In an era of brazen, bad-faith redistricting efforts, the prospects of winning a fair election as a newly gerrymandered candidate are slim, especially for Democrats. With the recent Trump-backed map changes in Texas and Missouri, the country now appears to be lurching toward a hyperpartisan — and less democratic — future.
Despite this, one gerrymandered Democratic representative in Kansas continues to win reelection.
Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., is the only Democratic representative that Kansas sends to Washington, DC. She represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which consists of four-and-a-half eastern counties, ranging from rural farmland to the highly urban, Kansas City metropolitan area. That’s because a Republican-drawn map in 2022 carved up Davids’ territory, cutting the urban, ethnically diverse Wyandotte County in half. This left Davids to contend with a larger, more rural and more conservative electorate — one that Republicans hoped would reject the liberal, openly gay Democrat and member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, a Native American tribe.
“When they gerrymandered the Kansas maps, I was — like a lot of folks around here — frustrated at the fact that they essentially decided who their voters are,” Davids told Salon. “Voters are supposed to decide who their representatives are.”
So confident in their redistricting were Republican state lawmakers that former Senate Majority Leader Susan Wagle said she could “guarantee you we can draw four Republican congressional maps” and secure a state-wide red wave.
And yet, when it came time to vote, Davids beat her conservative opponent by 12 points, and again in 2024, when she won reelection for a third term — also by double digits. “The voters spoke loud and clear,” she said.
Davids said part of her winning strategy was simply meeting with as many voters as she could, using the “anger” of Kansas voters to her advantage.
“What I needed to do was continue figuring out how to bring the voices of the folks out to DC,” Davids said. “So, the frustration and anger about the gerrymandering and silencing of Kansas voters was there. I had a job to do. I made it a real point to meet and talk to as many folks in the new part of the Kansas third [district] as I could.”
According to Davids, her support of abortion rights, efforts to bring renewable energy and manufacturing jobs to Kansas, her commitment to tax and criminal justice reform, as well as her role in the 2023 bipartisan infrastructure bill have won her a reliable voter base.
“It’s my plan to continue to do that,” Davids added.
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She may have to do more of that sooner than she thinks.
Earlier this month, Republican Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson said he would consider another round of redistricting “for the heart and soul of the country,” and to further President Donald Trump’s national agenda.
“It is crucial that President Trump can continue working with a Republican Congress to keep delivering on his agenda and ushering in America’s comeback,” Masterson said.
At an annual retreat last month for Kansas Republican lawmakers, party leaders distributed petitions to the attendees calling for a special session of the state legislature to vote on another change to state election maps — the first clear sign of a new conservative gerrymander in the works.
The mid-decade redistricting — following similar efforts in Texas and Missouri — would see Davids’ territory sliced up again, splitting up her power base in Johnson County. That county, the most populous in Kansas, has seen its Democratic ranks grow by roughly 53,000 people in the last nine years, even as the number of registered Republicans stagnated. Davids said she is “outraged” by the proposal, and that she’s not alone.
“People are pretty pissed about the idea of revisiting the idea of redistricting,” Davids told Salon. She said the move came from Trump’s desire to secure a conservative advantage in the face of “extreme policies” that are known to be “unpopular.” Davids cited the effects of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which led some 79,000 Kansans to lose health coverage.
“It’s why Donald Trump is telling state legislators to do this,” Davids said. “They know there is no other way for them to win. They have to cheat to win.”
Geoffrey Skelley, Chief Elections Analyst at real-time election data company Decision Desk HQ, says that’s the whole point, noting that House Republicans have a majority, but only by “a fine margin.”
That fine margin is under threat. Data compiled by polling aggregate and conservative news website RealClearPolitics projects that Democrats have a 3.6% edge on Republicans when it comes to the 2026 midterm elections.
“Trump is looking for a way to give [Republicans] a better chance of power after the 2026 midterms,” Skelley told Salon. “He’s been pretty open in pushing for space to redistrict.”
“Kansas is a relatively Republican leaning state,” Skelley continued, “but the Kansas City suburbs have trended toward the Democrats in the Trump era.”
Skelley says that the gerrymandering planned for Davids will be what he refers to as “cracking.”
“The party in power can crack the opposition party across a bunch of different districts,” Skelley explained. “You have decently strong Republican districts, but you spread out the opposition party in such a way that they can’t win any of those seats.”
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While Skelley says there is precedent for redistricting based on changes to the census data of an area, Samuel Wang, founder of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and a neuroscientist at Princeton, said a mid-decade redistricting is “extremely rare.”
“It is never called for,” Wang told Salon. “It used to be that mid-decade got done regularly during the Gilded Age. That’s not supposed to happen anymore.”
Wang founded the Princeton Gerrymandering Project in 2017 as a research project looking for ways to use data analytics to understand redistricting to make the process fairer through simulations. Based on its findings, the project gave Kansas an overall F grade, noting a “significant Republican advantage.” Wang called the third congressional district in Kansas an “outlier.”
“It is more favorable to Republicans than a large fraction of those simulated plans,” Wang said of the current third district map. “In most plans, the most Democratic leaning district is more Democratic leaning than the third district.”
Wang’s findings show that things are hard enough for Davids as a Democrat, but said it is “technically” possible for them to be even harder, which he calls “a desperation move.” His analysis follows Skelley’s description of “cracking.”
“It would take a pretty aggressive move,” Wang said, “like connecting the western part of the state with Johnson County.”
While Davids’ record of moderation and meet-the-people attitude has seen her through two gerrymandered elections, Republicans are meeting continued Democratic victory with increasingly extreme gerrymanders.
Skelley said that many factors are simply out of David’s control. “You’re going to need the political environment to be pretty favorable to Democrats,” Skelley said. “You’re perhaps going to need the GOP to nominate a pretty weak candidate.”
Wang noted that while Davids may have “special appeal” to her voter base, it might not be enough. “She played the hand she was dealt very well,” Wang said. “But mid-decade redistricting would pose a new challenge that she would have to overcome.”
Still, Davids has no choice but to play her hand, using tried-and-true tactics to win reelection to a fifth term. She’s also hoping Kansans are just as angry as she is.
“The most important thing we can all be doing is making sure as many people as possible know that our state’s legislators are looking at doing Donald Trump’s bidding,” Davids said. “They’re trying to change the field in the middle of a game they know they’re going to lose.”
“It’s not just unfair,” Davids said, “it is egregious.”
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