Kansas is an intensely Republican state, yet Democrats have hopes of an upset in the first U.S. House race in the age of Trump, a special election today to replace Mike Pompeo, who quit Congress to become CIA director. The Democratic nominee, civil rights lawyer James Thompson, “has spooked Republicans in Washington” with a Bernie-Sanders-style campaign, says The Nation.
President Trump won the vote in the 4th Congressional District, in south-central Kansas, by 27 points last November. The GOP nominee to succeed Pompeo, in a district that has sent Republicans to the House for decades, is state treasurer Ron Estes. He should have a formidable advantage but Republicans are “worried about a low-turnout contest, a depressed GOP base and and an under-performing candidate,” says NPR.
“Thompson is running a campaign that proudly embraces the ‘not the billionaires’ ethic of Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid,” says The Nation. “Thompson says he is running to preserve public education, health-care protections, and the social safety net that helped him make it from the streets to law school.” Still, it is an uphill fight for Thompson, a first-time candidate.
“Republicans are now sending in their cavalry,” said NPR. The GOP congressional campaign committee has put out an ad attacking Thompson on abortion rights, Vice President Mike Pence has recorded a robo-call for Estes, and Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Kansas presidential primary last year, planned to campaign with Estes on Monday. National Democrats have not taken as much interest in the race, says NPR. “But a closer-than-expected result could only give Democrats more momentum and optimism” for a special election in Georgia next week.
The 4th District, with 8.2 million acres of farmland, half of it in crops, is one of the largest wheat-growing districts in the nation, says USDA. The population is more than 80 percent white. More than half of the 725,000 people in the district live in Wichita and an additional 120,000 live in its outskirts. A quarter of the workforce is employed in manufacturing and 0.5 percent are in agriculture.
To read profiles of the candidates, prepared by public broadcaster KMUW-FM in Wichita, click here.