This Kansas congressional race was one of nation’s closest in 2018. Will it be again?
Kansas Republican Steve Watkins was narrowly elected to Congress in 2018 in one of the nation’s closest races. Now, he’s fighting for his political survival in the face of felony charges and better-funded challengers in both August and November.
Kansas’ 2nd Congressional District is again one of the most competitive on the 2020 map. Watkins has a dual primary challenge from Kansas Treasurer Jake LaTurner, the youngest statewide elected official in the nation, and Dennis Taylor, whose long career has included stints in local, state and federal government.
If he makes it through the August 4 primary, Watkins will be running against Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla, a well-funded Democrat with a remarkable life story about her journey from homeless teenager in Puerto Rico to mayor of Kansas’ capital city.
The district covers 25 counties that stretch from the state’s northeast corner to the Oklahoma border— a diverse set of communities which include Lawrence, Topeka, rural enclaves and one of the oldest operating military bases in the country in Leavenworth.
Watkins, 43, an Army veteran with graduate degrees from Harvard and MIT, admitted to The Star Tuesday that he voted in the wrong district, but he disputed that he should have been charged with a felony. He called it a mistake rather than intentional effort to influence the outcome of the city council race.
From homeless teen to capital city mayor
De La Isla, 44, moved from New York to Puerto Rico as a toddler. She became homeless at 17, spending the first several months staying with different friends until she finally ran out of places.
“It wasn’t until I had to stay in an abandoned house and I had to walk into a campus to take a shower that I realized something’s not right here,” she said.
The experience has given the Topeka Democrat a rare perspective that she hopes to bring to the debate over homelessness and poverty in Congress, long the preserve of millionaires.
“Having a voice who can actually speak of the homeless population as brother and sister instead of ‘those people’ is powerful,” she said.
De La Isla said she turned her life around when she became pregnant at age 19 and received a Section 8 housing voucher after her son was born.
She attended the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and returned to church, where a Catholic priest, Father Patrick Erwin, helped set her on the path toward Kansas.
After she survived breast cancer, Erwin encouraged De La Isla to pursue her life goals and helped her raise the money to transfer to Wichita State University, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in microbiology in 2001.
She moved to Topeka four years later and began working for Housing and Credit Counseling, Inc., a nonprofit that helps low-income families with financial planning. She became involved with multiple community activist groups and successfully ran for the city council in 2013. She was elected mayor four years later.
A single mother with three children and the mayor of a city grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, De La Isla has been juggling many roles since launching her congressional campaign in January.
“A mayor’s job is a 24-7 job. You don’t have a break. You figure out a way to multiply yourself,” said De La Isla, who is also serving as the city’s liaison to the Shawnee County Health Department during the pandemic.
She was on her way into a city council meeting when the news about Watkins’ criminal charges broke. She said she put her phone aside and ignored it. The issue is in the law’s hands, she said, and she’s focused on what she’s running for rather than who she is running against.
While her focus in Congress would be advocating for Kansas, De La Isla said she also welcomes the opportunity to speak on behalf of Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory still recovering from the 2017 Hurricane Maria after a federal response many deem inadequate.
“The treatment of this island, it’s horrific,” De La Isla said.
Buoyed by fundraising events with former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and other prominent Democrats, De La Isla has outraised the Republicans since January and as of July 15 led the entire field with $516,000 cash on hand, more than double Watkins’ total.
Youngest statewide elected official in the nation
LaTurner, 32, grew up in Galena, a small mining town in the state’s southeast corner. He was raised by a single father after his mother, who struggled with addiction, left the family when he was 1. (His mother has been sober for 10 years and they now have a relationship).
LaTurner’s father, Mark LaTurner, managed a Sonic Drive-In as he pursued a teaching degree at Pittsburg State University.
“I remember Christmas that first year that he got a teaching job and my brother and sister and I thought we were wealthy… which clearly wasn’t the case. But it felt like that way,” LaTurner recalled.
His interest in politics first stirred as he walked door-to-door with his father during a successful campaign for mayor of Galena. At Pitt State he founded the university’s chapter of College Republicans and became involved with the local party.
That led to a job running the southeast Kansas district office in Pittsburg for Republican Rep. Lynn Jenkins, who was state treasurer before holding the 2nd District seat for a decade. LaTurner worked for Jenkins, his political mentor and Watkins’ predecessor, from 2009 to 2012.
“She never forgot where she came from. It’s something I admired a whole lot… not forgetting the people who sent you there and not letting any position drive your ego,” he said.
LaTurner was elected to the Kansas Senate in 2012 after defeating a moderate Republican incumbent as part of a conservative wave.
He cited the passage of Simon’s Law in 2017 as his proudest accomplishment. The legislation, which LaTurner sponsored in the state Senate, prohibits health care facilities from issuing “do not resuscitate orders” for critically ill children without parental permission.
He was appointed treasurer in 2017 after Ron Estes was elected to the U.S. House.
LaTurner has been the most aggressive among Watkins’ opponents in attacking the incumbent on the voter fraud charges. He noted that Watkins’ withdrawal from committee assignments in the face of prosecution means the district lacks representation when laws are being drafted.
“If there was some way that Congressman Watkins could make it back there— and there isn’t— we won’t be represented until his legal issues are resolved. So that’s sending an empty seat to Washington,” LaTurner said.
Asked about stepping down from his committees, Watkins blamed his prosecution on LaTurner.
He has repeatedly pointed to the fact that the state treasurer uses the same direct mail firm as Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay— as do many Republicans in the state, including Sen. Jerry Moran— when asked about the charges.
“I stepped down from the committees voluntarily, so that I can focus on the unfortunate situation created by my opponent Jake LaTurner and DA Kagay. We are no less effective. I’m no less effective as a congressman,” Watkins said.
LaTurner’s campaign released an internal poll last week that showed Watkins trailing De La Isla by nearly 12 points in a general matchup, while LaTurner had a 1-point lead that fell within the margin of error—which would make the race a tossup.
Shawnee County to Warsaw and back
Taylor joined the race in June. His decades-long career in government includes stints as a Shawnee County commissioner, chief of staff for Republican Gov. Mike Hayden and Secretary of Administration for Gov. Sam Brownback.
But the experience Taylor says would be most valuable in Congress is the period he spent with the U.S. Agency for International Development, helping train local officials in Eastern Europe to administer a democratic government after the end of the Cold War.
“Most of these people had gotten their marching orders from the top from Moscow or Warsaw... They weren’t used to thinking for themselves,” said Taylor.
He lived in Warsaw, Poland from 1994 to 1996 for U.S. AID and again from 1999 to 2001 as a consultant advising the State Department. During both stints, he worked to help bring former Eastern Bloc countries in NATO to keep “those countries from falling back under Russian influence after the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Taylor said he was concerned with Trump’s more isolationist approach to foreign policy, which he said has ceded influence to Russia and China.
“’America First’ is also America alone and I don’t think that’s ultimately where we want to be as a country. We don’t want to abdicate our leadership,” Taylor said. “I don’t think we’re going to be safer by giving the Russians or the Chinese the leadership of the world.”
Taylor said that he was often a dissenting voice during his two years in the Brownback administration. He said Brownback resisted his ideas to cut spending, which Taylor warned would be needed if Brownback followed through with his plans to drastically reduce taxes.
As secretary of administration, he recommended consolidating IT staff at the various state agencies to save costs. This prompted backlash from the rest of cabinet secretaries and Brownback took their side.
“Republicans are good about being conservative until it’s their own stuff we’re talking about,” Taylor said.
Taylor said his willingness to stand up Trump contrasts with his two primary opponents. Watkins has voted with Trump 96 percent of the time and LaTurner claims he’ll vote with Trump at an even higher rate, Taylor said.
He also said his opponents aren’t focused enough on economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which he said should be the focus of the campaign.
“I don’t see Steve or Jake talking about it all. It’s like it doesn’t exist,” Taylor said. “They’re so determined to be in the president’s good graces.”
Taylor would like to put the millions of Americans who have become unemployed during the pandemic to work on contact tracing, which he said would both help spur an economic recovery and help contain the virus.
Taylor hasn’t been interested in discussing the legal case against Watkins. He fielded the first question about Watkins’ charges during a televised debate in Topeka earlier this month. He called it a distraction from the pandemic and reiterated that view to The Star.
When asked by The Star earlier in the day if there had been any gaps in the federal response to the pandemic as U.S. death approaches 150,000, Watkins asserted there had been none.
“I’m proud of the president’s leadership on this and he has my full and complete support,” Watkins said.
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
