‘It’s over with.’ Abortion recount hampers Kansas Republicans’ pivot to general election

Kansas Republicans have spent the past two weeks trying to move on.

The landslide Aug. 2 vote preserving abortion rights in the state constitution was a stunning defeat for many anti-abortion Republicans. GOP candidates up and down the ballot quickly pivoted to the Nov. 8 general election.

Rather than continuing the fight over abortion, Republicans were hoping to shift the focus back to inflation and President Joe Biden as they seek to tie incumbent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Rep. Sharice Davids to the president whose popularity has sagged in recent months.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, the Republican nominee for governor, and former Cerner executive Amanda Adkins, the Republican nominee in the 3rd Congressional District, have both shown little desire to make abortion a central focus on their campaigns following the Aug. 2 amendment vote.

But now a far-right Wichita anti-abortion activist and a Colby-based election denier are keeping abortion front and center. Mark Gietzen and Melissa Leavitt raised $120,000 to trigger hand recounts in nine counties, including the largest in the state.

The recount won’t dramatically move the needle on the more than 165,000 vote lead. But it will keep the issue top of mind for voters as Republicans seek to win back the governor’s office and the 3rd District in November.

Neither Schmidt’s campaign, nor Adkins’ campaign, responded to questions about whether the GOP candidates supported the recount effort.

“What’s ironic is the very people who I think it hurts are on the side of the people continuing to keep it in the spotlight,” said Stephanie Sharp, a former moderate Republican state legislator who now operates a political consulting firm.

She added that she believes the recount “hurts Amanda and Derek but the right can’t let it go.”

Schmidt and Adkins, Sharp said, already had support from voters on the right. Now they need to convince voters in the middle, many of whom voted “no.” The 3rd District is one of the most competitive congressional seats in the country and key to Republicans’ hopes of winning the U.S. House.

In a statement, Davids pointed out the 95,000-vote lead “no” had in Johnson County alone.

“I’m grateful to the election workers and officials who are doing their jobs here, but the recount is a waste of money and time from dangerously out-of-touch politicians who are unwilling to accept defeat, and should be called out as such,” Davids said.

While Davids’ GOP opponent Adkins remained mum on the recount, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sought to tie the Johnson County Republican to the effort. The DCCC called it an attempt by “radical election deniers and conspiracy theorists … working to overthrow the will of voters in KS-03.”

Recounts began Tuesday morning in Johnson, Shawnee, Douglas, Crawford, Harvey, Jefferson, Lyon and Thomas counties, with Sedgwick to follow on Wednesday. All but Thomas had a majority of voters reject the amendment. The counties combine to account for roughly 59% of votes cast in the August primary election.

Election workers in Johnson County began sorting ballots into piles by precincts on Tuesday. Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman said at a news conference that he hopes the actual recounting of ballots begins on Wednesday. Counties have until Saturday to complete the recount.

At least 46% of the “no” votes in the counties would need to flip in order to change the results of the election.

In justifying his decision to fund the recount, Gietzen, president of the Kansas Republican Assembly, said he was seeking to uncover election fraud. There is no evidence of fraud in the August primary.

The Kansas Republican Assembly is a hard-right group unaffiliated with the official Kansas Republican Party. Over the years, it has taken on a number of ultra-conservative and anti-government positions, including opposition to fluoridated water among other issues.

In Sedgwick County, Republican officials are trying to distance themselves from the Value Them Both failure. David Thorne, chairman of the county party, said the party made no effort to sign up volunteers for the recount.

“The party’s not involved with that, at all,” Thorne said. “The race is over, by a large margin.”

Thorne said many Sedgwick County Republicans signed up to help with the recount on their own. Sedgwick County officials confirmed, as of Tuesday afternoon, that they had an overabundance of Republican volunteers to help count ballots and a lack of interest from Democratic counters.

“We do have a lot of volunteers, and some of them — on their own — are probably going to be involved and just become a counter,” Thorne said. “But, the fact is, we’ve moved on. We’re focusing on growing the Wichita economy and setting the vision for that and winning in the general.”

A distraction?

Schmidt attempted to reset the political conversation this week by attacking Kelly on education, a major emphasis in her first campaign for governor. Schmidt aimed to hit Kelly on student achievement and school shutdowns of early COVID-19.

The new front in the race came several days after Schmidt quietly posted a statement online in the wake of the amendment defeat that declared he had never supported a total abortion ban and preferred exceptions for instances of rape, incest and the life of the mother. He otherwise sidestepped the issue.

“Going forward, I will continue to do what I’ve done for years – defend commonsense regulations supported by a majority of Kansans such as the existing restrictions on late-term abortion and on taxpayer funding for abortion,” said the statement, issued six days after the vote.

In a statement following the vote Adkins proclaimed the Kansas vote as evidence of the U.S. Supreme Court’s wisdom returning the issue to the states. Kansans had spoken, she said, and the federal government no longer had a role.

But the effort nonetheless may distract from the issues they want to be talking about - like the economy.

“I’m positive it has an impact. Now the question is, how much? Is it de minimis, is it small? It’s a distraction, it’s a sour grapes, now how much, who knows?” said Kansas Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican.

But state Rep. William Sutton, a Gardner Republican, said he expected Republicans to stay on message despite the continuation of the abortion debate.

“We’ve got a job to do and we’re set about doing that. If there’s a recount going on, that’s not for me to deal with. I’m just doing my job ahead,” he said.

The recount will require an incredible amount of labor to complete on the tight timeline.

At the Johnson County Election Office on Tuesday afternoon, a couple dozen election workers were working on the recount process. Their numbers are expected to swell to roughly 150 over the next few days. Johnson County plans to temporarily reassign some county employees from other departments to assist in the effort.

The recount will be conducted by numerous bipartisan teams, each having one Republican and one Democrat. County employees will be assigned to teams based on their party affiliation.

“We will have a combination of county employees who will be reassigned to this location that will help us conclude or conduct this process, as well as election workers we’re working contacting to come in and help us finish the process,” Sherman said.

In Sedgwick County, a lack of Democratic Party ballot counters and “logistics issues” are likely to delay a recount of the abortion rights vote in Wichita until Wednesday at the earliest, a Sedgwick County official said.

For the recount, the Sedgwick County Election Office is seeking 100 Republicans and 100 Democrats to count ballots and ensure bipartisan representation. At least 100 Republicans have agreed to help with the recount but the election office has not found enough Democrats, Libertarians and unaffiliated counters yet, Sedgwick County spokesperson Nicole Gibbs said.

The state’s leading anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have distanced themselves from the recount, which is expected to reaffirm the landslide defeat for the amendment.

In a statement about the recount the Value Them Both Coalition - the primary “vote yes” campaign - said they were focused on looking forward not back.

In a newsletter to supporters, Kansans for Life outlined possible steps forward for combating abortion in Kansas after the amendment’s failure, including additional resources for crisis pregnancy centers, laws protecting “abortion survivors” and support for candidates who would support anti-abortion judges.

“The prolife movement has faithfully fought battles on many fronts for 50 years and nothing—not even a bad election night—will weaken our resolve,” the newsletter said.

State Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican and chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, said anti-abortion lawmakers had discussed increasing funding to Kansas’ existing pregnancy maintenance initiative fund and making adoptions easier in the state.

However, Landwehr said she couldn’t see what could be gained from the recount.

“Some people may want to make it a distraction but it shouldn’t be. That race, that election happened, it’s over with,” she said.

‘Ripe for the picking’

But the recount will reinforce a Democratic talking point that the August vote was just one piece of a broader contest over abortion rights.

“Potentially, this shows to the broader public that these are people who are bringing forward accusations and complaints that are not grounded in reality, without substantive evidence,” said state Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat.

Holscher said she wasn’t surprised to see a recount effort materialize - Kansas lawmakers gave platform for election deniers to spread unfounded claims of fraud during the 2022 session.

The recount, she said, would likely affirm the results. But it underscored Democrats’ task heading into November.

“We have this whole extremist faction that’s the supermajority that’s pretty much detached from their constituents and what the people want. So we have to ensure that we keep sending the message that this is not the direction Kansans want to move into,” Holscher said.

Sharp agreed. Candidates on the right needed to keep the abortion issue alive to energize their base, but it would push away the middle and the left.

“Continuing this conversation just alienates the rest of the people that didn’t vote that way,” Sharp said.

However, she said, it would be incumbent on Democrats to make that point. While Davids has leaned into the abortion issue before and after the vote, Kelly has shied away from it.

“It’s right there. It’s ripe for the picking,” Sharp said.