Lawmakers will draw new congressional maps. How will it impact Kansas’ 2nd District?
Speaking to a small group at a Leavenworth, Kansas, town hall in his 2nd Congressional District earlier this month, Rep. Jake LaTurner was in campaign mode.
Before taking questions, he stressed the urgency of returning the House majority to Republicans in 2022.
“We have to take back the majority. That’s not just a punchline,” LaTurner said. “The Speaker of the House decides everything from what bills come to the floor to what soap you have in the bathrooms. Majority rules in the House of Representatives.”
But LaTurner couldn’t be sure that any of the 12 individuals who turned out at the Leavenworth Public Library would even be capable of voting for him next year.
The upcoming redistricting process, based on the results of the 2020 census, injects a measure of uncertainty into LaTurner’s bid for a second term. The GOP supermajority of Kansas lawmakers, who will draw new state legislative and congressional lines, could decide to make Kansas’ 3rd District, represented by Democrat Sharice Davids, more competitive for a Republican.
That could muddy LaTurner’s political future, or make it more secure.
“Right now we have all or a part of 25 counties,” said LaTurner, said of the 2nd, which currently stretches from the northern to southern edge of eastern Kansas, excluding the Kansas City metro area.
“We love this district. But we also understand that the Legislature makes this decision and it’s set up that way for a reason.”
“It’s just premature to talk too much about when we don’t even have the numbers.”
‘Creative Map’
The Constitution requires that each of the state’s four congressional districts be of roughly equal population.
Though final census data has not yet been released, 2019 estimates indicate that Kansas’ four congressional districts must each have about 728,000 people. The new district lines will need to account for population growth in Northeast Kansas — primarily Johnson, Douglas, Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties — and loss in other portions of the state.
Kansas’ 3rd District, comprised of Johnson and Wyandotte counties and a piece of Miami County, is well above the threshold with 779,860 residents.
The state’s other three districts fall short. The 4th, anchored by Wichita, is an estimated 723,075 people. LaTurner’s 2nd District, stands at 715,881, and the sprawling 1st District, encompassing Western and North Central Kansas, is 694,498 people.
Without final data it’s unclear exactly what the newly drawn districts could look like. At the state GOP convention in April, Sen. Jerry Moran told donors he’d heard that a possible map could place Wyandotte County in the 1st District. Lawmakers could also choose to break Johnson County into more than one district or draw entirely new congressional districts distinct from the current map.
Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican who chairs the Senate Redistricting, said it’s too early to say where the changes will lie.
“People will accuse us of being up to mischief and it’s just a matter of pure numbers,” Wilborn said.
“I don’t care where it’s at, you’re going to have to get numbers for the ones who overgrew...and you’re going to have to add to the ones that undergrew.”
Gov. Laura Kelly called for an independent commission to draw the maps after prominent Kansas Republicans began speaking openly about reconfiguring the 3rd District more favorably for a Republican like former Cerner executive Amanda Adkins, who lost to Davids by 10 points in 2020 and is running again.
“I think (an independent commission) would be a great idea but I want to wait and see what the Legislature puts together and how they operate,” Kelly said. “If they can put something together that will lead us to a fair and appropriate redistricting map then I don’t feel a great need to put together an independent commission.”
Kelly encouraged Kansans who are concerned about gerrymandering, the practice of drawing lines to benefit one party, to attend one of the 14 town halls the lawmakers plan to hold across the state.
How close congressional districts look to the ones currently in place will depend on how “creative” lawmakers choose to be, said KU political science professor Patrick Miller.
Strategically, he said, the best way for Republicans to ensure four GOP congressional districts would be place parts of Johnson County, which is growing in population and shifting to the left, into two or three other districts.
The lines of the 2nd and 3rd, he said, could be shifted to the west so that those districts take in more conservative rural voters.
“It’s very hard to predict because really diluting Johnson County voters is going to take some very creative map drawing that may not keep the second district intact as we know it,” Miller said.
What about the ‘crown jewel’?
Kansas’ 2nd District can be competitive as it is currently drawn. In 2018, Democrat Paul Davis came within one point of beating Republican Steve Watkins for the seat vacated by GOP Rep. Lynn Jenkins.
But in 2020 LaTurner defeated Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla by 15 points.
Although the 2nd District includes some left-leaning counties, like Douglas, home to Lawrence and KU, Miller said it would be exceedingly difficult to create a district that could successfully close the existing 15-point gap.
Davis said LaTurner would be walking into the race with immediate advantages as an incumbent. And midterm elections almost always benefit the party that is not holding the White House. 2nd District voters, Davis said, have become more likely to vote a straight party line rather than split their tickets between candidates of different parties.
But, he said, plans floated to place Wyandotte County in Kansas’s first district could make the 2nd more competitive for Democrats if it removed a “crown-jewel” of the district, military-heavy Leavenworth County.
Redistricting guidelines in Kansas call for districts to be contiguous. This means the 1st District would have to pick up other northeastern Kansas counties, potentially Leavenworth County, in order to reach Wyandotte County.
“The challenge Republicans have is if they want to try to change the third District to make it more competitive it’s tough to do that and not make the 2nd District more competitive for a Democrat,” Davis said.
But if that map looks like the option to place Wyandotte County in the 1st District that was on the table 10 years ago, former Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said, then the 2nd will pick up more Republican counties to the west.
“It makes it much more difficult for a democrat to win the seat,” he said.
Regardless of the lines, LaTurner and the lone Democratic candidate so far, Patrick Schmidt, the Navy veteran who entered the race last week, will spend the foreseeable future campaigning without a clear idea of who their voters will be.
Mike Kuckleman, chair of the Kansas GOP, said he didn’t think that would play a role in the ultimate outcome of the election and that Kansans as a whole would support Republican candidates.
He attributed Davis’s close race against Watkins in 2018 as a product of Watkin’s status as a political newcomer, not the makeup of the district.
“I think it’s overstated when people worry about redistricting,” Kuckleman said. “I just don’t see the constituent bases changing anywhere by margins that are going to change outcomes of elections.
This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
