This was a special election to replace Mike Pompeo, who is now the CIA Director.
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It was the first special congressional election since Donald Trump’s election as president.
They chose the state treasurer, Ron Estes, a Republican, over James Thompson, a Democrat and a civil rights lawyer. The seat, which Pompeo won with almost 61 percent of the vote in November, looked until recently like a lock for Estes, the state treasurer since 2011.
During an interview on MSNBC, the Democratic candidate in the House special election in Georgia, Jon Ossoff, showed exactly why Democrats are so excited and Republicans are deeply concerned about defeat next week. Observers are already looking to a special election for a House seat in Georgia next Tuesday, which has attracted more of the national spotlight and is expected to be very competitive. Their candidate in the May 25 election, country musician and Bernie Sanders supporter Rob Quist, is running a populist campaign against Republican Greg Gianforte, a software entrepreneur who lost the 2016 governor’s race.
Estes is the state treasurer.
Democratic National Committee member and Daily Kos member Chris Reeves said Tuesday that the blog set up its donation site last week.
Estes told the Wichita Eagle on Wednesday that he hadn’t heard anything about a possible primary challenge from Wagle, and said he was not yet thinking about his reelection bid next year. Although Estes ran poorly compared to Trump and Pompeo in 2016, he ran slightly ahead of Brownback and about as well as GOP senator Pat Roberts in 2014. But given the nature of this district, Thompson holding Estes to a mid-single-digit win (the margin is 5.6 percent with 90 percent of the vote reporting) was pretty fantastic.
Trump himself triggered the special election by naming then-Rep. But Republicans control the Senate where these nominees are confirmed and, due to a 2013 rule change, only a simple majority is required for confirmation.
To be sure, a special election is just that – an isolated contest held on a day in which voters are not typically accustomed to voting.
David Carron, a 50-year-old Republican from Belle Plaine, showed up to vote in his Army uniform.
Lucy Jones-Phillips, a 31-year-old insurance representative and Democrat, acknowledged she doesn’t vote in every election, but said she voted for Thompson because she wanted to register her disappointment in Brownback, especially his veto of an expansion of Medicaid.
To take back the House, Democrats will need to net 24 seats in 2018, a task that many analysts once considered nearly impossible due to the slim number of competitive congressional districts on the map.
Estes said voters he talked to were largely satisfied with Trump’s leadership. President Donald Trump recorded a get-out-the-vote message that was robo-called Monday to Republicans, and he tweeted his support early Tuesday.
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Republican Ron Estes, the state treasurer, has won a special election Tuesday night in Kansas to replace Rep. Mike Pompeo, who became President Donald Trump’s Central Intelligence Agency director.
