Kansas U.S. House delegation looking to stay red as Kevin Yoder leads

Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas was leading in his rough-and-tumble fight to win re-election against Democratic newcomer Jay Sidie on Tuesday.

Large numbers of votes had yet to be tabulated in Johnson County early Wednesday, but ballots cast in advance and those from Wyandotte and Miami counties showed Yoder on a likely path to take the race. He led Sidie 48 percent to 44 percent in the partial results, and that didn’t include much of the tally from regularly Republican Johnson County.

The 3rd Congressional District looked to be, by far, the most competitive U.S. House race near Kansas City.

Tim Huelskamp, a conservative from Kansas’ expansive western 1st District, got knocked from his seat in the Republican primary by Roger Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend. Huelskamp was chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus and had lost support partly by failing to secure a seat on the Agriculture Committee. Marshall breezed past an independent and a Libertarian and faced no Democrat in Tuesday’s general election.

Republicans Mike Pompeo in Kansas’ 4th District and Lynn Jenkins in the 2nd District were expected to win re-election.

Yoder, who represents Johnson and Wyandotte counties and part of Miami County, has been a familiar figure to voters in the Kansas City suburbs for more than a decade as a state lawmaker and for three terms in the U.S. House.

Yoder walked into a mostly empty ballroom in Overland Park early Wednesday morning to say he wasn’t certain he’d won re-election but that “I’m not going to lie. Things look good.”

He’s known in the district as a congressman with a responsive constituent office and a reliable conservative vote in the House. Sidie, by comparison, entered the race an unknown and finished it as barely known.

Still, for several weeks in September and October, the race drew some national attention, with pundits putting the contest in a “leaning” Republican category when it had been expected to be a safe district for the GOP.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee smelled blood. It spent more than $1.3 million to help Sidie’s chances in the final weeks of the campaign. At least one October poll showed no more than 4 points separating the candidates.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign stumbled on the national scene, although few analysts saw much chance heading into Tuesday’s voting that the House could return to the Democrats.

“It looked like the Democrats had a shot at the race two weeks ago when (Hillary) Clinton led by 8 points” nationally, said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political science professor.

But instead of raising his profile among voters in the 3rd Congressional District, Loomis said, Sidie continued to run with TV commercials attacking Yoder while making few public campaign appearances of his own.

“He wasn’t offering much other than that he wasn’t Yoder,” Loomis said. “You still have to give people a reason to vote for you.”

Meantime, Clinton’s campaign stalled when FBI Director James Comey announced his agency was looking at more evidence in the probe into her handling of State Department emails. He would later say the new leads didn’t pan out, but Clinton’s campaign had suffered a blow, Trump regained his footing in the polls and down-ballot Democrats such as Sidie saw their momentum stall.

Yoder and Sidie candidates deployed their campaigns in ways that suggested a real fight. Incumbents coasting to re-election tend to fill airwaves and mailboxes with messages of their accomplishments in office. Those who sense they could be in danger of losing spend their campaign money steering voters to the challenger’s faults.

Yoder spent much of the campaign’s home stretch attacking Sidie, including his repeated failure to vote in local elections and his work as a financial adviser.

Sidie attempted to paint the incumbent as a political clone of Gov. Sam Brownback, whose popularity in the district has fallen with school funding issues, even though Yoder didn’t play a role in Kansas’ tax cuts or its education spending.

Yoder raised more than $2.5 million for his re-election bid. Sidie garnered shy of $500,000. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent more than $1.3 million for Sidie, while the Republican Congressional Leadership countered with about $800,000 to boost Yoder’s re-election bid.

Yoder’s congressional voting record has always been conservative enough to shield him from a serious challenge in the Republican primary. And the district lines were drawn to protect any member of the GOP in a general election.

After serving in the Kansas House for eight years, Yoder was elected to Congress in 2010 and mostly coasted in his re-elections. Sidie, by contrast, had never run for office before and was largely unfamiliar even to Democratic activists in Kansas before this year’s contest.

But in a year when voters seemed especially inclined to back outsiders, and when Republicans in the state were taking the blame for problems with the state budget and education funding, Sidie managed to tie the prospects of a race for federal office to Brownback and upheaval in Topeka.

In addition, the suburban voters of Johnson and Miami counties tend to represent the moderate, rather than Tea Party, elements of the Republican Party. Polls suggested they might vote for Hillary Clinton in larger numbers than Donald Trump.

That made the 40-year-old Yoder’s position more precarious, and the prospects that the 59-year-old Sidie could win strong enough to draw support from the national Democratic Party.

Sidie became the focus of a minor late-campaign dispute when he was campaigning Saturday near the Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center, an early-voting site. Election officials asked Sidie to leave to avoid electioneering at a polling place. Although he complied with the request, his campaign said he had not been within the 250-foot range where campaigning is prohibited during voting.

The Star’s Hunter Woodall contributed to this report.

This story was originally published November 8, 2016 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Kansas U.S. House delegation looking to stay red as Kevin Yoder leads."