WASHINGTON — Republicans created fertile ground for Amanda Adkins to win the Kansas 3rd Congressional District, but shifting national momentum might stifle their chances of a successful harvest in the fall.
After Adkins lost to Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids by 10 percentage points in 2020, the Republican-controlled Legislature redrew the district, chopping out some of the most reliable Democratic voters in diverse Wyandotte County and adding reliable Republican voters from rural, mostly white counties.
The new lines created a district where candidates live and die by national political momentum — typically an advantage for challengers in a midterm election, where the party opposing the president often picks up seats in Congress. The district went from one Democrats won in the presidential race in both 2016 and 2020 to boundaries that former President Donald Trump would have won in 2016 and President Joe Biden would have narrowly flipped four years later.
