Pressure over the push to do a sooner-than-usual redrawing of Kansas Congressional districts increased this week, as statehouse Republicans met for a White House conference in Washington, D.C., and local Democrats rallied against a plan that may split Johnson County among newly redrawn districts.
In the space of three days, opponents of redistricting in Johnson County have held one town hall, one rally and two press conferences to call out Republicans who appear to be moving forward with a plan that could cost Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids her seat.
Kansas Fair Maps hosted a rally at the Sylvester Powell Community Center in Mission on Tuesday night, attended by about 230 people.
Laurel Burchfield, a Shawnee city councilmember and advocacy director for the Mainstream Coalition, emceed the event. She encouraged attendees to sign an online petition against mid-decade redistricting. By Wednesday evening, the signature count had topped 1,300.
The subject could come up again on Saturday, during a “No Kings” rally planned at the corner of College Boulevard and Quivira in Overland Park. Burchfield will be one of the speakers at that event, which is part of a national chain of protests planned for Saturday against the Trump administration’s policies.
Davids says she’d eye run for Senate if districts change
Meanwhile, Davids said during a remote press conference Wednesday morning that she plans to challenge in court any redistricting plan that would split Johnson County, and that she’d consider running for Roger Marshall’s U.S. Senate seat if Republicans are successful in defeating her.
“I don’t know what will happen,” Davids said of the hypothetical questions. “But I can tell you that if they continue forward on this path and they’re successful in this, at this point, all I can say is that every option is on the table, including a statewide run.”
Marshall, a Republican, is up for re-election in 2026.
She added that a run in one of the newly redrawn congressional districts isn’t out of the realm of possibility, either.
Information about Republican plans has been slower to emerge.
Statehouse Republicans were reportedly invited to a Wednesday leadership conference put on by the White House. Earlier this week, the GOP legislative leaders approved $460,000 to cover the costs of holding a special session that would include redistricting.
State legislators need two-thirds of their members from each chamber to sign a petition to call a special session without Gov. Laura Kelly’s support to redraw congressional boundaries. So far, it’s not clear whether there are enough votes.
GOP lawmakers kept Johnson County intact during 2022 redistricting
Congressional boundaries are redrawn periodically by legislators to ensure even populations among districts. Normally, that happens every ten years, after new U.S. Census Bureau data reveals population shifts. Kansas lawmakers last redid the lines in 2022.
But this year, several states have started mid-decade redistricting efforts in response to calls from President Donald Trump. Trump asked Republicans in multiple states to create districts that would increase the likelihood of retaining the majority in the House in next year’s elections.
Kansas has four congressional districts, but the Third District is the only one represented by a Democrat. The whole of Johnson County is within its borders.
To create a district that would make it harder for Davids to win, map drawers would have to consider putting some Johnson County residents into a neighboring district. That prospect has drawn the most ire from opponents, who say such a move would dilute the voice of a county that is uniquely suburban in a mostly rural state.
Lawmakers tried something similar during the post-Census redistricting time in 2022, by splitting part of Wyandotte County off and adding three mostly rural counties to the Third District. Those maps were upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court. Davids won re-election anyway.
Opponents this week have made much of that experience, pointing to what they said are broken promises by Senate President Ty Masterson, who is running for governor next year, about keeping the county together and comparing it with the apparent willingness to now accommodate Trump.
During the run-up to the 2022 redistricting, Masterson said that the “core of the [Third] district,” Johnson County, would be maintained.
At another redistricting town hall earlier this week held at a Lenexa church, State Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Democratic candidate for governor from Overland Park, referenced Kansas’ history.
“Kansas is the Free State, not the blindly-following-orders state,” she said. “One man in Washington should not be dictating to us how our representatives are elected.”
'The worst idea'
During this week’s separate town hall and rally in Johnson County, redistricting opponents repeatedly said that separating the county’s cities and perhaps neighborhoods into other congressional districts would be detrimental to community building and to federal benefits county leaders lobby for.
Steve Rose, who owned the one-time Johnson County Sun and wrote a column for the Kansas City Star, highlighted the county’s unique suburban nature among Kansas counties, noting that one-third of the economic growth of the state is generated in Johnson County.
“There is just no county that begs for a single congressional representative any more than Johnson County does,” said Rose, who in 2009 was briefly a Republican candidate for the Congressional district before withdrawing for health reasons.
Calling a county split “the worst idea I’ve witnessed in my lifetime,” Rose said, “it would be devastating economically, taking the golden goose and carving it into scattered pieces.”
A split county would “dilute the hyper focus of a single congressman or woman of either party and replace that with a ragtag chaos of split personalities,” he continued.
Other speakers on Tuesday expressed concern that a divided county would cause a drop in voter participation. The Rev. Chris Wilson, pastor at St. Andrew Christian Church in Olathe, called it “another form of voter suppression.”
Dividing communities weakens, “the ability of those same communities to organize, to make their voices heard, to advocate for their needs,” he said. “Leaders become less and less accountable to the people they serve.
Some attendees also worried about the possibility that individual Johnson County cities might be divided. Reed Krewson, president of the Kansas Young Democrats, said after the rally that Wyandotte County’s split between the Third and Second district during the 2022 redistricting was discouraging for residents used to being in one district.
Krewson said the size of the district has made it difficult for people no longer in the Third District.
“If they want to be involved in the party organization or go to a town hall, they have to drive hours away when they used to just go down the street. That is an issue of fairness. It’s an issue of democracy,” he said.
Davids said the redistricting drama also could increase the likelihood of political fatigue.
“This political BS is exactly why people don’t trust the government in the first place,” she said during her press conference on Wednesday. “Kansans can see through it and are tired of it.”
Where do local Republicans stand?
The Post reached out to eight different Republican lawmakers from Johnson County on Wednesday but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Based on other recent media reports, Republican enthusiasm for the effort has been mixed.
Masterson has led the effort from the Kansas Senate, saying he wants to support Trump’s plan to “make America great again.”
Other Republican gubernatorial candidates with Johnson County ties, including Jeff Colyer, Scott Schwab, Charlotte O’Hara and Doug Billings, also have publicly backed the effort to redraw the Third District.
But some other local Republicans have been slower to come fully on board.
The Kansas City Star reported Reps. Sean Tarwater and Bill Sutton, for instance, expressed skepticism at the move. They and all other Kansas House members are up for re-election in 2026.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
