The Kansas City Star’s endorsement in Davids-Reddy race for Kansas’ 3rd District | Opinion
Here is the candidate we endorse for the general election in Kansas’ 3rd U.S. Congressional District. For more information about the Nov. 5 election, check out our Voter Guide, a collaboration between The Kansas City Star and the KC Media Collective. See all our published endorsements on our Elections Recommendations page.
It has been six years since we recommended Sharice Davids in her first congressional campaign to represent the 3rd District of Kansas.
Davids “has never held elective office,” we said about the Democrat in 2018. “What she lacks in experience, though, she more than makes up for with intelligence and thoughtfulness.” She won that year and in the following two elections.
A lot has changed since her first run.
The 3rd District has been redrawn by Republicans in Topeka — a transparent attempt to reclaim the seat for the GOP — carving out the northern part of Wyandotte County in exchange for the more rural environs of Anderson and Franklin counties. (Johnson and Miami counties remain.) And Davids is no longer an upstart challenger, but is now herself a three-term veteran of Congress.
What hasn’t changed? Davids still brings obvious intelligence and thoughtfulness to the task of governing. And we are once again endorsing her to represent the 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It is not a difficult choice.
Prasanth Reddy of Lenexa, Davids’ Republican challenger, has an inspiring biography. He came to the United States from India with his parents when he was still a child. As an adult, he signed up for the United States Air Force Reserve after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. In private life, he obtained degrees from Kansas State and the University of Kansas Medical Center before becoming an oncologist and medical company executive.
He is a Kansas success story by any measure. We find him evasive on important issues, however.
Just one example: Reddy is clearly frustrated by Davids’ attacks suggesting he is in league with anti-abortion rights forces in the GOP — “It’s untruthful,” he told us. He says he respects the will of Kansas voters who in 2022 rejected the Value Them Both state constitutional amendment to curb reproductive rights, and adds that he wouldn’t vote for a national ban.
But Reddy also suggests that Kansas voters might not have fully understood the stakes and contours of the 2022 ballot measure. We disagree. And he eludes the question of whether he would support a hypothetical Republican White House if it tried to withdraw Food and Drug Administration approval of the drugs used in medication abortions.
“What I would tell you is I want to talk through those details and try to understand when access to those kinds of drugs would be available,” Reddy told us.
There is no confusion about what Davids stands for. She is a steadfast supporter of reproductive rights.
We know Davids by now. She also has a distinct identity, as a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Kansas’ first LGBT member of Congress. Moreover, she is a moderate whose politics are well-matched for the complex and evolving 3rd District.
Davids backed the recent bipartisan immigration bill — the one Republicans ultimately abandoned because Donald Trump needed the campaign issue — and says the current system is broken. “Securing our borders,” she told us, is a “key part of being a sovereign nation.” But Davids has also advocated a path to citizenship for so-called “Dreamers” — young immigrants who were brought to this country as children — and voted against extreme GOP immigration proposals she warned would “decimate our agricultural workforce.”
That’s a telling objection. The 3rd District was mostly urban and suburban when Davids first ran. The new map makes it both urban and agricultural.
Davids has deftly handled the transition, reaching out to the new portions of her district to form relationships and determine voter needs. She even took a seat on the House Agriculture Committee. Her efforts earned her the endorsement of the Kansas Farm Bureau PAC, a rare Democrat to earn that nod, and a first for a Kansas City-area representative.
Davids “has sought the input of farmers and ranchers as part of her decision-making process,” Kansas Farm Bureau President Joe Newland said in a statement. That makes her “the right choice for agriculture.”
The Kansas-Missouri region is represented in Washington, D.C., by a few folks who seem mostly interested in fighting culture war battles on cable news and in social media. Davids has been more of a workhorse than a show horse in the House, focused on local issues and constituent services.
In an era where hair-on-fire politics has become standard, she seems blessedly normal. Davids has been a calm and steady hand representing the 3rd District in Congress. Voters should allow her to continue the job.
This story was originally published October 16, 2024 at 5:09 AM.