Registered Democratic voters will have a choice of who they want to represent the party in November for Kansas Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State is one of the top offices in Topeka, elected statewide every four years and serving concurrently with the governor.
Most voters may know the Secretary of State best as the overseer of elections in Kansas, but the office is also responsible for collecting and maintaining business records and publishing official state publications.
Though county election officials handle the day-to-day running of local elections, the Secretary of State does appoint election commissioners in Kansas’ most populous counties, including Johnson County.
Also unique to Kansas, the Secretary of State has prosecutorial power to investigate alleged voter fraud, a legacy of Kris Kobach’s time in the office nearly a decade ago.
The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican state representative Pat Proctor of Leavenworth, who does not have a primary opponent, in November.
Scott Morgan of Lawrence has also filed to run in the general election for the United Kansas Party.
Current Secretary of State Scott Schwab of Olathe is running for the Republican nomination for governor and is leaving the Secretary of State’s office.
This candidate guide will focus on the two candidates running in the contested Democratic primary. Only registered Democrats will be able to cast ballots in this race on Aug. 4.
The profiles below were compiled using information from the candidates’ websites, their social media accounts, their responses to the Post’s questionnaire, their Ballotpedia profiles and their answers to a Vote JoCo questionnaire distributed by local chambers of commerce.
Jennifer Day
- Political experience: Jennifer Day of Overland Park served a partial term in the Kansas House of Representatives from 2020 to 2021, for District 48 in Overland Park. She won election in 2020 but resigned the seat the following year after she moved out of the district. According to her questionnaires, she has worked as a Johnson County election volunteer and supervising judge. For this race, she touts endorsements from Gov. Laura Kelly, House Democratic Leader Brandon Woodard and Johnson County Chair Mike Kelly.
- Personal and professional life: Day has lived in Overland Park for the past 25 years and is self-employed as a real estate investor and interior designer. She earned an undergraduate degree from Pepperdine University. She lists affiliations with the League of Women Voters, Moms Demand Action and the National Organization for Women.
- Platform: In response to the Post’s questionnaire, Day listed her top three priorities as increasing voter education and confidence, ensuring elections are secure and accessible, and strengthening the office’s service to Kansas businesses. She describes the Secretary of State’s role as nonpartisan and focused on “customer service” for voters and business owners. She advocates for reinstating a three-day grace period for mail-in ballots, expanding the advance voting period from 20 to 30 days and improving voter registration procedures at DMVs. She also says she would push back on “unreasonable” federal requests for private voter information.
Campaign website; Facebook page; Instagram account
Samuel Lane
- Political experience: Samuel Lane of Shawnee is a first-time candidate who has never held public office before. In his Post questionnaire, he said he has been registered as an independent most of his life but is running as a Democrat “so as not to split the vote.” He casts himself as a political outsider and says his top priority, if elected, would be visiting all 105 Kansas counties in his first year to understand local needs.
- Personal and professional life: Lane was born in Leavenworth and graduated from the University of Kansas, where he majored in psychology. He currently lives in Shawnee and works in construction inspection and materials testing, according to his campaign website biography, which emphasizes his working-class background. He also describes traveling to India and Sri Lanka after college.
- Platform: Lane’s campaign slogan is “Hold the Line.” Much of his campaign website focuses on defending elections from what he calls fringe partisan politics. In his Post questionnaire responses, he says paper ballots are the “best defense against hacked elections” and calls mail-in ballots “unreliable as-is.” He also would push to restore the three-day grace period for mail ballots. He opposes the Johnson County Election Office’s closure of some early voting sites this year, saying it “looks suspicious.” He also calls for plainclothes security at polling places and says he would sue over what he felt were unfair purges of voter rolls.
