Former Burns & McDonnell executive will run for Sharice Davids’ seat
A former Burns & McDonnell executive will join the Republican primary to challenge Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids in Kansas.
Mike Beehler, a former vice president of Kansas City engineering firm Burns & McDonnell, confirmed that he is in the process of filing for the seat in Kansas’ 3rd congressional district, which covers Johnson, Wyandotte and Miami Counties.
Beehler, 60, splits his time between a condo in Florida and a house in Leawood. He said he changed his voter registration from Florida to Kansas last week. His four children attended the Blue Valley School District during his time with Burns & McDonnell and he said he considered the state his home.
He pointed Davids’ December vote in favor of President Donald Trump’s impeachment as one reason he decided to challenge the freshman Democrat. He blamed Trump’s impeachment partly on the president’s inability to follow through with pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington.
“I think that Donald Trump has done a great job—not perfect,” Beehler said. “He’s done a lot of things that he’s promised to do. One thing that he didn’t do is he didn’t the drain swamp. And so because he didn’t get rid of that bureaucracy—that is invasive in Washington, DC—it came back to bite him.”
Beehler ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1992 as a Republican in Arizona.
He served as vice president of Burns & McDonnell from 1995 until February of 2019 after engineering jobs in Arizona and Hawaii, according to his LinkedIn page. The Kansas City-based engineering and construction firm works in industries spanning transportation, water, power, environmental engineering and others.
Employees of the firm gave heavily to former Rep. Kevin Yoder, who lost to Davids in 2018. Contributions from the company’s PAC and individual employees accounted for more than $45,000 of Yoder’s fundraising, the second most of any company in the nation, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Since his departure from the firm, Beehler has written a book “The Science of the Sale,” which was published in September.
As an engineer, Beehler said his platform would focus on infrastructure and innovation. He said the Kansas City area stands to gain from an aggressive infrastructure plan because of the number of technology and engineering firms in the region.
While he does not support the “Green New Deal,” an ambitious Democratic proposal to combat climate change, he said he’s interested in the business opportunities that could arise from renewable energy.
He also pointed to space exploration as an important policy goal, contending that the U.S. should build a base on the moon to facilitate eventual travel to Mars.
“If we set our minds and hearts to it as a country, we can do it,” Beehler said, contending that a reinvigorated space program would inspire kids to study math and science.
He contrasted his engineering background against Davids, an attorney and former White House fellow who pursued a mixed martial arts career before she entered politics.
“If this becomes a race between Mike Beehler and Sharice Davids, there’s a very clear contrast between us,” Beehler said. “You can hire a professional engineer or a professional wrestler.”
Davids’ campaign spokeswoman Johanna Warshaw said in a statement that Davids “is fighting every day for the things that matter most to Kansans, like lowering the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, strengthening our public schools, and making sure government is working for the people, not special interests.”
Beehler will speak at the Republican Third Congressional District of Kansas Committee’s March 21 “Eggs and Issues” event at the HyVee on W. 95th Street in Overland Park. He enters a primary race that features three female candidates.
The district committee has already heard from two — Sara Hart Weir and Amanda Adkins. Former Roeland Park Mayor Adrienne Vallejo Foster was scheduled to speak at the group’s January event, which was postponed because of weather. She will instead speak in April.
All three women are part of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Young Guns” program. Adkins, a former state party chair and Cerner executive, was elevated this week to the status of “Contender” based on the strength of her fundraising.
Beehler’s candidacy comes relatively late in the election cycle — less than six months away from the August primary. But Davids also did not launch her campaign until this point in 2018, before winning a crowded primary and the general election.
Beehler said party leaders urged him against running this late in the cycle with already crowded field, which could make it difficult to fundraise.
“When I told a couple of the party leaders I was entering the race, they said, ‘Mike, that’s going to be tough. Everybody’s already been contacted.’ I said not everybody’s been contacted,” Beehler said.
The Star’s Steve Vockrodt contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 11:13 AM.
