Holscher Wins Kansas Governor Race, Keeping the Seat in Democratic Hands

The Associated Press called the Kansas governor's race on Thursday, and the winner was State Senator Cindy Holscher, a Democrat from suburban Kansas City. Her narrow defeat of Republican Ty Masterson, the president of the Kansas Senate, keeps the governorship in Democratic hands for a third consecutive term. Gov. Laura Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, could not run again because of term limits.

The result fits a pattern that has long defined the state. Kansas reliably votes Republican for president, yet for decades it has swung between Republican and Democratic governors, showing an independent streak in midterm years. This year, high costs, dissatisfaction with President Trump's policies and a tangle of challenges facing farmers made the Plains more winnable for Democrats. Both parties spent heavily. Republicans saw a tantalizing chance to flip a seat on an otherwise foreboding national map, while Democrats saw a chance to hold a rare lever of power in a conservative state.

Holscher ran on a populist platform. She called for legalizing marijuana and placing a moratorium on data centers, and she promised to prioritize funding for public schools and to reduce property taxes. At a debate at the State Fair, she said she stood with the people, not the corporations and not the billionaires. She will be the fourth woman to serve as governor of Kansas. Her running mate, State Representative KC Ohaebosim, is the first Black person to win statewide office in Kansas since the 1880s, and Holscher is the first Democratic governor elected to succeed a fellow Democrat in the state's history.

Her path to the nomination was not smooth. Kelly had endorsed a different candidate in a competitive Democratic primary and had publicly questioned whether Holscher could win a general election, suggesting she had positioned herself too far to the left. After the primary, Kelly endorsed her. In a post-election interview, Kelly said she was more confident now that Holscher would be a good governor. Governing looks very different from campaigning, she said, and she was absolutely confident Holscher would surround herself with good people and keep things moving forward.

Masterson, a legislator from the Wichita area, leaned on his endorsement from Trump and pledged to lower taxes and cut costs for residents. In a statement Thursday, he said it looked like the campaign would come up just short, and that he had called Holscher to congratulate her. It was a hard election, he said, for people who share his vision, in Kansas and across the country.

Though not a household name in much of the state, Masterson built considerable power at the Capitol. Under his leadership of the Senate, lawmakers overrode Kelly's vetoes to enact dozens of bills, including measures restricting transgender people, overhauling election procedures and limiting officials' ability to impose restrictions during public health emergencies. Yet his power had limits. Last year he and other legislative Republicans wanted to redraw the state's congressional map, but they would have needed near-unanimous Republican support to beat a veto. The plan unraveled when several Republicans voiced opposition, leaving in place the state's single Democratic-leaning U.S. House district.

The governor's race was one piece of a larger night for Kansas Democrats. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, became the first Kansas Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race since the 1930s. Democrats also flipped several legislative seats, breaking the Republican supermajority in the Kansas House, which will make overriding Holscher's vetoes much harder. Voters ousted Attorney General Kris W. Kobach, a Republican who helped elevate illegal voting as a political issue.

Republicans still won other statewide races and will hold majorities in both legislative chambers. The question now is how Holscher's agenda on schools, property taxes and marijuana fares against a Republican-led legislature that no longer has the numbers to override her at will.