Davids took Kansas politics by surprise in 2018. Will she prove she’s here to stay?
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids’ first year in Congress started with a federal government shutdown and ended with a vote in favor of the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history.
Those first-year challenges seem almost pedestrian now, with the global pandemic that has upended lawmaking and devastated her Kansas congressional district.
“We have certainly had our share of crises and historic moments to deal with,” said Davids, 40, reflecting on what she and other members of an historically diverse House freshman class have had to face.
She said COVID-19 has only underscored the importance of health care access, a focus of her 2018 and 2020 campaigns.
“These are all the things that we knew were important before this and now that we’re in the time that we’re finding ourselves in we’re just seeing really how important having strong federal representation is.”
This year she faces a challenge in the Kansas 3rd Congressional District from Republican Amanda Adkins, 45, a former state Republican party chair and executive with health care IT giant Cerner.
Adkins and the GOP have tried to depict Davids as a radical, a strategy that the party used unsuccessfully in 2018.
If Davids can hold the seat in her first re-election contest, she could be in Congress for a long time — especially if Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly thwarts Republican efforts to draw more favorable district boundaries based on the 2020 census.
The daughter of a single mother who served as an Army drill sergeant, Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk tribe, rose from Johnson County Community College to Cornell Law School — with a foray into mixed martial arts and economic development work on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota — before unseating four-term incumbent Kevin Yoder in the 2018 Democratic wave.
She made history as one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress, a distinction she shares with New Mexico Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland, and as the first LGBT person to represent Kansas.
It’s a nontraditional backstory in a legislative body that skews sharply white, male and wealthy. But her style of constituent-focused style of lawmaking is conscientiously traditional.
And that’s complicated Republicans’ efforts to portray her as a leftist.
“Republicans were thinking that Sharice Davids was going to be the equivalent of a member of ‘the Squad,’ that she would be their own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And she hasn’t been. She’s been a real sensible centrist and representative of the district,” said Chris Reeves, Kansas’ Democratic National Committeeman.
“They wanted to run against her as a wild-eyed liberal and she’s not. And that’s been a problem for them.”
Swing district centrist
The GOP message doesn’t appear to be connecting the suburban district. A September poll from a GOP firm gave her a 20-point lead on Adkins and most election forecasters see the seat as safe for the incumbent.
The Kansas Republican Party has sent out mailers that pose Davids next to Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress, who has become a frequent target of the right.
In national media coverage of the diverse House freshman class, Davids was often featured alongside Squad members Ocasio-Cortez and Omar. But she hasn’t joined them in pushing for the ambitious progressive policy goals of Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal.
Davids has favored more incremental steps, sponsoring legislation to prevent surprise medical billing and to increase transparency on pharmaceutical costs. This approach has occasionally drawn criticism from the left.
“Nobody is surprised when they get an enormous hospital bill. The problem is they can’t afford to pay it. That’s why we need #MedicareForAll,” Davids’ 2018 primary opponent Brent Welder tweeted at the congresswoman in response to a campaign ad focused on medical bills.
Instead Davids has mostly aligned with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On the few occasions she’s broken with Pelosi’s leadership team, it’s been because she’s voted to the right of the majority of the caucus.
She opposed a $3 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in May and voted against a similar $2.2 trillion bill in September. Davids was one of 18 swing district Democrats to vote against the most recent version.
She’s been vague in her explanation of the votes, saying only that the Democratic-crafted bills were too partisan. Both relief measures would have included aid to state and local governments, which Davids has repeatedly called for, but they faced intense opposition from the GOP-controlled Senate.
“I’ve been consistently pushing the leadership of both parties to come together to make sure we get a bipartisan relief package. I know we can do it because we’ve done it before and at the end of the day the folks at home don’t want to see a partisan package,” Davids told The Star in September when asked if her race for re-election had any impact on her decision.
As of this week, however, the two parties are no closer to negotiating a compromise before the election.
Roeland Park Mayor Mike Kelly said Davids called him in May to explain her vote against the $3 trillion version.
“I think some of us were a little surprised, but the fact that she took the time to call to explain why she was voting no and confirm that she was working on a stimulus that was right for the 3rd district was appreciated,” Kelly said.
During the early days of the pandemic, Kelly said Davids was instrumental in helping Roeland Park businesses navigate the federal aid programs.
“Being able to reach out to her office and have that addressed immediately was incredibly comforting when we’re trying to create an emergency response plan from scratch,” Kelly said.
Davids said her mother, Crystal Herriage, who works for the U.S. Postal Service at a sorting center in Wyandotte County, was a major influence on her decision to pursue public service.
She remains close to Herriage, an Army veteran and former Overland Park police officer. The two, along with Davids’ dog, Nala, drove from Kansas to Washington last month.
“She felt like she had a purpose when she was serving in the Army and whatever her next step was she wanted to make sure that she had a purpose. And now that she’s with the Post Office, I can see every single day she goes to work — she’s still going to work in the midst of the pandemic — just like so many other people who are trying to make sure our packages are getting delivered,” said Davids, an outspoken critic of proposed changes to the U.S. Postal Service.
‘Someone who listens’
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas attended law school with Davids and has remained friends with her since then.
Years before they held office, the two would meet for dinner to discuss life as they began their legal careers. Davids was a calming influence in his life, Lucas said. He thinks she brings a similar approach to Congress.
“She has been an amazing listener. She has not been someone who has needed to be the loudest voice in the room,” Lucas said. “I have appreciated that tremendously as someone who is a political moderate. I think it is an important time in America that you have someone who listens.”
Davids, who has embraced collaboration with leaders on both sides of the state line, has developed a close relationship with Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the Missouri Democrat whose district borders hers.
Cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor and eight-term congressman, called Davids “one of the most natural politicians” he’s met in his life, noting her efforts to engage community groups.
“Sometimes she’ll stun me. We do a lot of FaceTime conversations, sometimes maybe more than twice a day, and she’ll say, ‘I’m going to this group or that group,’... I don’t think she leaves a stone unturned. And nobody can say she never comes around,” Cleaver said.
Cleaver said that in one of his many FaceTime calls with Davids she prodded him when he took his mask off to talk while he was running errands. The senior Democrat listened to the freshman and immediately ran back to his car to retrieve his mask.
Patrick Sallee, CEO of Vibrant Health, a Wyandotte County non-profit that provides medical care to low income people, said since he first met Davids in 2018 she has consistently shown interest in his work and seeks his advice on health policy matters.
“The thing that matters to me is that she’s reaching out and she’s listening and she shows genuine interest in the issue,” he said. “She genuinely gives a damn what we think.”
Davids, the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, promised to engage and work closely with the state’s Republicans when she took office. She’s received mixed reviews on that front.
Rep. Ron Estes, a Republican who represents the Wichita area, said in a statement that while he was able to partner with Davids on legislation early on “she has increasingly voted right alongside her liberal allies in the House—only crossing party lines when she has a political motive.”
He accused Davids of “attacking the aviation industry,” a major source of jobs in Estes’ district.
Davids serves on the House Transportation Committee, which investigated Boeing following deadly crashes with its 737 Max line, and has called for stronger safety and transparency standards in the industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated Davids’ ability to connect with voters the way she did in 2018.
She’s turned her Roeland Park home into her congressional office, using video calls to conduct business. Her in-person events are limited and instead of walking door-to-door her supporters rely on phone canvassing — the campaign said it has made more than 75,000 phone calls — and digital outreach.
Gabby Fried, a 26-year-old Leawood resident and Davids volunteer, said they join each other on video chats as they make phone calls to recapture the community aspect of campaigning in a normal year.
“You can still have very meaningful conversations on the phone and it’s exciting and invigorating,” she said.
Davids said she’s been impressed with the innovative ways voters and activists have figured out how to connect during the pandemic.
“People are really fired up and I think it’s because they know that this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes and I’ve been really heartened to see the ways that people are getting engaged,” she said.
