Kansas abortion laws, taxes could hinge on election results

Kansas Democrats would need to hold on to all their seats and flip two House Republican seats or three in the Senate to bust the GOP's supermajority. Consequential legislation on property taxes, food stamp benefits, advance voting and gender-affirming care for minors have passed or failed on either side of the supermajority margin.

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State News

August 27, 2024 - 2:37 PM

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vowed to work collaboratively with the 2024 Legislature to reduce the tax burden on Kansans after the state government ended the fiscal year by collecting $400 million more in revenue than deposited the prior year. Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector

Last April, the Kansas Legislature approved a bill making it a crime to coerce another person to have an abortion. Critics said it would be a redundant law that could intimidate reproductive health care providers. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, a move that would kill many pieces of legislation.

Instead, lawmakers rallied 85 votes in the state House of Representatives and 28 in the Senate — just over two-thirds in each chamber — to pass the bill into law anyway. The Republican-dominated Legislature had bypassed the governor’s signature.

This November’s Statehouse elections will determine how likely that scenario is to play out again. Consequential legislation on property taxes, food stamp benefits, advance voting and gender-affirming care for minors have passed or failed on either side of the supermajority margin.

Term-limited in 2026, this is the last election that will determine whether Kelly can wield the full force of her veto power.

3 key questions to make or break the supermajority

1. Can Democrats gain territory?

Out of just over 100 contested races, a handful stand a chance of switching parties. In addition to holding on to seats they already have, Democrats would need to unseat two Republicans in the House of Representatives or three in the Senate if they want to bust the GOP supermajority.

“The gap is closing,” Democratic House candidate Ace Allen told the Kansas News Service.

After losing in Leawood to Republican Carl Turner by 60 votes — the closest Kansas Statehouse race in 2022 — Allen hopes this is the year he can help turn the tide.

Turner’s district is part of a cluster in northeast Kansas that have turned on a dime in recent years, handing landslide victories to Republicans one presidential election cycle and choosing Democrats the next.

Democrats came within 5% of winning seven House districts in 2022. All were in the suburbs of Kansas City, Wichita and Manhattan. Meanwhile, Republicans came that close to flipping five House seats that same year.

The nitty-gritty numbers game, tedious as it is, has and will continue to shape policies that affect every Kansan.

A retired physician, Allen said the stakes of the supermajority become clear to him when he watched the Legislature constrain reproductive health care and halt Medicaid expansion.

“People will suffer and people will die because of those (veto) overrides,” he said.

2. But can’t Republicans also flip vulnerable seats?

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