(Updated to add more interviews with more reporting and background)
The approaching debate over redrawing election boundaries exploded Friday morning over Senate President Susan Wagle’s comments about the need to protect the Republican supermajority in the Legislature.
Democrats, from Gov. Laura Kelly and Congresswoman Sharice Davids on down, hammered away at Wagle’s comments about keeping the supermajorities in the House and Senate so the GOP could control the redistricting battle ahead.
Democrats only need to pick up one seat in the House and three in the Senate to bust up the supermajority, something that even national Republicans believe may happen.
There are somewhere between a dozen and 18 legislative seats in play in the House and Senate as Republicans and Democrats wage a battle of the legislative numbers.
Wagle’s comments were recorded in a speech she made to the Wichita Pachyderm Club on Sept. 25 but went viral on social media Friday morning.
She conceded she was concerned about losing races as Democrats pile up cash going into the election.
“If Laura Kelly is governor, her goal is going to be to draw Democrat seats,” she said.
“My Senate seat that Renee Erickson is running in right now, it’s pro-Biden, it’s moved to the left,” Wagle says in the video. “And during redistricting, I need to give her some more Republican neighborhoods in order to make sure she stays elected.”
“If Gov. Kelly can veto a Republican bill that gives us four Republican congressmen that takes out Sharice Davids up in the 3rd, we can do that,” she said.
“We can draw four Republican congressional maps, but we can’t do it unless we have a two-thirds majority in the Senate and House,” Wagle said.
Wagle said Kelly would try to fashion congressional districts that would favor two Democrats.
Kelly responded by saying she wanted to pursue a nonpartisan redistricting commission, a method used by 14 other states.
“In light of Sen. Wagle’s comments explaining how she would manipulate Kansas’ electoral maps, I am calling on legislative leadership to support the creation of a nonpartisan voting commission to oversee the redistricting process,” Kelly said.
“A democracy means voters choose their elected officials – not elected officials choosing their voters. Kansans deserve to know where their leaders stand on an issue that will impact our state for the next decade.”
Davids weighed in as well.
“Corrupt politicians are using partisan gerrymandering to manipulate our already broken political system so it benefits their extreme agenda, not hardworking Kansans,” Davids said in a statement.
“I believe every elected official should be accountable to the people they represent. That means we need a redistricting process that’s independent, non-partisan and creates truly representative districts.”
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley criticized Wagle’s comments.
“Susan Wagle has argued time and again on the Senate floor to follow the will of the Kansas people,” Hensley said in a statement.
“Yet, when it comes to giving the people a fair shot at picking their elected leaders, she wants to manipulate the maps so that Republicans can dominate our state for another ten years.”
In response, Wagle criticized Democrats of twisting her words.
“It makes great headlines to clip and distort the message and the truth,” Wagle said in a statement.
“Everyone knows, as I stated, Gov. Kelly will demand a Democrat map that will elect her liberal friends if a Republican legislature can’t put a check on her power to fairly represent Kansans,” Wagle said.
“Elections have consequences and there is no question, reapportionment is a political process as it sets the table for both Congress and our Kansas legislature for the next 10 years,” she said.
House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. said there are laws in place to prevent election districts from being rigged to favor one party or the other.
“The people of Kansas have right put checks and balances in place to prevent either party from gerrymandering or drawing unfair maps,” Ryckman said.
“Democrats and Republicans know full well that redistricting maps have to be approved by the Legislature, the governor and the courts,” he said. “That’s important, so that no one branch of government has all the power.”
Last month, the president of the Republican State Leadership Committee noted the slim margins for Republicans to hold their legislative supermajorities.
“We don’t think there’s any risk of losing the majority, but the supermajorities are certainly at risk,” Austin Chambers told reporters.
“We need those for redistricting and for good policy (and) overriding the governor,” Chambers said. “Right now, those are toss-ups.”
Chambers said he expects Democrats to outspend Republicans in several states, including Kansas.
“But what we’ve seen is that we don’t have to outspend them, we just have to make sure we have enough, that we have good candidates who are running good campaigns with good messages, and they’re out working their asses off, and we can be successful and I think Kansas is that same way.”
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has targeted 18 Kansas statehouse races in an effort to break up the supermajority, including District 30 where Erickson is running to replace Wagle.
The DLCC is focusing on nine races in the House and nine in the Senate, many of them in suburban Johnson County where Democrats have made great inroads, especially with Davids’ election to Congress two years ago.
In her speech to the Pachyderm Club, Wagle painted a grave picture for Republicans heading into the election.
She noted that Democrats are raising up to four times as much money as their Republican rivals.
“We have some very big challenges,” Wagle said. “October is going to be a very, very, very difficult election month. I am very worried about this election.
“We’re in trouble in Kansas.”
