Former Kansas teen governor candidate holds single-vote lead over Democratic lawmaker

A teen who ran for Kansas governor in 2018 led a well-established Wyandotte County state lawmaker in the Democratic primary election by a single vote Tuesday night.

Aaron Coleman, 19, had 768 votes to Rep. Stan Frownfelter’s 767 votes with all precincts in House District 37 reporting.

The results aren’t final and will almost certainly fluctuate in the coming days as mail-in ballots arrive and election officials decide what to do with the provisional ballots cast in the race. It wasn’t clear Tuesday night how many provisional and mail-in ballots could potentially still be counted.

No Republican is on the November ballot, raising the stakes in the Democratic race.

The close result was shocking to Democrats. It came after condemnation last week by Democrats and Republicans of past social media comments by Coleman, who posted he would “giggle” when a former Republican state lawmaker died of COVID-19.

Coleman on Facebook had told John Whitmer, a former Republican representative who hosts a radio show in Wichita, that “I’m going to laugh and giggle when you get COVID and die,” the Kansas Reflector reported Friday.

“My past comments were absolutely inappropriate … my heart was right but my words were wrong,” Coleman said in an interview Tuesday night.

In the wake of reporting on the posts, several prominent Kansas Democrats condemned them. Rep. Brett Parker, an Overland Park Democrat, on Twitter said Coleman’s campaign “has only served to prove that he is unfit for the office.” He called the comments “appalling.”

Coleman, who said he works as a restaurant dishwasher, was one of several teenage candidates for governor in 2018. He said the closeness of the legislative race, regardless of the ultimate outcome, showed “the strength and the power of the progressive movement.”

Reached on Tuesday night, Frownfelter, who joined the House in 2007, said the outstanding ballots and a possible recount could change the razor-thin margin.

“There’s been a number (of elections) that have been this close that have changed in the recounts and ballots still out there,” Frownfelter said. “We’ll wait to see how that goes before we say anything.”

Wyandotte County has seen a one-vote outcome before. In 2015, Mark Gilstrap advanced to the general election in a Unified Government Commission race after a single vote gave him the edge over Nathan Barnes in the primary contest.

Still, Whitmer said he was shocked to see Coleman finish the night with a one-vote lead. “His party disavowed (Coleman) and they still elected him,” he said.

The Eagle’s Dion Lefler contributed reporting