SHAWNEE — Democratic state Senate candidate Andrew Mall breaks the Saturday morning silence in this Kansas suburb with a firm knock at a stranger’s door. A minute passes. Mall has turned to leave when a silver-haired woman materializes.
She entertains his stump speech at first. But the woman’s eyes drop when he mentions the word “Democrat.” She used to be a Democrat but believes the party has abandoned moderate values like hers.
Mall is ready for those kinds of responses. He sells himself as a moderate alternative to the conservative Republican who holds the seat.
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“I might be that Democrat you’re looking for,” Mall replies.
A purple splotch in the corner of a deep-red state, Johnson County contains more than half of the competitive races for the Kansas House and Senate in 2024, including Mall’s Senate District 10. Some other races that will help decide the makeup of the Legislature are scattered around Wichita, Topeka and Manhattan.
In Johnson County, registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats, and the conservative sheriff promotes unproven election fraud claims. Yet Johnson County also voted for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly twice and overwhelmingly voted to preserve the right to an abortion in a 2022 state referendum.