Three major questions will determine Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto power in her last two years. Her ability to block Republican priorities will depend on a handful of key Statehouse races.

Last April, the Kansas Legislature approved a bill making it a crime to coerce another person to have an abortion. Critics said it would be a redundant law that could intimidate reproductive health care providers. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, a move that would kill many pieces of legislation.

Instead, lawmakers rallied 85 votes in the state House of Representatives and 28 in the Senate — just over two-thirds in each chamber — to pass the bill into law anyway. The Republican-dominated Legislature had bypassed the governor’s signature.

This November’s Statehouse elections will determine how likely that scenario is to play out again. Consequential legislation on property taxes, food stamp benefits, advance voting and gender-affirming care for minors have passed or failed on either side of the supermajority margin.

Term-limited in 2026, this is the last election that will determine whether Kelly can wield the full force of her veto power.

3 key questions to make or break the supermajority

1. Can Democrats gain territory?

Out of just over 100 contested races, a handful stand a chance of switching parties. In addition to holding on to seats they already have, Democrats would need to unseat two Republicans in the House of Representatives or three in the Senate if they want to bust the GOP supermajority.

“The gap is closing,” Democratic House candidate Ace Allen told the Kansas News Service.

After losing in Leawood to Republican Carl Turner by 60 votes — the closest Kansas Statehouse race in 2022 — Allen hopes this is the year he can help turn the tide.

Turner’s district is part of a cluster in northeast Kansas that have turned on a dime in recent years, handing landslide victories to Republicans one presidential election cycle and choosing Democrats the next.

Democrats came within 5% of winning seven House districts in 2022. All were in the suburbs of Kansas City, Wichita and Manhattan. Meanwhile, Republicans came that close to flipping five House seats that same year.

The nitty-gritty numbers game, tedious as it is, has and will continue to shape policies that affect every Kansan.

A retired physician, Allen said the stakes of the supermajority become clear to him when he watched the Legislature constrain reproductive health care and halt Medicaid expansion.

“People will suffer and people will die because of those (veto) overrides,” he said.

2. But can’t Republicans also flip vulnerable seats?

Despite promising trends for Democratic lawmakers in some corners of the state, their call to break the supermajority sounds something like a broken record in Kansas politics.

Republicans haven’t lost their two-thirds majorities in both chambers for more than a decade.

“This isn’t something new,” said Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Republican. Every recent election, Hawkins said, Democrats labor to win the governor’s veto back, and they have repeatedly fallen short.

This cycle, Hawkins predicted his party would hold onto competitive seats — and pick up some.

But that doesn’t mean party leaders aren’t anxious to maintain and expand their ranks.

Wendy Bingesser is the GOP chair for Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, which overlaps with many state-level swing districts. She said her party is “closely monitoring the reelection bids” of lawmakers in Leawood and Lenexa, but listed several other Johnson County seats as opportunities for Republicans.

One Democrat they’re eager to oust is one-term state Sen. Jeff Pittman, who holds a Leavenworth district that has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in at least the last four elections.

Jeff Klemp, Pittman’s GOP challenger, is hoping a fiscally conservative message might win back some of those split-ticket voters.

“There (are) a lot of reasons why I’m in this race, and it’s not because we just needed somebody to run on the Republican ticket,” said Klemp, a longtime Leavenworth resident and business owner.

“It’s just because bad decisions continue to get made on behalf of taxpayers here in District 5.”

Specifically, Klemp accused the incumbent of choosing party loyalty over his constituents in this year’s fight over taxes. At the end of the regular session, Pittman voted not to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would have raised the property tax exemption and eliminated sales tax on grocery items sooner.

That veto override failed — by a single vote. It’s instances like these that make Klemp wonder if the Republican supermajority isn’t strong enough.

“Lots of bills are being passed that are bipartisan. However, these overrides, on significant issues, seem to get stifled,” he said.

3. How far will national trends trickle down?

Electoral outcomes are tough to predict. Any given Statehouse race could hinge on factors ranging from a candidate’s name recognition to hyperlocal issues that tip the scales in unexpected ways.

But of all the variables to consider, one stands out as having consistent downstream effects on state-level races: national politics.

Patrick Miller is a political scientist who’s pored over precinct-by-precinct election results in Kansas to track political trends. In his view, presidential election outcomes offer the most reliable — though still non-conclusive — bellwether for measuring political changes over time in a given district.

That’s because voters often know more about national candidates than local ones, and fill in all the circles in one column or another based on who they chose at the top of the ballot.

This November, multiple Republicans in the Kansas House and Senate will defend their seats in districts that voted Republican for president by wide margins in 2012 but sided with Democrats eight years later.

“That supermajority margin is so small that all these little individual races do matter,” Miller said.

The dynamics at the top of the ticket have changed rapidly in the last few months. Vice President Kamala Harris is mounting a whirlwind bid for the White House after Biden bowed out of the race. Early poll numbers suggest Harris has closed former President Donald Trump’s lead in key states.

Election watchers in Kansas will be curious to see if that enthusiasm filters down to state districts, where voters might have leaned Republican before — or felt unmotivated to vote at all.

Bingesser said GOP leaders in Kansas aren’t worried about their odds even if Democrats’ national momentum holds.

“These are state-specific elections that impact state-level policies. Our candidates are capable community leaders who stand on their own two feet and will win on their own merits,” she said.

Even if Republicans lose the supermajority this cycle, they will still enjoy sturdy majorities in the Legislature and all the agenda-setting power that comes with that.

And whatever happens in 2024, the clock will reset in two years after the current Democratic governor’s final term comes to a close.

“If a Republican succeeds Laura Kelly, then all the supermajority politics are really irrelevant,” Miller said.

Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.

Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.

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