KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly was statistically the most vulnerable incumbent governor in the nation heading into the 2022 election.
She was the only Democrat seeking reelection in a state former President Donald Trump carried in 2020. An overwhelmingly Republican electorate, Kansas voters not only sought to keep Trump in the White House, they did so by a 15 point margin.
Her narrow victory over Attorney General Derek Schmidt, which came on the heels of Kansans’ decisive vote in favor of abortion rights, has now placed the 72-year-old governor and self described policy wonk in the national spotlight.
This month the Democratic Governors Association elected Kelly as vice-chair for 2023 and chair-elect for 2024.
Though Kelly says she hasn’t committed to leading the organization in 2024, the position would place her at the helm of the national effort to re-elect Democrats to governors offices and unseat Republican governors in a presidential election year.
“Everybody’s going to want to be hearing from her,” said Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist.
The midterms were good to Democrats running in gubernatorial campaigns. They kept power in states like Kansas, Michigan and Pennsylvania, while flipping the governor’s office from Republican to Democrat in states like Massachusetts and Maryland, where moderate Republican candidates were eschewed for those loyal to former President Donald Trump.
But most of those Democratic successes came in swing states and places where the party has traditionally held control. Kelly twice has won in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since the Great Depression and hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson.
Now, national Democrats are pointing to Kelly and Kansas as a key example of how a Democrat can win in a conservative state.
“Democratic governors and the DGA, especially Governor Kelly, have shown that we can compete everywhere,” said Sam Newton, the deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “Democrats running for any office will have more success if they’re focused on the biggest issues that are impacting people’s lives, just like Governor Kelly has done.”
Kelly is one of four Democratic governors in states that were won by Trump in 2020. Two of them — Gov. John Bel Edwards in Louisiana and Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina — are serving their final term.
Only one faces another re-election: Gov. Andy Beshear in Kentucky.
Beshear is trying to win reelection after narrowly beating the unpopular former Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019, who angered teachers by proposing changes to their pension system.
In his first term, Beshear has faced a number of crises, guiding the commonwealth through the COVID-19 pandemic, a tornado that displaced thousands of people in western Kentucky and flooding in eastern Kentucky this year that killed 43 people.
Beshear has remained popular while guiding the commonwealth through each successive crisis, giving Democrats hope that he can win in a state that has become increasingly Republican.
“Democrats can win tough states by just doing what Laura Kelly did, what Steve Bullock did, what Andy Beshear is doing,” said Eric Hyers, Beshear’s campaign manager. “Being good governors.”
Like in Kansas, Kentucky Democrats got hope from voters’ rejection of a constitutional amendment that would have explicitly said there is no right to an abortion in the Kentucky constitution.
Sean Southard, the communications director for the Republican Party of Kentucky, said his state is different from Kansas. He said Republicans have been increasing their momentum in a state that used to consistently vote Democratic, unlike Kansas, which has long been a Republican stronghold.
“Andy’s tried to cultivate this image that he’s a non-partisan, managerial governor,” Southard said. “And I think that when the DGA and a bunch of national groups come in here and try to interfere in the race, I think it’s going to shatter some of his image.”
Kansas Republicans sought to capitalize on similar national forces helping Kelly but were unable to successfully tie her to national Democrats during the cycle.
Former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who chaired the Democratic Governors Association after she won reelection in 2006, said the coalition of Democratic state leaders is in a significantly different position than it was when she served.
While Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska were all led by Democrats during Sebelius’ time, Kelly stands out as the one Democratic governor in the Great Plains. As such, Sebelius said, her role will be in sharing strategies for Democrats in red states.
Kansas, Sebelius said, “has always been an oddity” in its politics and penchant for electing Democrats to its top office. But Sebelius believes pieces of Kelly’s strategy can be replicated elsewhere.
Democrats in Kansas, she said, must be Kansas Democrats and avoid ties to national politics.
“I think Democrats who win have done a good job of saying we’re both” pro business and pro labor, Sebelius said.
Kelly consistently pitched herself as a policymaker singularly focused on the state of Kansas.
In a debate, she refused to answer a question from Schmidt about whether Kansans were better off under Democratic President Joe Biden.
“I’m not going to answer that because for my entire time in the (Kansas) Senate and my entire time as governor I have stayed laser-focused on Kansas,” Kelly said.
Her decision to emphasize her record as a state-focused moderate may have been key in winning over voters who may have voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.
“It’s certainly worth looking at,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, when asked if Democrats in Republican leaning states should run as moderates. “It worked in Kansas because that’s where people saw themselves, and it’s also where people saw her. It was credible. So it’s certainly worth looking at for anybody in a place where you need to have Republican voters vote for you.”
A record of winning in red states doesn’t always translate to other political offices.
Bullock, for example, won his gubernatorial bid in 2016, when Trump won Montana by 20 percentage points. But when he tried to run for president in 2020, he never got more than 1 percent of the vote in polls. He lost his subsequent U.S. Senate bid by 10 percentage points.
“Voting for governor is a different animal than voting for a federal office,” Hyers said. “Voters are willing to put party aside and vote for who they think will make their lives better.”
Chistopher Reeves, a Kansas Democratic analyst, said Kelly’s role in the DGA will be an asset to Democrats nationwide as a model of how to exploit divisions within the Republican Party. He said the role will be especially useful in elevating her voice to push back on actions from Attorney General-elect Kris Kobach.
“It will set her up in a position where, as often as Kobach is running out to the national news media, it gives the Democratic faithful here a chance to have a voice and push back on the xenophonbic rhetoric,” he said.
The last two second term governors in Kansas — Sebelius and Republican Sam Brownback — ended their terms early to take a position in a presidential administration.
Kelly told reporters last week her position in the DGA should not be taken as a sign of higher ambition.
But Beatty, Sebelius and Reeves said the option could be open to her if Biden wins reelection.
“She now can control her own future,” Sebelius said after noting that Kelly has never sought, and often avoided, national attention.
