Rep. Sharice Davids won her fourth term representing Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District centered around Johnson County, cementing Democrats’ hold over the once-red U.S. House seat.
Davids defeated Lenexa oncologist Prasanth Reddy Tuesday by a margin of 54% to 42%, according to unofficial final result totals published by the Kansas Secretary of State’s office.
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If that margin holds through the final counting of mail-in and provisional ballots, it would the third time Davids has won by double digits in four tries.
“Tonight, this victory is our opportunity to continue to push forward. It’s our opportunity to continue to build on real progress that we’ve seen and achieved so far, and do what we can to create a better future for Kansas,” Davids said to a Democratic Party gathering at an Overland Park hotel Tuesday night.
Davids used abortion issue to help define race
The race hinged most prominently on abortion, an issue that still resonates with Kansas voters two years after a statewide amendment meant to eliminate the right to abortion from the state constitution was soundly defeated.
And Davids referenced that in her remarks Tuesday.
“The fight for better Kansas isn’t over,” Davids said, referencing abortion, health care, democracy, LGBT rights and other prominent issues throughout her speech.
Davids repeatedly tied Reddy, a first-time candidate, to what she labeled “extreme” abortion opponents, including the lobbying group Kansans For Life.
That sparked an exchange in the pair’s only debate before Election Day, aired by Kansas City PBS in late October, in which Davids went after Reddy for appearing on the Kansans for Life Political Action Committee’s endorsement list.
Reddy said the group had not endorsed him and called political ads tying him to the group “misinformation.”
In a pre-election questionnaire sent by the Post, Davids said she opposed any moves to ban abortion at the federal level and “that a woman’s health care decisions should absolutely remain between herself, her family, and her doctor, without the interference of politicians.”
Reddy also said he would oppose a national abortion ban and that he respected the result of the 2022 vote in Kansas. In his own Post questionnaire responses, he repeated a version of the line he offered often during the campaign that the issue of abortion “should remain at the state level.”
Reddy tried to press Davids on immigration
In Congress, Davids says she bucked her own party’s leadership in pushing for a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year — one she called the “strictest border legislation in decades” — that was ultimately scuttled by Republicans when former President Trump publicly came out against it.
Reddy faulted Davids for not supporting a different GOP-backed border bill that would have drastically tightened rules for claiming asylum and rolled back protections for migrant children, among other things.
Reddy said he supported steps to limit illegal crossings and tighten border security, while at the same time exploring pathways to citizenship for immigrants here legally, adding that process should come with “strict requirements such as background checks, paying taxes, and learning English.”
On issues more broadly, Davids tried to portray Reddy as a candidate aligned with the extreme branch of the Republican Party while presenting herself as someone who pushed back against some Democratic initiatives and worked across the aisle.
In their televised debate last month, Davids name-dropped U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and outgoing U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, both Republicans, as people with whom she’s found common ground.
On issues like tax policy, Davids said during the debate, “At the end of the day, the thing that’s not going to get us there is aligning with the most extreme people in our Congress, getting the support of the most extreme people in Congress who would rather shut the government down than actually solve problems.”
Reddy hit back, trying to portray Davids as ineffective in bringing about change on border policy and other challenges during her time in office.
He also called out Davids for lack of progress on issues like the cost of higher education.
“You’ve had six years to bend that needle” and costs have “continued to explode,” he said during the October debate.
Kansas’ 3rd District has long been a GOP target
As they did in the previous two elections in which Davids was the incumbent, Republicans targeted Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District this election cycle as a district that could potentially be flipped.
Last summer, the National Republican Congressional Committee put Kansas’s 3rd District on a list of nearly 40 targeted Democratic-held districts nationwide.
In 2022, Republicans in Topeka led a redistricting effort that changed the boundaries of the 3rd District in ways largely seen as an attempt to make it more favorable for the GOP.
The new map carved out northern Wyandotte County and added three more rural counties to go with Johnson County.
But in the 2022 midterms, Davids expanded her 10-point victory margin from 2020, defeating challenger Amanda Adkins by 12 percentage points.
In the weeks leading up to Nov. 5, The Cook Political Report consistently put Kansas’s 3rd District in the “Likely Democrat” column of its district-by-district U.S. House race tracker.
First-time candidate challenged popular incumbent
Similar to Davids’s political beginnings six years ago, Reddy ran for elected office for the first time in 2024 with a unique biography as part of his pitch to voters to send a new face to Washington, D.C.
Now a doctor living in Lenexa, Reddy immigrated to the U.S. from India with his parents when he was a child. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, he joined the U.S. Air Force Reserves and has since risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He earned degrees from the University of Kansas State and University of Kansas Medical Center, as well as a master’s in public health. He’s also an alumnus of Harvard Business School. He served as an executive for Labcorp before stepping down in 2023 to run his campaign.
Davids has her own memorable personal story. When she defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder in 2018, she became one of the first Native American women ever elected to Congress.
She also became the first openly gay elected official representing Kansas in Washington, D.C. Before her election in 2018, she worked as an attorney and earned a prestigious White House fellowship.
Davids won her previous three elections all by comfortable double-digit percentage point margins, defeating Yoder in 2018 and health care executive and Kansas Republican Party official Amanda Adkins twice in 2020 and 2022.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
