Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids repels GOP challenge to win third term in House

Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids is projected to win reelection on Tuesday in Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District, repelling a challenge from Republican Amanda Adkins, a former congressional staffer, for the right to return to Capitol Hill for a third term.

The race marked a rematch of the 2020 contest, when Davids defeated Adkins by 10 points. 

Since then, Kansas’s Republican-controlled state legislature had redrawn the congressional map, carving up Davids’s district, which is centered around Kansas City, to include newly installed rural counties. 

Democrats blasted the changes, saying they were designed for the sole purpose of ousting Davids, the state’s only Democratic member of Congress. But Davids weathered the threat — and the strong headwinds facing her party this cycle — in a district that President Biden won by 4.5 points two years ago. 

Lending a likely boost to Davids’s campaign was this year’s Supreme Court decision eliminating the 50-year-old federal protection of abortion rights. Kansas became ground zero in that debate in August when state voters stunned the country by rejecting a conservative effort to limit abortion access — an issue that resonated greatly in Davids’s heavily suburban district. 

Davids, a mixed martial artist, made history when she was first elected in 2018, becoming one of the first two Native American women to come to Congress.