After losing U.S. House race, Adkins will officially leave Kansas City’s Cerner Corp.
Veteran Cerner Corp. executive Amanda Adkins has left the healthcare IT firm since losing her campaign for a Kansas Congressional seat.
Adkins, 45, Cerner’s vice president of strategic growth, took a leave of absence last January as she sought to unseat Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, who represents the 3rd Congressional District in Kansas.
While Adkins lost the November election by about 10 percentage points, she continues fundraising efforts — sparking speculation about a possible rematch with Davids in 2022.
Adkins told The Star that it was her decision to leave Cerner and declined to discuss future political plans. She worked at the firm for 15 years.
“After a long and valuable contribution to Cerner over many years, Amanda will not be returning to the company in any capacity,” Cerner spokeswoman Misti Preston told The Star. “We wish her well in her efforts to positively impact the Kansas City community in the years to come.”
Cerner is the Kansas City area’s largest private employer with some 14,000 workers spread across multiple campuses. The North Kansas City-based company is also a major federal contractor with a $10 billion contract to design a new health care records system for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
That raised ethical questions as Adkins at first announced she would continue her work at Cerner while campaigning. Federal election rules prohibit federal contractors from giving directly to federal candidates, but one expert said her leave of absence protected the company from violating the rule.
Some Republicans credit Adkins with rebuilding the Kansas GOP after Kris Kobach divided the party’s moderate and conservative wings. But her decades-long association with former Gov. Sam Brownback plagued her 2020 campaign to represent the Third District, which covers Johnson, Wyandotte and Miami counties.
Brownback left the governorship in early 2018 with low approval ratings after a prolonged — and largely self-inflicted — budget crisis triggered by massive income tax cuts in 2012.
But Adkins doesn’t appear to be leaving politics any time soon.
Las week, she sent a fundraising plea to supporters tied to the Tuesday’s runoff Senate elections in Georgia. Two-thirds of proceeds would go to the two Republican candidates, while Adkins’ campaign would collect the other third.
It’s not uncommon for campaigns to continue fundraising in the weeks after the election if candidates face campaign debts. But a November 23 campaign finance filing showed Adkins’ campaign with nearly $45,000 cash on hand with only $5,000 in debts left to pay.
Adkins may be counting on a redrawing of the district boundaries. Kansas Republicans, who hold supermajorities in Topeka, intend to reshape the district to be more favorable to GOP candidates in 2022, when the state undergoes redistricting based on the 2020 Census.
The Star’s Bryan Lowry contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 12:00 AM with the headline "After losing U.S. House race, Adkins will officially leave Kansas City’s Cerner Corp.."
