Sharice Davids’ road trip; a chance to see cows, or something more? | Opinion
Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids dropped by Wichita a few days ago to chat with the media and tour the Innovation Campus at Wichita State University.
After pretty much sticking to her home district, the Kansas 3rd, during her tenure in the House, the state’s only Democratic member of either chamber in Congress took a swing last week through Topeka, Wichita, Dodge City and Colby.
I couldn’t help but notice that it’s the kind of thing that Kansas congressfolk do when they’ve begun to contemplate running for office on a statewide level. During a press availability before the tour, Davids didn’t rule that out.
“I haven’t had the chance to do as many . . . out of district visits as I would like, but I will say it is pretty cool to get the chance to go a little bit deeper on some of the committee work I’m doing,” she said of her “Kansas Strong” tour. “Which is why I’m so excited to see the aviation research (at WSU) and, like, probably going to see the biggest dairy operation I’ve seen so far when I get to Colby.”
I guess it’s possible to put 900 miles on the car to look at cows, but it’s a lot more likely Davids was really scoping out the political landscape.
Davids is in a strange spot right now.
Three months ago, the leaders of the Kansas Legislature — particularly Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins — tried to round up enough Republican members to force a special session to redraw Davids’ district to reduce her chances of reelection in the midterm this November.
It was a special request from President Donald Trump, who’s in danger of losing majority support in one or possibly both houses of Congress due to widespread and growing dissatisfaction with his, shall we say, unique approach to governance.
In the Kansas Legislature, Masterson had enough senators signed on to do the deed and attempt to redistrict Davids into oblivion. But Hawkins wasn’t as successful on the House side.
Though the special session attempt failed, Hawkins punished a handful of Republican lawmakers who balked at the plan — and the arm-twisting has continued under the Capital dome since the Legislature returned to session last month.
So when we asked Davids if she was setting the table to run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, she had this to say:
“I know why you’re asking, because . . . yeah, the redistricting issue is, has been hot button. I think that it is good news for Kansas that at this point, right now, it does appear as though there’s been a temporary pause on that, as far as I know. And I hope that remains the case. Doing a mid-decade redistricting for purely political purposes is not something that Kansans, by and large, agree with. And so, you know, I’ve said that if they move forward with this, all options are on the table.”
I can’t tell you for sure if her statewide tour means Davids is really planning to have a go at Marshall, or if this is her brushback pitch to state Republicans, warning them to leave her current district alone.
I do know that it’s risky business for the Republicans.
They currently hold the U.S. Senate by a 53-47 margin, meaning the Democrats would need to pick up four seats to flip control (Vice President JD Vance breaks ties, so 50-50 wouldn’t be enough).
At present, Cook’s political report rates two GOP Senate seats as “toss-up” and two seats as just “leaning” Republican. A Davids run at Marshall would put his seat, currently rated “solid R,” in play.
Kansans voters, blue, red and purple, have indicated they kind of like the small but feisty Davids, who first gained attention as a competitor in Mixed Martial Arts fighting.
In the redistricting following the 2020 Census, state lawmakers split half of Kansas City, Kan., off her district and replaced those diverse and largely Democratic voters with a bunch of rural Republicans.
It didn’t work.
She’s won the revised district twice since, 55%-43% in 2022 and 53%-43% in 2024.
Marshall’s been piling up negatives since March, when he bolted on his own town hall in the remote town of Oakley, after a local retiree asked a hard-but-fair question about the effect on veterans of the Trump Administration’s federal job cuts.
He’s been little more than a Trump surrogate since last year’s election, which remains popular on the far right, but is fading fast in the political middle.
Defending ICE has gotten a lot harder after the brutal crackdown in Minneapolis that led to two deaths and the incarceration of a 5-year-old boy in a bunny-ear cap.
Last week, Marshall lamented the 67 victims of the Wichita-to-D.C. plane crash a year ago. He’d probably just as soon you forget that in the days immediately after the tragedy, he parroted and expanded on Trump’s bizarre theory that the cause of the crash was diversity, equity and inclusion.
And there are persistent and growing questions about Marshall’s commitment to the Sunflower State when he owns a $1.2 million McMansion on Gulf of Mexico Drive (oops) in Sarasota, Fla., and claims a one-bedroom cabin near St. John as his official residence for election purposes.
So while I can’t tell you whether Davids is seriously prepping a run for Senate, I can tell you this: forcing her into it could be the biggest mistake the GOP can make in Kansas this election cycle.
