Kansas Republicans work toward special session on gerrymandering, gender markers
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Why are Kansas Republican leaders pushing for a special session in November?
Republican leaders of the Kansas legislature are working to cobble together the necessary two-thirds majority of the House and Senate to call a special session in November. The original purpose was to redraw the four Kansas congressional districts to make it easy to defeat U.S. Representative Sharice Davids, the Democrat. Belatedly, perhaps because there are maybe a dozen or so House GOP members not thrilled about redistricting in 2025 when it wasn't scheduled to be done again until 2032, Republican leadership in the legislature want to appeal to dissenters by trying to pass a bill during the special session to prevent individuals from changing their gender marker on Kansas driver's licenses. Well, with this proposed special session about three weeks away, it's time to take stock of this drama with me.
Kansas Reflector reporter Tim Carpenter is Sherman Smith, the Reflector's editor. Together, we're going to try to tell you what we know about this political development. We'll both start here by kind of tossing out some tidbits that might answer basic questions about this distinctly partisan maneuver. First of all, I think this gambit is certainly inspired by President Donald Trump who wants to tip the 2026 election for US House in the GOP's favor.
Yeah, that's right. We've seen this happen in states already. Texas Republicans moved to redistrict in their favor. California responded to favor Democrats. I think there's increasing pressure on places like Kansas around the country where they can gain one or two seats.
Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, both candidates for statewide office next year, have endorsed this special session. And so the power in the legislature is behind this. The opponents of it, of course, Congressman Davids is opposed to this, and Democratic Governor Laura Kelly has also decried the idea of redistricting mid-decade. So perhaps... Let's dive into this a little deeper, and I imagine, Sherman, that it's easy to conceive that Kansans wonder if this redistricting thing is even legal.
Yeah, you know, I think that we found out three years ago that redistricting, when they tried to get Sharice Davids out of office then, you know, what they did was upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court, and the federal courts had said before that that they don't think this is a matter for federal courts anymore.
And typically, I think the tradition in Kansas has been they do a census at the end of the decade, and then they take those population totals and divide the congressional districts so we have equal representation among each generally. And so there's four congressional districts in Kansas, three are held by Republicans, and one by Democrat Shreece Davids. So we think this is legal. What do you think, if they're going to have a special session to talk about this stuff, that's going to cost money? What do we think that might cost?
Yeah, the estimate out there is about $100,000 a day. That's inflated from past special sessions because lawmakers, I think starting with the current cycle here, dramatically increased their pay. I think it was almost doubled their pay from where it was before.
yeah 90 plus and so that actually increases the cost per day of a of of of conducting the legislature uh being in session and so that's what the one day which is i think the plan a one-day special session would cost about 100k
although they it would be we would assume one day to get this out but they would have to come back to override the governor's veto we assume and so maybe that's another hundred thousand
Yeah, yeah, indeed. Okay, so now I think we can reasonably speculate a bit about what a revamped third congressional district, the Kansas City Region District held by Davids, what that might look like if the special session occurs and the legislature overrides the governor's likely veto of a new congressional map. The options... that are really on the table are about splitting Johnson County among two or three districts, right? Yeah,
and remember they already moved part of Wyandotte County out of this district as part of the effort to get David's out of office three years ago.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why are Kansas Republican leaders pushing for a special session in November?
0:00–4:36
2
How does the proposed redistricting aim to unseat Rep. Sharice Davids?
4:36–8:01
3
What legal challenges exist around the 2025 mid‑decade redistricting?
8:01–11:33
4
How could splitting Johnson County reshape Kansas’s congressional map?
11:33–15:09
5
What are the estimated costs and political risks of holding the special session?
15:09–19:38
6
Why is the gender‑marker bill being added to the special session agenda?
19:38–23:47
7
What constitutional and court precedents could affect the new district maps?
23:47–28:01
8
What are the potential outcomes for Sharice Davids and other Kansas representatives if the plan succeeds?
28:01–30:40
Speakers
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