Six Democrats want to take on U.S. Rep. Yoder in district where Clinton topped Trump

Flipping U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder’s seat in November could determine whether Democrats can recapture the U.S. House.

The race has drawn the attention of the White House in recent weeks with President Donald Trump tweeting his support and Vice President Mike Pence raising cash for Yoder’s re-election. But the Johnson County Republican remains vulnerable in a district that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and that means the Aug. 7 Democratic primary holds national significance.

Yoder faces two long-shot GOP challengers, Joe Myers and Trevor Keegan, but it’s the six Democrats vying for his seat that Yoder’s campaign and national Democrats will be watching closely as Aug. 7 approaches.

Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore held the seat in Kansas’ 3rd congressional district for 12 years, but the party has not won the seat or any other congressional district in Kansas in a decade. This fall could be the party’s best chance in years.

The candidates demonstrate the range of political ideologies and identities struggling for control of the Democratic Party during the Trump era. Some of the candidates have presented themselves as moderates capable of attracting disaffected Republicans, while others have sought to tap into progressive anger at the administration or the desire for more diversity in Congress.

Sharice Davids

Sharice Davids, 38, would be Kansas’ first openly LGBTQ representative.

She’s Native American, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who served as a White House fellow during the final year of the Obama administration and who has fought competitively in mixed martial arts. She worked at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to oversee federal programs and promote economic development and now lives in Shawnee.

Davids received the endorsement of the Emily’s List Victory Fund, a national political action committee dedicated to helping pro-choice women get elected. She opposes the Republican tax legislation passed last year and, while she supports “Medicare for all,” she thinks other, more immediate solutions to expand healthcare also should be explored.

As someone who was raised by a single mother and started out at Johnson County Community College before moving on to the University of Missouri-Kansas City and then Cornell Law School, she thinks she would bring an underappreciated quality to Congress: diversity — not only of ethnicity or gender, but of experience.

“How many of our congressional members have struggled to afford health care? Or had to work their way through college? How many were raised by a single mom or started off at community college?” Davids said. “When you’re making policy that affects everyone, everyone should have a say in that discussion.

“One new voice can change the entire conversation.”

Mike McCamon

With issues facing the United States today like Russian election interference, online privacy breaches, net neutrality, cyber currency and cyber security, it’s extremely important for our elected officials to “deeply understand the role and risks of technology in our everyday lives,” Mike McCamon said.

McCamon, a former tech executive with experience working for Apple, Intel, Sprint and others, says he is such a candidate. He’s 55, has three kids, has been married for 30 years and graduated from the University of Kansas.

His other main focus is expanding affordable access to health care. It’s the issue he thinks is most important to his voters, and it has a particular importance to him as well. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 — it’s now in remission — and he says the experience pushed him to more deeply understand the importance of health care access. He supports a single-payer system and thinks Medicare is the best option to make that happen.

McCamon would support President Donald Trump’s impeachment for obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election and improperly using the presidency to enrich himself.

He also thinks the Democratic party needs new leadership in Washington. If elected, he said, he would not support Nancy Pelosi for House speaker.

Tom Niermann

“We send lawyers, bankers, and executives to Washington every election. No wonder working families get left behind,” Tom Niermann said.

He’s a high school history teacher.

Niermann, 50, has a Ph.D. in American History from KU, and his wife is a special education teacher. He thinks that his experience in the American public school system has given him a stronger connection with the needs of his district than the other candidates have.

He’s had students killed by gun violence, struggled to afford health care for his family because of his wife’s pre-existing condition and seen firsthand through his students that opportunities aren’t distributed evenly in this country.

Niermann is endorsed by former Kansas City, Kan., mayor Carol Marinovich. He wants to patch the Affordable Care Act to move toward universal health care coverage. He supports immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now in the U.S.

It’s the federal government’s job to make sure children have equal access to a high-quality education, Niermann said. To achieve that, legislation should be passed that expands federal education funding, that invests more in Head Start and other programs and that exercises more oversight over the states so that places like Kansas can’t “unconstitutionally slash education budgets.”

Jay Sidie

Jay Sidie, the party’s 2016 nominee, doesn’t want to go to Congress because he wants to start a career as a politician, he said.

He wants to go to Congress, he said, because “this district deserves bold leadership, someone willing to step out and go to bat for their values. That’s what I’m ready to do.”

Sidie, 61, married with two daughters, is a market analyst and currency trader who formerly was a vice president at Archer Daniels Midland. He was educated in agricultural business at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, then got his master’s in finance at UMKC.

He said he’s fed up with the corruption he’s witnessed, so now he wants to fight for transparency both in government and business with a fervor that “could be considered an obsession,” he said on his website.

He has been endorsed by the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation union and is proud to be a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate. He supports a single-payer health care system as a goal but thinks incremental steps should be taken to smooth the transition.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said, should be broken into pieces and then spread out into different departments with as much oversight as possible.

Sidie said he would vote for the president’s impeachment.

“President Trump is clearly not working in America’s best interest,” he said.

Brent Welder

Bernie Sanders, the headline-grabbing Democratic socialist, gave Hillary Clinton a strong challenge in the primaries in 2016 and pushed the Democratic party to the left with his progressive platform.

Brent Welder, who received Sanders’ endorsement, supports similar policies.

“I believe in big solutions for big problems,” Welder said. “I don’t accept that the ‘moderate’ or ‘middle-of-the-road’ compromise is all we should shoot for or all we should accept.”

The attorney, who holds degrees in political science and journalism from Iowa State University, supports a $15 minimum wage and “common sense gun reform.” He also doesn’t accept campaign donations from corporate political action committees because, he says, big businesses have corrupted the American political process.

He thinks “Medicare for all” is the right thing to do, both “morally and economically.”

“We have been talking about universal health care since President Harry Truman, and we never seem to get there. It is time to get this big problem solved with a big solution,” he said.

“Some Democratic candidates are content to advocate for small changes at the margins; proposing a series of steps that would guarantee the status quo of ever-rising prices for families and ever-rising profits for insurance companies,” Welder said. “But that’s not a status quo that works for working families. Voters are smart enough to see through cop-out positions calling for merely providing ‘access’ to healthcare that they can’t actually afford.”

Sylvia Williams

Health care is a right — not a privilege, Sylvia Williams says.

It’s for that reason she supports a single-payer system, but she won’t hold up interim improvements in pursuit of that goal.

Williams, 52, and her husband, Greg, have a 7-year-old daughter named Hayley. Williams is a managing director in banking, and she got her bachelor’s degree from Pittsburg State University and a master’s in finance from UMKC. She lives in Leawood.

She’s been endorsed by Joan Wagnon, former chair of the Kansas Democratic Party and the first woman mayor of Topeka.

Williams, a moderate, supports reforming ICE, saying that its criminal divisions do valuable work. She listed equal pay for women, paid family leave, Social Security and Medicare as issues that don’t receive enough attention.

Her campaign manager, Kelly Kultala, said Williams “has factual Kansas roots, valuable private sector business experience and knowledge that can bring real change to Kansans, and an important understanding of the community ties that exist here.”

“She is the only candidate that has a real vision for the district that includes jobs, pay, health, and community.”