For more than three decades, African Americans have held seven seats in the Kansas legislature. In Kansas City, there have consistently been two house seats and one senate seat held by African Americans and Wichita had a similar composition, with two house seats and one Senate seat. These seats are all in core city districts with large African-American populations. The seventh seat is in liberal-leaning Lawrence, KS. While the seat has been held by an African American, the district is not largely African American.
Growing the number of Africans in the legislature would require gaining seats in districts without large African-American populations and that’s exactly what many of the new African-American candidates who stepped up to run for seats in the Kansas Legislature attempted to accomplish.
New Candidates
In June, at the close of the Kansas candidate filing deadline, 14 new African-American candidates had filed to run for office. Four of them were running for traditionally African-American seats in Wyandotte County, but nine were running for seats that weren’t currently held by African Americans.
All but one of them were running as Democrats in heavily Republican Kansas.
Primary Win All
Three of the new candidates filed for the House District 34 Seat in Wyandotte County against incumbent Marvin Robinson. The newcomers were Michelle Watley and Kimberly DeWitt and Wanda Brownlee Paige, who was already serving on the Kansas City School Board. Paige won that primary and a seat in the Kansas House since she didn’t have an opponent in the general election.
Ephran Taylor III took on long-serving Senator David Haley from Wyandotte County and lost in the primary. Like Paige, Haley won reelection without a Republican opponent.
Brooklynne Mosley competed in a three-way primary for the House District 46 seat in Lawrence. She won that race and also advanced to victory without a Republican opponent.
RESULTS: One new representative in a traditional House seat and one net gain in African Americans in the Kansas legislature.
Other Races
Here are the other nine candidates and their results in the general election.
In one of the closest losses of the evening, Johnson County candidate Vanessa Vaughn West made a strong bid for the Kansas House District 39 seat in northern Johnson County, but came up short by less than 500 votes, with 48% of the vote.
Also in Johnson County, Stacey Knoell came up short again, with just 47% of the vote, in her second run for the District 23 Kansas Senate Seat.
In far west Wyandotte County, Eli Woody lost in his bid for election to House District 33.
In Topeka, Jessica “J.P.” Porter lost in her bid for Kansas House District 50 seat.
Also In Topeka, ShaMecha King Simms lost in the primary for the District 9 Senate Seat. In an important gain for the Democrats, the winner of that primary, Patrick Schmidt, won in the general election.
In Wichita, Carol Brewer lost in her bid to represent House District 98 in south Wichita and Aonya Kendrick Barnett lost in her bid to unseat Black Republican Patrick Penn, who is the only Black Republican in the Kansas legislature.
Keisha McClish Couts lost in her bid to represent Kansas House District 91, which covers parts of far north Wichita, Park City, Kechi, and Bellaire.
Our sole new Republican candidate, Keenen Smith, lost in his bid to unseat Democratic incumbent Mary Ware, who represents Kansas Sen. District 25.
RESULTS: Zero Wins
