

And I think the nut of that is that the Republicans in the legislature will maybe broaden their agenda.

They'll be on the same issues as before, taxes, abortion, education, election security, these kind of things.

But I think they may be emboldened to write bills differently knowing that they can add a little bit of edge to this and that.

And even if she vetoes it, she will be more easily overridden.

- Yeah, and we'll get to more of that the upcoming session in a bit.

Bill, was there anything that the Democrats could do given these national forces?

Or what would somehow some different strategy have worked and I asked that really not knowing, but wondering what you think?

- Well, somewhat facetiously, I might say, you know, abortion rights weren't on the ballot.

And if they were maybe, and this is across the board, it's about mobilizing who your base is and getting people out.

And when there's an issue, when there's a reason to come out like we saw in 2022 with the abortion amendment, yeah, that's a chance.

You have a chance there.

But absent that, I mean, you are really trying to reach people who aren't coming out.

And there's been some good post-election talk about, you know, well, the Democrats lost a working class and that's, you know, I kind of, the working class is actually shrinking when you look at it nationally, and you look at Kansas, and they showed up.

But the real untapped kind of labor sector is the service class.

And this is the low wage, minimum wage.

You have a lot of women, minority groups, gen Z and millennial group, and they just didn't show up, Bob.

And to win something these days, and particularly, if you're the minority party, you have to get people to show up.

And if you just have the same people showing up, how they do that, that's the trick.

- Can I just add a bit there?

- Yeah, please.

- I think if you looked at the two major parties in Kansas, Republican and Democratic Party.

The Republicans did a much better job of particularly late in the cycle in getting registered voters.

Registered Republicans to the polls.

Their get out to vote campaign was much more effective.

I'm just not sure the Kansas Democratic Party has a major presence in the state, and that is a deficit they can't afford.

They've gotta be in a sense, twice as savvy, twice as well funded, twice as effective as the Republican party.

And they're not there, they're not close to that.

- And they were able to do it in the gubernatorial campaign, obviously, when Governor Laura Kelly was reelected.

- Trump, exactly.

Trump on the ballot.

It undermined the D's.

- And I get sometimes I get some flack.

Republicans, and you've pointed to this out, did a good job of this and I get some flack and they say, "Well, you know, give us some credit."

But the Republicans do have that advantage, which is this incredible, you're sort of pointing this out.

Incredible registration advantage, which is almost two to one, which is remarkable.

- Which is more registered independents than Democrats, I think.

- Right, it's more registered unaffiliated.

That's true.

So, that being said, they have that advantage, but so, Democrats have to do all the things you're saying, you know, and in a way, just to get their governor reelected.

I mean, that was $30 million and everything.

But on the other hand, the Republicans did, I think, run a good campaign and good strategically, as I pointed out.

I have been watching literally, hundreds of TV ads on the Republican side.

And they positioned themselves as bipartisan.

That's what people want to hear.

So, you saw that ad from Laura Kelly, she's not happy.

She's saying, "Well, don't know that these people were obstructionists and getting in the way."

And ad after ad after ad that I watched, started off with the Republican candidate saying, "Are you tired of all the partisan politics?

And you know, "We just want solutions."

And presenting themselves very smart strategy so.

- Also full of irony.

- Well.

- Because both parties are intensely partisan and just saying that you're bipartisan, if you look in these legislative races, there's a heck of a lot of votes that are bipartisan.

A lot of stuff is just, it's a given.

Yes, this is a yes vote.

So, they can say they're bipartisan, but there's distinct differences between ideology in those two parties.

And I guess both sides could have said they were bipartisan.

- And on the abortion issue, several states that had it on the ballot in other states this year, it passed.

- Yeah.

- But Harris didn't do.

- Correct.

Yeah.

- Right?

- Yeah, exactly.

So, maybe, you know, and we didn't try that again in 2024 with Kansas, but maybe there is a more sophisticated voter that can compartmentalize these things and say, "Oh, I feel there's not gonna be a national ban or I'm comfortable with my state representatives not forcing rights on me or taking rights away from me.

So, I'm okay with them, but if I have to come out and put my stamp on making sure it doesn't happen, I'll do that."

It didn't translate at least two years later in these other states except Nebraska, I think was the only one that actually, voted at the ballot to take rights away.

- Along these lines, Missouri passed an abortion amendment, a raised minimum wage.

- Minimum wage.

- Sports gambling.

- And sports gambling.

These are actually kinda libertarian ideas.

I want to decide my healthcare for myself, I want to gamble, or I don't.

You see?

And so, you can still do those things and go elect really conservative politicians to represent you.

I don't think that's inconsistent.

- Yeah, and the flip side happened in 2022 when the abortion amendment went down in Kansas, but that was in August, and then come November, obviously, Laura Kelly's reelected, but the Kansas legislature stays heavily Republican.

- If you look on something very strange happened in 2022 in the Kansas Amendment.

The timing of that vote couldn't have been worse for advocates for that amendment.

If you look at young voters, their interest in issues on abortion rights, reproductive rights went up to like 40%, number one issue, in July before that vote.

And now, it's down here in the twenties and thirties.

So, it was a peak moment, because the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

- Yeah.

- And so, that the timing of that vote, but a lot of people wanna hang their head on that vote.

And that was a moment in time.

That's not something that's gonna carry through, because a lot of those young voters don't go back to the polls.

- Let's go to what may happen in 2025.

Obviously, you've touched on it.

The Republicans now have a super duper majority.

Is that, Tim, are you gonna coin that?

- I don't think that's a technical term.

- Are you gonna coin a new phrase, because it's now, they had a super majority, but now it's bigger.

- Yeah, people have enough problems with understanding the procedure of the legislature without introducing super duper anything.

- Well, I'll keep testing that out- - All right.

- to see if that flies.

But Bill, all I've been hearing about is property taxes.

They were in the TV ads that Republicans who have the extra super majority said it's gonna be property taxes.

You know, we don't have, that's a whole entire show, which I'm sure you're looking forward to, but couple minutes.

Okay, let's say they're gonna do property taxes.

What does that mean for a Kansan saying, "Great, my property taxes are gonna go down."

Are they?

If the Kansas legislature passes property tax relief, will they really go down?

To any degree?

Let me put it that way.

- Yeah, the fervor that which you are hearing property tax you know, reform.

- Mean, it sounds exciting, right?

- Yeah, I don't think I've said this before.

It doesn't quite match the reality of what they can do.

And for example, and when you hear property tax, think schools for a second and think local services, 'cause that's 99% of property taxes is serving your local needs and services.

But the state only has their hand in about anywhere from 15 to 20% of your property tax.

They control, but they just pass most of that back to the school district.

So, when they have to cut property taxes at the state level, they still have to make schools whole.

And so, they have to take money from their income tax or their sales tax or their budget.

And they still have to make schools whole.

What they passed last session, again, you have a $250,000 house.

You probably saved about $40 on your tax bill, on average, okay?

- Okay.

- No one's gonna give that up, but they left at the table, if I remember, Tim, and check me if I'm wrong, I think they had a little bigger cut at one point exempting 100,000.

We're getting in a little weeds, but 100,000 of your home value from property tax they settled on 75,000 of your home value that they're exempting.

So, if they go back to that original proposal, you know, maybe that's another 20, 30 on, again, a 250.

So you do the math, it's nothing.

Who it does affect probably more less of people who have mortgages and they never see that.

It goes straight in from the, you know, into automatic payment every month.

But people who own their land and their homes outright.

So, things that have been passed down or they're retired and they're on fixed incomes, that does hurt when you're, you know, 40, 60, $70 a year.

But that gives you some context of how much they can play with without getting more extreme, which is more constitutional amendments and capping the increase in property values, which has been mentioned in the past.

So, I don't know how much more they can push us.

The governor has kind of said, "Hey, enough is enough" - They're gonna do something.

- Yeah.

- Right.

- So, they can nibble on the edge of property taxes.

The Governor's not wild about it, because of this massive tax legislation they passed last year really hasn't had boots on the ground yet to know how much it affected the economy and general tax revenue.

So, she wants to see that picture before they move ahead with other big tax cuts.

But you're right, the property tax effect of what the legislature can do is pretty nominal.

I think the House Republican leadership is more interested in slashing the corporate income tax when they come back.

And so, their tax packages are popular.

Everybody wants tax cuts right up until the point where the services they get out of government start dwindling.

The roads have more potholes.

The schools are closing.

It is exactly when the public will push back against some of that.

You're spending money, 'cause you're cutting tax revenue.

- And one of the Republican leaders, Dan Hawkins, actually, after the election, cautioned against going back to what, you know, doing something that would go back to the Brownback years, which then brought about a voter backlash that cut into the majorities as we all remember.

Okay, let's take about a minute that's pretty good for me in this show.

And some, you know, what this election's over, your comments, your thoughts or just something you noticed that you wanted to talk about.

Bill.

- I'll go real quick.

I've got two quick things.

One is a continuation of.

- Actually, you have 30 seconds, but go ahead.

- Yeah.

- The slow drip of legislative power grabs from the executive branch we see with their budget process that they created.

Now, we're hearing that changing the way we select Supreme Court justices and quickly don't sleep on the state board of education.

They now have a majority conservative board.

Will we go back to the hearings of evolution?

- Yes.

- No, I'm not saying we're doing that, but Tim may pay more attention to it.

- 30 seconds, Tim.

- So, I think this election cycle pointed out what we've heard many times before, don't take your eyes off the economy, it's the economy's stupid, right?

And President Trump was the one who really made the argument persuasively, I think that he was gonna fix the economy.

I'm not sure he can.

Like he'd said, he was just gonna get rid of inflation.

That's not like humanly possible.

And so, I think it's something to always remember these candidates when they're closing out races need to focus on economic issues and pocketbook issues.

And that's where maybe real swing voters are.

- All right, thank you.

One of my favorite moments came actually, to KTWU debate for the 2nd District Congress.

It was the closing statement of the Libertarian John Hauer.

So, let's take a look at that.

- In a way, inflation is the most insidious tax of all, because it always hurts the working class the most.

So please, for the love of God, Taylor Swift or whatever else you consider holy, please stop giving the federal government more power.

Because no matter which of us wins this election, if we do it at the expense of freedom, we all lose.

So, stay weird, stay wild and stay free.

- All right.

Stay weird, stay wild and stay free.

That's all the time we have for this episode of "IGI".

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you'd like to view this program again or any previous episodes of "IGI", visit us online watch.ktwu.org.

For "IGI", I'm Bob Beatty.

Thanks for watching.

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