Curt Skoog is running for Kansas governor. What his campaign will focus on

Just hours before the filing deadline for the 2026 primary elections in August, Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog filed to run for Kansas governor against two fellow Democrats and several Republicans eyeing Gov. Laura Kelly’s seat.

“Our message is about putting a mayor in the governor’s office. So we are focused on getting things done for Kansans — which includes bridges, roads, infrastructure, and supporting communities in their visions for what they want their communities to be,” Skoog told The Star on Monday. “That is going to be the key to success: We want to build and enable people to build communities where our kids and grandkids want to stay.”

Skoog named Jennifer McKenney, a physician from Fredonia, as his running mate. The pair will join State Sen. Ethan Corson, a Fairway Democrat, and Sen. Cindy Holscher, a fellow Overland Park Democrat, in the race to represent their party. Both Corson and Holscher’s campaigns have confirmed their commitments to succeed Kelly as governor.

“I have lots of respect for both of them,” Skoog said about his opponents on Monday. “They have worked hard in the state legislature about important issues, but I think to win in November we need somebody outside of the Legislature who knows how to get things done.”

Skoog said his final push to join the race came over Memorial Day Weekend, when President Donald Trump endorsed Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, for governor.

“I just watched how he ran the Kansas State Senate as Senate President. It was a lack of transparency, no notice of public hearings, no debate on bills that would change… the life of Kansans,” Skoog told The Star. “If that’s how he’s going to run the Senate, I can only imagine how he would run the government out of the governor’s office.

“That is not Kansas. That is not how Kansas operates. Kansas is a state that works on cooperation, consensus, public discussion and transparency.”

The third Democrat in the Kansas race for governor

The Overland Park mayor’s move to join the race could prove pivotal for Democrats, who hope they can translate a favorable national environment for the party into votes and hold onto the governor’s office as Republicans hope to flip the office for the first time in eight years.

Kansas has not consecutively elected different governors of the same party in decades and Johnson County candidates have historically struggled in statewide elections.

Republicans in the race include Masterson, former Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, Stacy Rogers and Scott Schwab.

Kelly, a Democrat, won her seat twice, making her ineligible to run again. Kelly’s office didn’t immediately respond for comment from The Star about Skoog joining the race, but Skoog said in an interview that he sat down with the governor prior to launching his gubernatorial campaign.

Curt Skoog’s political career

The Overland Park mayor entered his political career as a moderate Republican, representing parts of northern Overland Park as a City Councilmember starting in 2005. He left the party in 2021 during his first bid for mayor after the Johnson County and Kansas Republican parties took more conservative turns.

He won his first mayoral election in 2021 as an Independent candidate by just 700 votes against a conservative Republican candidate whose platform opposed high-rise apartment buildings and congestion.

While local elections are considered nonpartisan, Skoog ran for mayor again in 2025 with the support of the Johnson County Democrats and took a strong stance to support attainable housing development. His opponent, Faris Farassati, a Republican-backed candidate, criticized tax breaks for private developers and apartment complexes.

The 2025 elections presented a larger shift at the local level — with voters supporting Skoog by more than 15,000 votes.

Skoog’s work as mayor

So far, it appears he’s following through on his mayoral campaign promises. Since being reelected, Skoog has voted “yes” to a pilot program that will help build smaller and ideally more affordable homes, and is supporting a city ordinance update that would streamline the approval process for townhomes, duplexes or smaller homes to help bring more projects across the finish line.

On the economic side, Skoog has helped usher in several multimillion-dollar deals for the city. In 2024, Milwaukee-based financial services technology company Fiserv announced their bid to create a new headquarters at the Aspiria campus, formerly Sprint — promising about 2,000 jobs and $175 million in private investment.

A few months later, the city announced a $1.3 billion deal with global engineering firm Black and Veatch to expand their headquarters and build housing on site. Both of these projects will include some form of tax incentives from the city.

Skoog said Overland Park’s economic development has helped Kansas’ second-largest city maintain the lowest property tax rates in the state, something he hopes to bring to the state level — and an issue many gubernatorial candidates are promising to address — after Republicans failed to enact large-scale property tax reform during the last Legislative session.

“Affordability is a key issue in this race and part of that is property taxes,” he said. “I look forward to bringing (a) main street mindset to address affordability at the state and that includes property taxes.”

While on the campaign trail, Skoog will still hold his role as mayor, city spokesperson Meg Ralph said in an email.

If Skoog wins, the City Council president, currently Ward 2 Councilmember Melissa Cheatham, would serve as acting mayor and the City Council must elect an interim mayor within 30 days until a special election could take place in November 2027.

Kacen Bayless and Matthew Kelly contributed reporting.