Kansas GOP blames redistricting on California. No, Trump started this fight | Opinion

Kansas Republicans want to steal Sharice Davids’ seat in Congress. To hear them tell it, the whole thing is California’s fault.

Or maybe Gov. Laura Kelly is to blame.

Kelly, of course, is opposed to the ongoing push by Republicans to call a special session of the Kansas Legislature to redraw — gerrymander — the state’s congressional map in their favor. But she also endorsed California’s move to redraw its maps to help Democrats.

‘”There’s a bigger risk,” she said a few months back, “in doing nothing.”

Which means that Sunflower State Republicans are calling the governor out for hypocrisy.

“Her resistance to redrawing Kansas’ map, while endorsing California’s partisan efforts, is simply hypocritical,” Senate President Ty Masterson, a gubernatorial candidate, said in a newsletter to supporters.

“She cheers on California’s partisan gerrymandering, but when it comes to Kansas, she cries foul,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins said on X. “You can’t have it both ways, Governor!”

“California is putting its thumb on the scale in the balance of power in the US Congress to stop President @realDonaldTrump’s America First agenda,” added state Rep. Pat Proctor, a candidate for secretary of state. “Kansas has a responsibility to the rest of the country to fight back.”

“California has been doing it for decades,” Sedgwick County GOP chairman John Whitmer declared on “Kansas Week.” “I was born and raised in California. They’ve been doing this for decades.”

You would think, from all this Republican rhetoric, that California started this fight.

That’s nonsense.

Trump demands more Republican House seats

A reminder: States usually do their redistricting just once every 10 years, redrawing maps after new census numbers come out at the beginning of the decade. So it’s very unusual to find ourselves in a mid-decade debate over this stuff.

The reason we do, of course, is Donald Trump.

The president’s approval numbers are awful. That makes it more likely the House of Representatives will swing to Democrats in next year’s midterms. And Trump — never, ever one to play by the rules and certainly never interested in a fair fight — decided to rig the game: He demanded that Republican states, starting with Texas, redraw their maps to cut out Democratic seats and give the GOP a bigger edge.

“We are entitled to five more seats” in Congress, he said, as though political parties are entitled to power.

Texas and North Carolina obliged. So did Missouri, drawing a still-contested map that divvies up Kansas City along racial lines.

Kansas redistricting would also slice up the western side of the Kansas City area. There’s an argument that the KC region might be better off as its own state instead of letting itself be bullied by Kansas and Missouri Republicans, but that’s probably an idea for another column.

California — which, despite the comments of expatriate Whitmer, has a bipartisan redistricting commission designed for the express purpose of preventing gerrymandering — only moved after Trump and Texas started the fight. And Kelly only endorsed California’s efforts as a response to that GOP effort.

Power grabs are unprincipled

So why are Kansas Republicans suggesting (if implicitly) that this fight started with California Democrats?

A likely answer: Power grabs are messy, ugly things. They’re not about principles. They’re about doing what it takes to end up on top.

It’s easier for GOP officials to make their case if Kansas redistricting is somehow about fairness. But it’s not fair if the story starts with Trump and Texas. They appear to be operating on the assumption that Kansas voters aren’t paying attention and have the memories of goldfish.

Maybe that’s true.

But it’s notable that Kansas Republicans have so far failed to muster the number of supporters needed to call that special session. They can’t even persuade all the members of their own caucus.

“Redistricting by either party in midcycle should not be done,” GOP state Rep. Mark Schreiber told the Associated Press this week.

If it is done, though, Kansas Republicans should simply own their power grab. They want to steal Davids’ seat. That’s not Laura Kelly’s fault, or California’s.

This story was originally published October 27, 2025 at 11:41 AM.