It’s a high-stakes year for Kansas politics. Here’s everything you should expect
.JPG "Kansas State Capitol building in Topeka, Kansas.")
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Voters will select a governor, congressional delegation and vote on justice elections.
- Legislature will debate budgets, property tax reform, STAR bonds and school rules.
- Governor faces legal fights with attorney general and USDA over data and lawsuits.
The course of Kansas politics will be shaped for years to come by the decisions voters will make in 2026, from selecting a new governor to weighing Republican lawmakers’ proposal for overhauling how Kansas Supreme Court justices are chosen.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall is facing his first re-election campaign, and the state’s four U.S. House seats will be back up for grabs in a pivotal midterm election cycle, along with key statewide offices, from attorney general to secretary of state, and all 125 Kansas House seats.
The House races will give Democrats another chance to break Republicans’ veto-proof supermajority that has frustrated Gov. Laura Kelly’s agenda. But Republicans have high hopes for winning back the governor’s mansion after eight years of divided government.
Competitive primaries in the governor’s race will be held in August. That’s also when voters will decide whether to approve or reject a proposed constitutional amendment to switch to directly electing state supreme court justices — a reform long sought by conservatives who resent the high court’s rulings protecting abortion rights.
2026 Kansas legislative session
Kansas lawmakers have several months of work to do before elections take center stage, though.
Riding high off the late-December news that the Kansas City Chiefs intend to build their next stadium in Wyandotte County, lawmakers will reconvene in Topeka Monday for the start of the 2026 legislative session. On Tuesday, Kelly will deliver the annual State of the State address, laying out her priorities for her final year as chief executive.
One major issue that was expected to dominate this year’s session — a mid-decade redistricting push that would have splintered Johnson County into multiple congressional districts — will likely be a non-factor.
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican who’s running for governor, has pushed hard for a new congressional map, which could boost his odds of landing an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
But House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who’s running for state insurance commissioner, told reporters this month that there were too many holdouts in his caucus to press the issue.
“If I don’t have the votes to pass something, I’m not going to put people on a vote just to have a vote,” Hawkins said.
House and Senate lawmakers’ conflicting visions for providing systemic property tax relief fell apart in 2025 as each chamber shot down the other’s constitutional amendment proposal. Ultimately, the only significant property tax reform that became law was a 1.5 mill reduction in the state levy.
This year, lawmakers will renew negotiations over a potential ballot measure designed to rein in soaring property valuations that have become burdensome for homeowners.
This will also be the second year of the Legislature’s new budgeting approach, which involves creating a state budget from scratch instead of building off of the proposal put forward by Kelly and the Kansas Division of Budget.
Kelly has expressed frustration with having her role in the process minimized, saying the stakes are high for charting a course to long-term financial sustainability.
“If we continue with the current trends, we will be essentially without any money in our ending balance sometime around fiscal year ‘30,” Kelly said in December. “That’s the way we need to think about budgets and taxes and all those other kinds of things is long-term — not what fits today.”
Lawmakers are expected to take action on a range of other issues in 2026, from entertaining a complete ban on student cell phone usage in schools to deciding whether to extend Kansas’ controversial sales tax and revenue, or STAR bond, incentive tool past its July expiration date.
Other 2026 intrigue
In the coming months, Johnson County District Court Judge K. Christopher Jayaram is expected to issue a momentous ruling on whether a strict new slate of abortion restrictions adopted by lawmakers in 2023 — and several pre-existing restrictions — are constitutional in light of Kansas’ 2022 referendum vote endorsing abortion rights.
Another key legal battle that will play out in 2026 is between Kelly and Attorney General Kris Kobach, who sued the governor over her decision to sign onto several multi-state federal lawsuits disputing Trump administration policies. Kobach argues only he has the authority to represent Kansas in court.
Kelly remains in a standoff with Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture over its demands that her administration turn over the personal information of every person who has applied for federal food assistance since 2020 as part of the agency’s fraud prevention efforts.
Kelly has maintained that it would be illegal to do so without guarantees about how the data would be used, even as USDA has moved to withhold more than $10 million in food assistance funding and threatened to increase the penalty.
“I don’t like being subject to bullying or being bribed,” Kelly said in December.
