Each Kansas State Board of Education election will be competitive. Here's who is running.

The candidates are set for the statewide primaries for five of the Kansas State Board of Education's 10 seats.

Three of the five elections will require primary elections in August, while the other two elections had only a single Republican and Democrat file.

Although local school board races in Kansas are nonpartisan, candidates for the state board are usually affiliated with one of the two parties.

Each of the 10 members of the board are elected to four-year terms, with even and odd districts alternating election cycles. State board of education districts consist of four state Senate districts, and some of the districts saw their boundaries change after the Kansas Legislature revised maps following the 2020 Census.

Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, had said at the time of redistricting that the Legislature's hope was to break up a board he said was "monolithic." While Republicans have a 6-4 majority on the state board, most of its actions have usually been unanimous.

The board has often found itself at odds with legislators, who they say overstep into the board's jurisdiction over state education.

"There's some reason we need some some shake up and some change on that board," Masterson previously said.

More: Kansas governor signs new legislative, board of education maps, with legal challenge possible

Primaries will be a battle for conservative control of KSBOE

All three of the August primaries will be among Republican candidates.

In District 5, consisting of western and north-central Kansas, incumbent Jean Clifford will face Cathy Hopkins, of Hays. Clifford, a Garden City resident, was first elected to the board in 2019. Hopkins ran for the Hays Board of Education in November 2021 but lost.

In District 7, Ben Jones, the first-term incumbent from Sterling, is running against Dennis Hershberger, a Hutchinson resident and chairman of the Reno County Republican Party. The district covers multiple south-central counties to the west of Wichita.

Hershberger previously told The Capital-Journal "we probably will never know" whether the Jan. 6 insurrection was the result of Trump supporters or a left-wing false flag attack, an unsupported conspiracy theory.

The third primary race, for District 9, will be between incumbent and board chair Jim Porter, of Fredonia, and newcomer Luke Aichele, of McPherson. The district mainly covers southeast Kansas but extends into McPherson County near the center of the state.

Aichele, once a candidate for McPherson's mayor, previously garnered the support of Republican lawmakers in May 2020 after he was threatened with arrest for disobeying lockdown orders and opening his shop in the early months of the pandemic.

More: Here's where these Topeka USD 501 principals are going next

Two November board of education races will be between parties

Two Leavenworth candidates, each from opposing parties, will vie for the District 1 seat after Janet Waugh, a Democrat who was first elected to the board in 1999, became ineligible to run again following the redistricting process. The district covers northeast Kansas, including portions of Shawnee and Wyandotte counties.

Jeffrey Howards, a Democrat, will face Danny Zeck, a former member of the Leavenworth Board of Education who earlier this year urged the current board to ban the novel "All Boys Aren't Blue" by reading a passage from the book describing masturbation.

In District 3, Republican incumbent Michelle Dombrosky runs against Democratic candidate Sheila Albers, a retired educator from Overland Park. District 3 mainly covers southern Johnson and northern Miami counties.

Albers has fought for increased law enforcement transparency after police killed her 17-year-old son during a welfare check in 2018.

The 2022 Kansas primary elections will be Tuesday, Aug. 2, while the voter registration deadline is July 12. Primaries in Kansas are closed, meaning voters may only vote in a party's primaries if they have previously registered as being affiliated with that party, although no party affiliation will be required to vote in the special election Aug. 2 on an anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution.

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: These candidates competing in Kansas State Board of Education election