Republican protesters demonstrating outside U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids’ office on Wednesday collided with supporters of the first-term lawmaker.
About 60 people split between the two sides took up their causes outside Davids’ downtown Overland Park office in 50-degree temperatures in a drizzle that became heavier as the demonstrations wore on.
The Republican protest came as three GOP candidates — Amanda Adkins, Sara Hart Weir and Adrienne Foster — line up for the party’s nomination to face Davids in 2020. Foster was among the protesters Wednesday.
The crowd, under the watchful eye of the Overland Park police, stayed confined to the sidewalk without any attempt to block access to the congresswoman’s office.
The two sides were so close together it was hard to discern which side drew support from the honking cars that passed the protest. At times, demonstrators on both sides assumed the same car was honking for them.
It was very different from the protest staged by progressives in July in which one demonstrator refused to leave the congresswoman’s office and others blocked access to the entrance.
The protest on Wednesday was marked more by chants, with Republicans clamoring for “four more years” of President Donald Trump and Davids’ supporters declaring in unison, “We love Sharice.”
The two sides mostly didn’t interact, although at one point a Republican protester tried to engage a Davids supporter by asking him if he knew that Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln were Republicans.
“Did you know Trump is a moral degenerate?” the Davids supporter fired back before someone intervened and the men separated.
The congresswoman’s office on Wednesday said it was not commenting on the protests at this time.
Davids was not in the Overland Park office on Wednesday when the protests occurred. She had a meeting in Kansas City with Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and the chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Also Wednesday, she spoke to the rotary club in Olathe, met with constituents in Kansas City, Kan. and visited the union workers picket line at the General Motors plant in Wyandotte County.
The protest was led by Kansas Republican Party Chairman Mike Kuckelman to tell Davids to focus on other issues — such as the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — than just impeaching the president.
“We’re out here today because we want our (congressional members) from Kansas to address issues in Washington that we Kansans need addressed,” Kuckelman said. “We want her to know we’re watching, and we expect her to represent Kansas. She needs to quit listening to Pelosi.”
Nancy Leiker, chair of the Johnson County Democratic Party, said it was important to counter the Republican protest.
“We are so proud of our congresswoman, and she is doing such a good job,” said Leiker, who was among the counterdemonstrators. “We want people to know we’re very pleased with her.”‘
Leiker said the counterprotest was organized to prevent Republicans from carrying the day with their message.
“The conversation gets too one way when we don’t get out and support our congresswoman,” Leiker said. “We don’t like the conversation they’re trying to promote, and we just need to get out and counter that.”
