(Updated to include Waggoner comment, background on campaign)
Conservative Hutchinson businessman Paul Waggoner on Thursday defeated moderate state Rep. Steve Becker after provisional ballots were tallied in Reno County.
Waggoner beat Becker by just nine votes, receiving 2,045 votes to 2,036 for the incumbent. Waggoner led by just five votes before the provisional ballots were counted. There’s no Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.
“I am just very humbled,” Waggoner said after provisional ballots were counted.
It was not immediately known whether Becker would ask for a recount. The deadline for making that decision is Friday.
Becker’s loss brings to six the number of moderate Republicans who were defeated during the primary.
Overall, moderates were defending 17 seats they held going into the primary, and they lost eight of those races, including incumbent state Reps. Joy Koesten and Patty Markley in Johnson County.
Moderates, however, won in two districts that were held by conservatives, and the successor to state Rep. Clay Aurand is believed to be more moderate.
J.C. Moore beat conservative incumbent Rep. John Whitmer, and moderate Mark Samsel won in the district represented by outgoing state Rep. Kevin Jones.
The final outcomes for some of those seats are still not decided because some of the candidates who prevailed in the primary still face Democratic opposition in the general election.
Waggoner had argued that Becker wasn’t a good fit for a district that went for Donald Trump with 64 percent of the vote in 2016 and that went for former Gov. Sam Brownback with 51 percent in the 2014 governor’s race.
Waggoner used mailers to criticize Becker for being politically out of step with the district. One postcard superimposed Becker’s face on a donkey. The ad read, “Pin the Tail on the Democrat.”
Waggoner’s mailers ripped Becker for a wide range of issues, including his support for repealing the Brownback tax cuts and “religious intolerance” for voting against the faith-based adoption bill — legislation that critics said discriminated against LGBT parents.
To make a point during the campaign about religious freedom, Waggoner bought brownies and cookies for a fundraiser from the Colorado bakery that refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple because of the owner’s religious faith. The bakery ultimately prevailed in a highly watched U.S. Supreme Court case.
