Incumbent Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) will return for a third term in Washington as Kansas’ lone congressional Democrat, according to projections on Nov. 8.
Davids had 55 percent of the vote with nearly all precincts reporting, according to the Kansas Secretary of State Office. Republican challenger Amanda Adkins had 43 percent.Kansas CD 3 was among the nation’s 36 most competitive congressional midterm races, according to Cook Political Report, which rated Davids’ reelection bid a “toss-up” against Adkins in a rematch of their 2020 election because of the way the district was redrawn in post-2020 Census redistricting.
But Davids, who beat Adkins by 10 percentage points in 2020, was always the favorite in the Kansas City area district where she led in polls by 6-to-10 points all summer and early fall.
Neither Davids nor Adkins have commented on the result as of yet.
A former mixed martial arts (MMA) professional fighter who earned a law degree from Cornell Law School, Davids is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation In 2018, she and Rep Deb Harland (D-N.M.)— current U.S. Department of Interior Secretary—became the first two Native American women ever elected to serve in Congress when she upset incumbent Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.).
Adkins, a 2009–13 Kansas Republican Party chair, is a healthcare IT company executive who co-founded the Dwight D. Eisenhower Excellence in Public Service Series to prepare Republican women to seek leadership, and served on the Kansas Chamber of Commerces’s Executive Committee for 14 years.
Adkins’ campaign reflected the typical boilerplate of national partisan polarities in linking Davids to President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming she was complicit in supporting policies that GOP candidates nationwide say have fostered a 40-year high in inflation.
Davids’ campaign repeatedly tied Adkins to former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, whose rocky tenure as governor ended in 2018 with the lowest-ever recorded approval ratings for any Sunflower State chief executive.
Davids also maintained that like Brownback, Adkins is an absolutist on banning abortion, which she vows to protect.
The abortion issue had 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, the largest ever for a Kansas primary, and result—a shocking red state upset—galvanized Democrat voters nationwide, 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 appeared to have faded with voters nationwide, and in Kansas, more were concerned about the economy—about the cost of gas and groceries—than about access to abortion in the wake of June’s Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Davids in ads and in campaign literature never backed 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, but also targeted Adkins for “aligning herself with very extreme politicians who are looking to decimate Social Security and Medicare.”
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
