Kansas Republicans punish legislators for voting with Democrats on redistricting

Kansas state Senate Republicans have removed three of their own members from committee assignments after a dispute over new congressional district map lines earlier this week.

State Senate President Ty Masterson (R) said he would remove state Sens. Dennis Pyle, Mark Steffen and Alicia Straub from one committee each after the three Republicans voted with Democrats to uphold Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto of the congressional district maps.

Masterson and Kansas Republicans scrounged up the votes to override the veto after a delay. The state House joined the Senate Thursday to override her veto.

“To maintain unity in the caucus, these changes were necessary,” Masterson said in a statement.

The new maps will give Republicans a strong chance to oust Rep. Sharice Davids, the lone Democrat to represent Kansas in Washington. The Republican-drawn maps will split the core of Davids’s district, Wyandotte County, home of Kansas City, in half.

Davids’s district will incorporate three far more conservative counties south and west of the Kansas City metro area. 

Democrats blasted the new map as a blatant gerrymander, one that would carve up the fastest growing region in the state.

“Kansas Republicans ignored the will of the people and decades of precedent by carving up the Kansas City metropolitan area for their partisan gain,” Kelly Burton, who heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement last month after Republicans passed their initial map.