A mid-decade Congressional redistricting may be afoot in Kansas, and if state legislators go through with it, then Johnson County will be smack in the middle of the conversation.
Press releases continued to fly off the desks of elected officials this week, addressing the possibility that Republican state lawmakers may move forward with a plan to call a special session.
The goal: to redraw the boundaries of Kansas’ Congressional districts with an eye toward eliminating the state’s only Democratic member of Congress, Sharice Davids.
Johnson County is fully contained in the state’s Third District, which Davids has won four times.
In years past, county voters reliably elected Republicans to most offices, but in recent years, Democratic party affiliation has increased, and more Democrats have been elected. Moving the Third District’s boundaries to make it harder for Davids to win again in 2026 would likely mean putting a piece of Johnson County into a neighboring district.
Opponents warn that splitting the county could affect how the county is represented for federal funding and its economic development.
Special session 'at some point this fall?'
Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican gubernatorial candidate, has been at the forefront of the efforts, but some other candidates for governor including Jeff Colyer, Scott Schwab, former Johnson County commissioner Charlotte O’Hara and Doug Billings are also reportedly interested.
Masterson said in a statement that in 2022, Democrats had “gerrymandered their way into a lot of seats they didn’t earn,” and that he is “actively engaged in the battle for the heart and soul of America, helping the President to Make America Great Again.”
In a recent release, Masterson said the Senate is likely to discuss the possibility of a special session “at some point this fall.”
Although there’s no certainty at this point, the rumors have kicked the redistricting conversation in Kansas into a new level this week.
Punchbowl News reported that legislators are planning the special session. Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has called for the public to be allowed to weigh in on any change in their representation.
“A special session to draw new maps without new data would be an unprecedented departure from the normal post-Census process,” Kelly said in a press release this week. “For Kansans to have any faith in these new maps, they must be afforded opportunities to speak directly, in person, with their legislators.”
She noted that during redistricting in 2022, legislators hosted 18 public meetings across the state.
Davids released her own statement this week, echoing many of Kelly’s points.
“Let’s be clear: Kansans deserve fair representation, not backroom deals,” Davids said. “Republicans in Topeka know their politically motivated plan to once again silence Kansans and gerrymander the state isn’t popular, which is why they’re trying to do it in secret.”
The wave of redistricting started with President Donald Trump’s call for Texas to recombine its districts to get five more likely Republican seats. If the voters act as map drawers expect, that would make it more likely the party could keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, where there is a narrow margin in their favor.
Other states have followed. In response, California enacted a redistricting plan to counteract Texas’, the Associated Press reported.
This month, Missouri lawmakers approved new maps that included a change making U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district more Republican leaning.
How it could happen in Kansas
Normally, redistricting happens at the turn of the decade, after the U.S. Census update on population changes.
Kansas redrew its boundaries in 2022, a year when Republican lawmakers also had designs on Davids’ seat. That year, Wyandotte County was split in an effort to dilute support for Davids’ re-election. But Davids actually increased her margin, winning a second time against Republican Amanda Adkins.
With the 2026 election looming, another change to the districts would require a special session of the legislature.
Special sessions are typically called by the governor, but with a Democrat in that spot, the talk now is of having a session initiated by the lawmakers. The Kansas Constitution allows it, but it’s a little more difficult. State legislators would need two-thirds of the members of each house to sign a petition.
Although Republicans have a supermajority in both houses, it’s a narrow one. To call a special session, they’d need 84 of their 88 House members and 27 of their 31 Senators to sign the petition.
Possible political pitfalls
That requirement puts Johnson County Republican lawmakers in a delicate position, said Andrea Vieux, political science associate professor at Johnson County Community College.
For one thing, there are risks that strengthening Republican votes in one district could end up diluting them in another.
The change could also focus attention on the pressures at the national level and the problems with redistricting, she said.
“The more that this gets talked about in different states, and Kansas, the more people are going to start to question, ‘Are we voting for our representative or are our politicians determining who their voters are?’ There’s a real risk that people will get fed up with some of this national political climate impacting Kansas and take it out at the polls,” she said.
Deann Mitchell, chair of the Johnson County Democrats, said there would be consequences for splitting up “the most politically powerful county in Kansas.”
“I would hope that they would understand that that would be problematic for their re-election,” she said of Johnson County Republicans. She noted that every Kansas House representative will be up for re-election next year.
Some Johnson County Republicans have reportedly expressed hesitancy to wade in to a new redistricting battle.
State Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee told the Kansas City Star that an effort to break up a populous area like Johnson County might give a court challenge a better chance of succeeding, coming as it does so soon after the changes made in 2022.
Republican state Reps. Bill Sutton and Sean Tarwater, from Gardner and Overland Park respectively, were quoted in the same story as having doubts about the idea. Tarwater questioned whether new maps could stand up to a governor’s veto.
The Johnson County GOP did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Johnson County Democrats weigh in
Kansas Democratic lawmakers have been uniformly opposed, reiterating Kelly’s call for public hearings.
Sen. Dinah Sykes and Rep. Brandon Woodard, Democratic leaders of the Senate and House who both represent districts covering parts of Lenexa, put out a joint release emphasizing that point.
The push for redistricting is “a blatant attempt to curry favor with Trump and boost GOP political ambitions, not to serve Kansans,” Woodard said.
State Sen. Cindy Holscher of Overland Park, who is seeking her party’s nomination for governor next year, said, “Let’s be clear: there is no reason to re-district mid-decade except to rig the system in one party’s favor over another. That’s not democracy. That’s cheating.”
State Sen. Ethan Corson, another Johnson County Democrat from Fairway also running for governor, has been quoted as saying the redistricting to let politicians choose their voters is “tone deaf.”
Why it matters
Some have questioned whether the county’s interests could be properly represented if cities and suburbs are broken off to share with more rural areas.
“It’s hard to legislate and help all your different communities when you have very different goals in the community,” Mitchell said.
For instance, Johnson County’s need for federal highway and infrastructure funding is different from rural districts, she pointed out.
“And that’s just one of many issues that would be incredibly more complicated if we were split up into two Congressional districts,” she said.
Vieux said Davids and Cleaver have often worked together on issues affecting the metro area. Adding a split Johnson County to the changes in Cleaver’s district could have a negative impact on economic interests, she said.
“If the [Republican] party is about business and economic development, you’d probably want to keep the county together,” she said.
Tracey Osborne Oltjen, president and CEO of the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce said the chamber’s position remains that the county shouldn’t be split. Combining part of the county with a large rural area dilutes the county’s representation, she said.
“We would just become a tiny part of that district,” she said.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
