TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas attorney general’s successful political comeback in Tuesday’s election kept an open U.S. House seat in Republican hands while the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation was trying to fend off a GOP challenger.
Republican Derek Schmidt won the 2nd Congressional District seat held by retiring two-term Republican Rep. Jake LaTurner. Schmidt, who served three terms as attorney general, was coming off a narrow loss in the 2022 governor’s race. He defeated Democrat Nancy Boyda.
Click to Gallery
Republican Rep. Ron Estes addresses the crowd gathered at the Cozine Life Events Center in Wichita, Kan., Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Jaime Green/The Wichita Eagle via AP)
Olivia Nunez shops while people vote at a grocery store on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Steven Vandenburgh votes at a grocery store, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A woman votes at a grocery store on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A woman shops while a voter casts a ballet at a grocery store, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids was seeking a fourth term and faced Republican Prasanth Reddy, a doctor and former vice president of two medical research companies. Most of the district’s voters are in suburbs that have been friendly to Davids.
In the state’s two other districts, Republican Reps. Tracey Mann and Ron Estes won reelection comfortably.
Democrats have held the 2nd District seat previously, but not since Boyda served a single, two-year term and lost her race for reelection in 2008. LaTurner won both of his two terms by about 15 percentage points and would have likely cruised to victory again, but he announced in April that he wanted to spend more time with his young children.
Schmidt is often affable in public, and he worked early in his career for two moderate Republicans, U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker and Gov. Bill Graves, before serving in the state Senate and being elected attorney general in 2010. That’s created lingering distrust among hard-right Republicans.
But Schimdt easily won a five-person primary this year — partly because former President Donald Trump declared in a social media post that Schmidt was “An America First Patriot” and, “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
In the 3rd District, Davids gained national attention when she unseated a Republican incumbent in 2018 as a Native American, lesbian and former mixed martial arts fighter. Republicans try to portray her as among the most liberal members of Congress. Her vocal support of abortion rights has helped her in her district, and she’s positioned herself as a business-friendly and pragmatic centrist.
The key to a 3rd District victory is heavily suburban Johnson County, the state’s most populous county. Trump’s support has waned there since his victory in the 2016 presidential race, hurting Republicans, while Davids’ margins of victory have grown over time.
The 1st District that Mann represents includes the liberal northeastern Kansas enclave of Lawrence, home to the main University of Kansas campus. However, Lawrence’s influence can’t match the GOP’s strength in the rest of the district, the state’s western third and much of central Kansas. Mann is a former Kansas lieutenant governor who’s had no trouble winning his two previous terms.
His Democratic opponent was Paul Buskirk, an academic counselor and adviser for student athletes at the University of Kansas.
The 4th District of south-central Kansas is centered on Estes’ hometown of Wichita, and he’s a former two-term state treasurer. He’s held the seat since winning a special election in 2017 to replace Mike Pompeo, who was appointed by Trump to be CIA director and later U.S. secretary of state.
His Democratic opponent was Esau Freeman, a painter and union leader who is best known for advocating the legalization of marijuana.
Republican Rep. Ron Estes addresses the crowd gathered at the Cozine Life Events Center in Wichita, Kan., Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Jaime Green/The Wichita Eagle via AP)
Olivia Nunez shops while people vote at a grocery store on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Steven Vandenburgh votes at a grocery store, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A woman votes at a grocery store on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A woman shops while a voter casts a ballet at a grocery store, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — In a presidential swing state where elections are typically intense contests, Nevada's U.S. Senate race has been unusually sleepy.
The campaign pits Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen — a former computer programmer and synagogue president — against Republican Sam Brown, a retired Army captain whose face is still scarred from injuries he suffered in Afghanistan. Both parties agree the state is in the midst of a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, but that the Senate race has drawn little notice, though Rosen has emerged as the favorite.
The first-term Rosen has outspent Brown by more than 3-1 in the contest, positioning herself as a nonideological senator who delivers for her home state on issues like broadband internet access and a high-speed rail connection with Southern California. Brown, who was awarded the Purple Heart, has campaigned on his biography and the state's cost-of-living crisis, particularly acute in working-class Nevada. He's had trouble gaining traction, though a last-minute infusion of GOP money in late October came as Republicans, cheered by strong turnout for their party in early voting, hoped Brown could upend expectations in the race.
“He hasn't really articulated a case for why we should get rid of Rosen, and Rosen has done a really good job of positioning herself as the prototypical Nevada Senator,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Damore added that since Nevada became a state in 1864, only five of its incumbent Senators have lost bids for reelection. Most have behaved like Rosen, positioning themselves as nonpartisan leaders who deliver for the state.
“There's a history of longstanding, moderate senators who have dominated Nevada politics,” Damore said.
Rosen won in 2018 when the prior senator who'd occupied that role, Republican Sen. Dean Heller, veered sharply to the right in response to attacks from Trump for not supporting the then-president adequately. The state's other senator, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, narrowly won reelection in 2022 with a similarly centrist, low-profile campaign against a Trump-backed candidate.
Nevada voters were divided over how they view both candidates, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state.
Half of voters viewed Brown in an unfavorable light, but nearly the same number of voters viewed him positively. Rosen scored about the same with voters. Nearly half held a favorable view of the senator, and about the same number viewed her unfavorably.
Trump endorsed Brown in the state's primary, but his political career predates Trump. Brown tried to run for a statehouse seat in Texas in 2014 before moving to Nevada in 2018 and unsuccessfully competing in the 2022 Republican primary to challenge Cortez Masto.
Brown in 2008 was grievously wounded by an improvised explosive device during a Taliban ambush of his unit in southern Afghanistan. He left the Army in 2011 after 30 surgeries and years of recovery, founding a business to help veterans get medical care. Brown's face remains seriously scarred and has become central to his campaign ads.
“As a U.S. Senator I will proudly stand alongside Donald Trump to make American affordable, safe and strong again,” Brown said at the Republican National Convention this summer.
Rosen has hammered Brown over his stance on abortion, saying he'd vote for a national ban if sent to Washington, D.C.
Abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy is protected in Nevada by a 1990 state law. A measure to enshrine the right to an abortion until viability — which is after 21 weeks — in the state constitution is on ballots this year. If it passes, it must pass again in 2026.
Brown describes himself as “pro-life” and contends he never filled out a 2022 questionnaire that states he opposes exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. Brown and his wife Amy sat down for a joint interview with NBC News earlier this year describing an abortion she had before the two met.
Meanwhile, Rosen kicked off her reelection earlier this year with an ad in which she states: “Six years ago I promised to do what's right for Nevada, not my party leaders.”
Republicans need to net two Senate seats to win a majority in the chamber, so every seat counts in this election. But the GOP is already well-positioned in West Virginia, where they have an open seat in a state Trump won overwhelmingly. The Republican party is confident in its odds ousting Democrats in two other red states, Montana and Ohio. So the party has not invested heavily in Nevada.
The Senate race isn't the only underwhelming one in Nevada. The state has three Democratic-held House seats that could be competitive, but Republicans are significant underdogs in all of them.
“They did a horrible job of recruiting,” Damore said of the state Republican party, which has been taken over by hardline pro-Trump activists.
Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, who has represented Nevada's 1st Congressional District for more than a decade, again faces a challenge from retired Army Col. Mark Robertson. Titus defeated Robertson in 2022 by nearly 6 percentage points. Her district is reliably blue, covering Las Vegas and portions of the city's suburbs of Henderson and Boulder City.
In the 3rd Congressional District, widely considered the state's most competitive, Democratic U.S. Rep. Susie Lee is trying to defend her seat from Drew Johnson, a conservative policy analyst. The district includes a large swath of the culturally diverse Spring Valley neighborhood in Las Vegas, but also more rural areas in Clark County, which is the state's most populous.
Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, is looking to keep his seat in Nevada's sweeping 4th Congressional District that covers downtown Las Vegas and deep-red rural counties including Nye, Mineral and Esmeralda. He faces a challenge from former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, now a Republican after switching parties and running an unsuccessful primary campaign in 2022 for governor.
FILE - Republican senatorial candidate Sam Brown speaks at a primary election night party, June 11, 2024, in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/Tom R. Smedes, File)
FILE - Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., is seen before a debate with Republican senatorial candidate Sam Brown, Oct. 17, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
