U.S. Representative Candidates
Midterm elections are underway. Advance in-person voting for federal, state, and local offices begins October 17th in Johnson and Wyandotte Counties. Representatives are key to control of Congress, and two Congressional Districts serve the Kansas metro area.
District 3 includes part of Kansas City, KS, all of Johnson County, and several counties south and west. District 2 includes much of eastern Kansas from Nebraska to Oklahoma including Junction City, Topeka, Emporia, Pittsburg, and parts of Lawrence and Kansas City.
The District 3 incumbent is Sharice Davids, who took office in 2019. She is the second Native American from Kansas elected to Congress, after Charles Curtis, who became vice-president in the Hoover Administration nearly a century ago.
Davids’s legislative priorities include support for agriculture, education and workforce development; sustainable energy (She voted for the Inflation Reduction Act that brought more than 20,000 clean energy jobs to District 3—more than any other district in America.); ethics and voting rights; healthcare as a human right; infrastructure (She voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law that brought $3.3 billion to Kansas for road, bridge, transit, and water projects.); responsible spending; national security; immigration reform; reproductive rights; small businesses; and veteran services.
Davids is endorsed by the Kansas AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Government Employees, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Human Rights Campaign, Democratic Majority for Israel, and several other organizations. Her campaign website is shariceforcongress.com.
Davids’s opponent is Eric Jenkins, a retired Army colonel with 34 years of active and reserve duty, 30 years with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 20 years on the Shawnee Planning Commission, and eight years on the Shawnee City Council with two years as president.
His priorities include fiscal responsibility, a strong military and support for veterans, border security and immigration reform with a path to citizenship for legal immigrants, an economy with fewer regulations, energy independence including oil, gas, nuclear, and renewables, and defending Second Amendment rights, free speech, and religious liberty. His website is ericjenkinsforkansas.com.
The District 2 incumbent is Derek Schmidt, who took office in 2025 after 12 years as Kansas attorney general. His legislative priorities include border security (He co-sponsored two laws to help communities be safe from illegal immigrants.); economic relief by controlling federal spending, lowering inflation, and providing tax relief; and public safety by supporting victims of violent crime, coordinating federal responses to scams targeting seniors, and deporting fraudsters who are not citizens.
Schmidt is endorsed by Donald Trump, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Kansas State Council of Fire Fighters, the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund, Kansans for Life, Kansas Farm Bureau, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and several other organizations. His website is derekschmidt.com.
Schmidt’s opponent is Don Coover, a West Point graduate and intelligence officer, now a veterinarian and rancher from Galesburg in southeast Kansas. Coover is running because politics is “broken” and “something has to be done to fix it. I’ve always been one of the guys who would do the jobs that had to get done but no one else wanted to do.”
Coover believes people want to work hard, but “there’s a lot of despair. We all see it with rising grocery and housing costs and the closing of local hospitals. And people in Washington keep making things worse. They either don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or they’re too focused on their own reelection or what their party leaders want.” For Coover, “it isn’t about party or politics.” He wants to “help move our country in the right direction for my granddaughter and for Kansans. I’d like the folks who know what it’s like to put in a hard day’s work to be making the decisions again in Washington.” His website is doncooverforcongress.com.
Your voice matters. Vote.
