If you stayed up late to watch returns in Johnson County on Election Night, you could have been forgiven for feeling a bit of whiplash.
On one hand, a Democrat was elected sheriff for the first time in nearly a century, and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids eased back into office with another double-digit percentage point victory.
On the other, the county’s Republican District Attorney fended off a challenge to capture a fifth term in office, and the GOP not only held off Democrats’ attempts to break the legislative supermajorities but actually picked up Statehouse seats in Johnson County.
Here are some things we noticed on Election Night:
A historic choice for sheriff
Byron Roberson broke barriers when he was hired as Prairie Village police chief three years ago.
He did it again on Election Night.
With a lead of less than 4,000 total votes over Republican Doug Bedford, Roberson appears poised to become Johnson County’s first Black sheriff and the first Democrat to hold the office in nearly a century. (Bedford on Tuesday said he had reached out to congratulate Roberson on the win.)
During the campaign, both Roberson and Bedford, a former undersheriff, seemed eager to move on from the often-divisive tenure of outgoing Sheriff Calvin Hayden, including his long-running and fruitless investigation into local elections.
In a nod to bipartisanship, Roberson on Tuesday said his victory was “for everybody in Johnson County,” adding, “I want to be sheriff for everyone, not just one party.”
Steve Howe survives again
While Johnson County voters elected a Democrat for sheriff, they stuck with a long-time Republican incumbent for the county’s other top law enforcement job.
District Attorney Steve Howe appears set to claim his fifth term in office, beating former assistant DA Vanessa Riebli by a 51% to 49% margin. In total ballots cast, Howe was up by about 4,500 votes after Tuesday’s unofficial results.
Riebli, who formerly worked for Howe in the DA’s office, posed the stiffest challenge Howe has faced yet since first being elected in 2008. Howe also won a close race in 2020 after being unopposed in 2012 and 2016.
He called it a “hard-fought” victory on Tuesday and again emphasized Johnson County’s relatively low crime rates during his tenure and his record on drug-related prosecutions.
“We will fight to stop the fentanyl that is going throughout our county, and we will continue to work for you [to] make sure the business community is safe,” he said.
GOP takes a Statehouse victory lap
Democrats had high hopes of breaking Republicans’ supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature this election cycle and, in the process, turning Johnson County bluer.
Not only did that not happen, but Republicans gained back ground in local Statehouse districts, flipping two Kansas House districts from blue to red. In all other closely watched contests, GOP incumbents fought off challenges and held on to office, cementing the party’s dominance in Topeka.
Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee, a hard-line conservative often at the center of local Democrats’ ire, summed up the GOP’s ebullient mood Tuesday night:
“Back in the spring, nobody thought I could win,” he said. “They said, no this blue wave coming across northeast Johnson County is gonna knock me out — and I said, ‘Not on our watch.’”
Other GOP candidates said the results proved their focus on pocketbook issues like inflation and high property taxes were what voters cared about, over issues emphasized by Democrats, like abortion access and Medicaid expansion.
This is Sharice Davids’ district, we’re just living in it
The Statehouse losses may have been a bitter pill for Democrats, but they did have a notable bright spot further up the ballot.
In addition to Roberson’s win, Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids on Tuesday easily swatted away what many thought could be another competitive Republican bid to unseat her.
After Tuesday’s unofficial count, Davids led GOP opponent Prasanth Reddy by a 53% to 43% margin. If that holds, then it would be Davids’ third straight double-digit percentage point victory after unseating Rep. Kevin Yoder for her first win in 2018.
Her triumph Tuesday again keeps Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District squarely in Democrats’ column, even after redistricting two years ago seemed to make it a more viable pickup opportunity for Republicans.
Tuesday’s results also underlined how much of an outlier Davids is. Kansas’ three other Congressional districts all went to Republicans by margins of roughly 20 percentage points or more.
An ideological shift on the county commission
Beyond the presidential hoopla and attention paid to races near the top of the ballot, the Johnson County commission quietly experienced a notable change.
In these nonpartisan races, two more moderate incumbents, Jeff Meyers and Shirley Allenbrand, were able to hold their seats against challengers who ran on platforms of lower taxes and budget cuts.
At the same time, incumbent Charlotte O’Hara, a self-styled “conservative” who often clashes with county chair Mike Kelly and other commissioners, lost her race to challenger Julie Brewer, the former head of nonprofit United Community Services of Johnson County.
The results consolidate a shift on the board that will make six of the seven commissioners more aligned on key issues like addressing homelessness, affordable housing, property taxes, spending and sustainability, and diversity initiatives.
Unlike the rest of the state, turnout here dropped
After jumping up to nearly 78% in 2020, turnout in Johnson County dipped notably this year.
The final numbers will increase slightly as mail-in and provisional ballots are counted, but after Tuesday, the Johnson County Election Office reported final unofficial turnout of 70%.
That’s in contrast to Kansas as a whole, which was expecting possibly record turnout statewide, according to the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday.
But it’s in line with a notable trend observed in the initial results from Tuesday’s presidential election: a slight softening of voter turnout in suburbs from four years ago, a seeming contributor to Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss to former President Donald Trump.
On that note, Johnson County appears to be continuing its split away from much of the rest of Kansas.
On Tuesday, Harris won Johnson County over Trump by a margin of 53% to 45%, identical to President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump here in 2020.
But Trump’s margin in Kansas after Tuesday ticked up overall. He won the state 57% to 41% this year, compared to a 56%-to-41% split four years ago.
