The names voters see on the Nov. 8 Kansas Congressional District 3 (CD 3) ballot are two-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Sharice Davids versus Republican challenger Amanda Adkins.
But to the naked ear, the contentious contest for Kansas’ only congressional seat, now occupied by a Democrat, sounds more like a referendum on Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.
Adkins, a former Kansas Republican Party chair who lost to Davids by 41,000 votes in 2020, says the incumbent is a Biden lackey and, as such, is complicit in supporting policies that GOP candidates across the nation say have fostered a 40-year high in inflation.
Davids repeatedly ties Adkins to Brownback, whose rocky tenure as governor ended in 2018 with the lowest-ever recorded approval ratings for any Sunflower State chief executive.
Adkins, who chaired the former governor’s unsuccessful 2004 U.S. Senate run, “was a senior aide to Sam Brownback as he decimated our state’s budget, destroyed our public education system, and downgraded our credit rating as a state,” Davids said during an Oct. 25 debate with Adkins, referring to the budget cuts that led to unpopular slashes in spending on schools and state services.
Davids maintains that, like Brownback, Adkins is also an absolutist on banning abortion, which she vows to protect.
The abortion issue has salience in the CD 2 race after more than 900,000 Kansans voted in a special election on Aug. 2, with nearly 60 percent rejecting a proposed amendment removing abortion access as a fundamental right from the state’s constitution.
The Aug. 2 turnout, largest ever for a Kansas primary, and the result—a shocking red state upset—galvanized Democrat voters across the country, brightening the party’s once-bleak prospects of retaining the U.S. House and taking the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections.
But that momentum appears to have faded in Kansas and with voters nationwide, who are more concerned about the economy—about the cost of gas and groceries—than about access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court June decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Davids is among four Kansas congressional incumbents running for new two-year terms in the 2022 midterms. She is the only Democrat and the only one not projected to win convincingly on Nov. 8.
Post-2020 Census redistricting by the GOP-dominated state legislature gives Republicans a better shot at winning in the metro Kansas City district, turning a blue stronghold in a statewide sea of red into a purple district that the GOP believes it can win.
The new maps, upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court, move rural areas into CD 3 while breaking up urban neighborhoods, teeing-up the prospects of sending an all-GOP Kansas delegation to Washington in 2023.
Kansas CD 3 is among the nation’s 36 most competitive congressional midterm races, according to Cook Political Report, which rates Davids’ reelection bid against challenger Adkins as a “toss-up.”
Before redistricting, the Cook Political Report Partisan Voting Index rated CD 3 as D+1. It has now revised its rating to R+1. Nevertheless, it projects district voters will “lean” Democratic when casting Nov. 8 ballots.
FiveThirtyEight sees the new CD 3 as “highly competitive” but rates Davids’ odds of winning 79-21 percent. Sabato’s Crystal Ball forecasts a “lean” Democratic result as does Politico, which on Oct, 3 revised its assessment of the CD 3 race from “tossup” to “lean” Democratic.
Nearly $11 million has been raised by the two CD 3 campaigns, nearly three times the money flowing into the state’s three other congressional campaigns combined.
According to Davids’ Oct. 19 Federal Elections Commission filing, her campaign alone has raised more than $7.255 million, spent $7 million, with $730,000 cash on hand with two weeks to go before elections. Adkins’ same-day FEC filing showed her campaign had raised $3.5 million, spent $3.167 million, and had $385,000 in cash on hand.
Davids in ads and in her campaign platform does not back away from her support for Biden’s policies, telling voters they have delivered about $2.5 billion in current and future benefits to the district.
She paints Adkins as a Brownback clone who would support GOP attempts to ban abortion and slash Medicaid and Social Security programs.
Adkins “has aligned herself with very extreme politicians who are looking to decimate Social Security and Medicare, supports a total ban on abortion with no exceptions, not for rape or incest,” Davids said during their Oct. 25 debate.
As part of her campaign platform, Adkins states she believes life begins at conception and should be protected from that moment. She supported the failed constitutional amendment that would have allowed a state ban on abortion but has acknowledged repeatedly during the campaign that she respects the Aug. 2 vote.
Her position, as stated repeatedly, is abortion regulations are a state issue, not a federal matter, calling any bill proposing a national abortion ban an overreach of federal authority.
Adkins has pounded at Davids and Biden over the economy, claiming both should be held accountable for the skyrocketing costs of gas and groceries.
“People are suffering now,” Adkins said during the debate. “We have interest rates that are rising. We are entering a recession. And that (inflation) is all due to the bad policies on the part of President Joe Biden and Sharice Davids has it 100 percent of the time.”
