Johnson County shifted blue under Trump. Is the color durable or will it wash out?
President-elect Joe Biden won Johnson County — a once-reliable GOP stronghold — by 8 percentage points, a result that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
With Biden at the top of the ticket, Democrats in the county also flipped two seats in the Kansas House and one in the state Senate held by Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican who didn’t seek reelection.
So why aren’t local Democrats popping champagne?
Because they were hoping for more. Instead of building on ground gained in 2016 and 2018, the party saw its Johnson County wins offset by losses elsewhere in Kansas, including two of the other big counties, Sedgwick and Shawnee. The state as a whole went strongly for President Donald Trump and down ballot Republicans.
If GOP dominance in the rest of Kansas continues to intensify in 2022, Democrats will have to rely on Johnson County for an even greater share of their statewide vote to keep Gov. Laura Kelly in office and avoid further retreat in the Legislature.
And that may not be possible.
“Can you offset all of those losses across the state in Johnson County and Douglas County? That’s kind of a tall order,” said state Rep. Cindy Holscher, the Overland Park Democrat who will succeed Denning in the state Senate after her 12-point win.
In addition to flipping Denning’s seat, Democrats also held the seats of lawmakers who changed parties after the 2018 election.
Republican-turned-Democratic state Sen. Dinah Sykes from Lenexa won by double digits. And Democrat Ethan Corson easily claimed the seat held by state Sen. Barbara Bollier, the party switcher who lost her U.S. Senate race this week.
The House race to name Holscher’s successor remains too close to call, however. Even so, Democrats will have gained ground in Johnson County.
“We feel really good,” said Greg Shelton, vice chair of the Johnson County Democratic Party. “I think you look at what we were able to accomplish in sending not one, but three Democrats now to the state Senate from Johnson County. I think it’s the first time we’ve had a Democrat elected to the state Senate since 1980, is the stat I’ve seen.”
But former Gov. Jeff Colyer, a Johnson County Republican, said Democrats’ inability to pick up more down ballot seats on the coattails of Biden and Bollier shows the continued strength of the GOP brand in the county.
“When you go and you look at those races, Democrats should have won those by gangbusters and they didn’t. They had the candidates they wanted. They had all the money in the world, more money than they’ve had in 20 years, and they lost,” said Colyer.
Trump vs. other Republicans
The question Johnson County Democrats grapple with: Is the blue shift of the last three elections real and sustainable, or a bubble unique to the Trump era?
George W. Bush won Johnson County by more than 20 points in both of his elections as president. In 2008, Republican nominee John McCain carried it by a slimmer but still solid 9 points over President Barack Obama. Mitt Romney ran just behind Bush in 2012, winning the county by 17 points.
Trump’s performance in the county in both 2016 and 2020 was historically poor for a Republican nominee.
He won Johnson County by 2 percentage points in 2016 and lost the Kansas 3rd Congressional District after losing Democratic-leaning Wyandotte County.
And this year, he lost Johnson County by nearly 27,000 votes.
The final tally will fluctuate as the county processes thousands of provisional ballots. That could further pad Biden’s lead.
It’s a pattern that has played out nationally — affluent suburbs that were once GOP strongholds or at least battlegrounds have grown increasingly Democratic in recent elections.
Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, which proved decisive for the presidency, was achieved by improving on Hillary Clinton’s margins in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs. He lost the rural parts of the state, but by smaller margins than Clinton.
But while the urban and suburban vote can deliver a statewide win in Pennsylvania, that’s a tougher formula in a state as largely rural as Kansas.
“In about 75% of the state, Democrats aren’t winning hardly any elections,” said David Kensinger, former Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief of staff and campaign manager.
“Clearly, Democrats had a good 2018 and 2020 in Johnson County. Much of that can be attributed to the president’s (low) popularity in affluent suburbs. The question is can they maintain that in a post-Trump environment?” Kensinger said. “If this is as good as it gets for them, it’s not that great.”
Trump’s percentage in the county was terrible for a Republican, but his raw vote total of 151,280 based on unofficial results is comparable to what McCain and Romney achieved.
The difference is that Biden achieved an unprecedented total for a Democrat: 177,925 votes, nearly 50,000 above Clinton’s in 2016 with Johnson County native Tim Kaine as her running mate. Clinton improved on Obama’s vote total just as Obama outperformed previous Democratic nominees, which shows a clear trend line.
Demographic change may partially explain the political shift over the last 20 years.
Johnson is more populous and diverse. When Bush first won in 2000, non-Hispanic whites made up 86% of the county. The 2019 Census estimates place that figure at 79%.
A major question facing Democrats going into the 2022 midterm is whether they can maintain the energy that enabled them to flip the 3rd Congressional District two years ago.
Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids won reelection by 9 points, a margin similar to her 2018 victory and a solid win in a year when House Democrats lost seats. She expressed confidence in the party’s future prospects.
“The trend of Democratic candidates winning in Johnson County shows that our fight for affordable health care, strong public schools and an economic recovery that includes all Kansans resonates with voters,” Davids said in a statement.
“Over the last two years, we worked hard to make sure that Democrats can compete — and win — up and down the ballot in the 3rd District and we will continue to build on the progress we’ve made for years to come.”
Ceiling or floor?
With GOP supermajorities in Topeka, Democrats have limited leverage in 2022 redistricting. Republican leaders have been open about their desire to gerrymander the 3rd and oust Davids.
This would likely require carving out all or a portion of Wyandotte County, the most racially diverse county in the state, and shaping a new 3rd District with whiter counties to the south of Johnson, a proposition that would face legal and political backlash.
“They would do it for one reason: Just to dilute the Black and brown vote in Wyandotte,” said Kansas Democratic National Committeeman Christopher Reeves.
Even if the district retains much of its current makeup, Davids’ reelection with Biden in the White House isn’t guaranteed.
The last time a congressional Democrat won in Kansas with an incumbent Democrat in the White House was then-Rep. Dennis Moore, during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Former Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder rode an anti-Obama wave into office in 2010 after Moore’s decision to retire. And Davids rode an anti-Trump wave to oust Yoder eight years later.
“Even going back to the Dennis Moore days, this has been ground zero in competition,” said Jared Suhn, a Johnson County-based GOP consultant who has worked for Sen. Jerry Moran among other Republicans.
“I feel to a degree Democrats are hitting their ceiling here because they had everything going for them this cycle — this is, I believe, the first time in history the Republican nominee for president didn’t win Johnson County,” Suhn said.
But there’s one critical difference between 2020 and past elections. This time the top of the statewide Kansas Republican ticket did not build its strategy around winning Johnson County.
In 2014, Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts both made the county a key part of their 4-point and 11-point statewide victories respectively.
Roberts’ successor in the Senate, Republican Rep. Roger Roger Marshall, expected to lose Johnson County to Bollier— and did by 7 points. But he won statewide by 13 points, focused on running up the score in western Kansas and the Wichita area.
The Johnson County results, taken in isolation, would’ve been seen as a triumph during the Brownback years when Democrats struggled for relevance. But limited polling that showed Biden, Bollier and Davids winning by double digits inflated expectations for down ballot races.
Democrats maintained Johnson County seats they flipped in 2018 and held onto ones held by party switchers. Reeves said Democrats raised their floor in the Legislature with long-term holds on moderate seats in northeast Johnson County.
But they fell short on some of their bigger targets.
The party was bullish about its chances of ousting House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican. But ahead of the county canvass, Ryckman beat Democrat Kathy Meyer by nearly 700 votes.
Asked how he viewed the Johnson County results, Ryckman, who is seeking a third term as speaker, said in a text message: “Election night was more indication that we need to unify — not as Republicans and Democrats but as Kansans. The voters were clear that they want to see this pandemic managed in a way that gets our schools, our economy and our lives safely back to normal.”
State Rep. Stephanie Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat who switched parties in 2018, said Democrats’ aversion to door-to-door canvassing, a key part of their 2018 strategy, during the COVID-19 pandemic hampered their ability to build on their gains.
It was a matter of internal debate among Democrats about whether to knock on doors during the lead-up to the election, while Republicans enthusiastically embraced the strategy.
“I still think that the Johnson County Democratic candidates worked really, really hard. They did,” Clayton said. “But it’s just, I think that what these elections have shown us is that there is no substitute for a face to face, old-fashioned conversation where you are coming to them at their door.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Johnson County shifted blue under Trump. Is the color durable or will it wash out?."
