Less than four years after winning their preferred congressional map, some Kansas Republicans want to reshape the state’s U.S. House districts again ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. If they’re successful, it could mean ousting the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation.
Kansas would join a wave of Republican- and Democrat-led states engaging in overt gerrymandering to tip the balance of power in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives.
In a statement, Republican Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson said he would consider redistricting “as a part of the bigger battle for the heart and soul of the country.”
“It is crucial that President Trump can continue working with a Republican Congress to keep delivering on his agenda and ushering in America’s comeback,” Masterson said.
REDISTRICTING normally happens every 10 years, following the national census. And politicians typically shy away from making partisan objectives explicit during the map-drawing process.
But this year, political pressures at the federal level have pushed state Legislatures to ignore those norms. Texas, California, Missouri and several other states are in various stages of mid-decade redistricting — with the unvarnished goal of electing candidates of their preferred party.
The 3rd Congressional District in northeastern Kansas, which Democratic Representative Sharice Davids has held since 2019, would be the likely target of gerrymandering by Republican state lawmakers.
“Voters should pick their representatives, not the other way around,” Davids told the Kansas News Service in an email. “This unprecedented step would only further polarize this country and harm our democracy.”
THE REDISTRICTING effort may be more difficult in Kansas than in other states. It’s only been a few years since the Republican-dominated state Legislature passed congressional maps targeting Davids’ district in the Kansas City metro area.
Those drawings sparked intense political debate and a state Supreme Court case, which the map’s proponents won. Supporters said redistricting ensured equal representation in Kansas, while civil rights groups and Democrats argued the new boundaries split up racially diverse areas for partisan advantage.
The 2022 map swallowed the left-leaning city of Lawrence in eastern Kansas into the vast, mostly rural 1st District, which stretches over 350 miles to the state’s western border with Colorado. The plan also bisected Wyandotte County, the state’s most ethnically and economically diverse county.
A nonpartisan gerrymandering research project gave the 2022 Kansas electoral map an “F” for partisan fairness. Yet Davids held onto her seat by wide margins in 2022 and 2024.
Patrick Miller, a political science professor at Kent State University who served as an expert witness in the 2022 Kansas redistricting trial, said Republicans have one option left to create four safe GOP districts.
“The only way that you ensure that Sharice Davids loses, or any Democrat, is you break Johnson County up,” Miller said.
Johnson County is the most populous in the state. Its leftward shift over the past few decades has underpinned Democrats’ ability to win statewide races and ballot initiatives.
LAWMAKERS IN 2022 proposed several maps that involved cleaving Johnson County in two, but settled on one called Ad Astra 2, which left the county intact.
