Republicans take seat from only House Democrat west of Wichita, keep supermajorities
Republicans expanded their control of Wichita-area seats in the Kansas Legislature on Tuesday night, flipping a seat in the state House by knocking off the only Democratic legislator west of Wichita.
Republican Kyler Sweely, a 26-year-old first-time candidate, appears to have narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Jason Probst in the Hutchinson-area District 102 race. The Associated Press called the race at 10:26 p.m. on Tuesday. Sweely led by fewer than 250 votes with 99% of votes counted. He ended the night leading 3,619 votes to 3,370 votes for Probst.
Sweely became the focus of a Wichita Police Department investigation into the circumstances surrounding a video posted on Reddit last month that showed him leaping onto a woman lying on a bed, then holding a pillow over her face. Sweely said they were “hanging out and being silly.” The woman told investigators they were “just having fun” and that she did not feel like a victim. Police are not pursuing criminal charges.
Avery Anderson, a Republican incumbent who was hanging out with Sweely and the woman when the video was made in 2023, also won his race against Democrat Heidi Hoskinson — 65% to 35%.
Meanwhile, Republicans kept a hold on open seats in the Legislature and won several other contests without a Democratic opponent. The only Wichita-area Democrats to defeat Republican opponents were incumbents Mary Ware, Henry Helgerson and Tom Sawyer.
Every seat in the Kansas Legislature was up for election in 2024.
Republicans are expected to maintain majority control of both chambers, as they have since 1993, but Democrats had hoped to break the two-thirds supermajority the GOP has held since 2010.
Instead, the GOP appears to have expanded its majority, making gains in Johnson County as well as picking up the Hutchinson seat.
Tuesday’s elections will likely set the tone of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s final two years in office. A partisan supermajority allows one party to pass laws without the governor’s signature, rendering compromise on legislation an unnecessary step on some bills. Breaking the supermajority would allow Kelly to more easily veto bills that she opposes.
Democrats needed to pick up an additional five seats in the Legislature — two in the House and three in the Senate — to break the GOP’s two-thirds majority.
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican who won his race, said he expects to keep a veto-proof majority.
“We still have Laura [Kelly] for two more years, and by the way, I have an authentically positive relationship with her,” Masterson said before all results were known Tuesday night. “She was my ranking Democrat on the committee for four years. We have a good working relationship. We don’t agree on a couple things. I mean, honestly, we agree on probably 70-80% . . . but it’s that last 10%, right? It’s a worldview issue.”
“If it holds for the House, because it doesn’t matter if I have a super duper majority, right? If the House doesn’t have theirs, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Masterson said. “So I’m pretty excited. It feels like we’re gonna have that. I think Kansas is coming in for the Republicans … so then we’ll be able to advance our agenda.”
The 125-member Kansas House is elected every two years while the 40-member Senate is elected every four years. Republicans currently hold 29 seats to Democrats’ 11 in the Senate and an 86-to-39 advantage in the House.
Rank-and-file legislators are set to receive a pay bump of about 93% starting next year — bringing their total compensation from $30,000 a year to nearly $58,000, according to the Associated Press, while the House speaker and Senate president are expected to make more than $85,000 a year.
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 7:30 PM.