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      Woman Killed in Kansas City Shooting Was a Popular Radio Host

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      Elizabeth Galvan, 43, who was fatally shot near Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday, was a mother of two and co-hosted a radio program that featured Tejano music.Wednesday was a day that Elizabeth Galvan and thousands of Kansas City Chiefs fans had long awaited.But a chance to revel in the team’s Super Bowl victory was abruptly cut short when gunfire rang out in the afternoon near Union Station, where a rally was being held for the Chiefs, sending scores of fans fleeing for safety.Caught in the gunfire was Ms. Galvan, 43, who the police said on Thursday had died in the shooting. At least 22 others were injured, the authorities.“She was beloved by many,” Chief Stacey Graves of the Kansas City Police Department said at a news conference on Thursday.Elizabeth Galvan was killed in the shooting in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday.KKFIMs. Galvan, who was also known as Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was well-known in the Kansas City area. She was a host of the radio show “Taste of Tejano,” broadcast on KKFI, a local radio station. She had a daughter and a son. And she was an avid fan of the Chiefs.Her son, Marc, was also at the rally, and was shot in the leg, KKFI said Thursday. He was treated at a hospital and later released.Ms. Lopez-Galvan had been a disc-jockey for more than 15 years, and she performed for all sorts of crowds with music in English and Spanish, according to KKFI. In March 2022, she was asked to join Tommy Andrade and Monica Frias in co-hosting “Taste of Tejano,” a program she had listened to for years, according to the radio station. The program features Tejano music and news.Lisa Lopez, a friend of Ms. Lopez-Galvan, said in an interview that Ms. Lopez-Galvan was known for inviting her close friends to her garage to watch football games. Ms. Lopez said that she and Ms. Lopez-Galvan, who were not related, would often call each other “tocaya,” Spanish for “namesake,” because of their similar names.Ms. Lopez-Galvan’s passion for the Chiefs was so strong that she was superstitious about watching the team’s games each week with the same people, hoping that it was good luck for the team, Ms. Lopez said. In fact, she said, Ms. Lopez-Galvan would not let anyone new join the group.Ms. Lopez described Ms. Lopez-Galvan as the life of the party, and said she had recently joined a group that helped to organize Fiesta Hispana, an annual festival in downtown Kansas City.“She was loved by everybody in our community,” said Ms. Lopez, who is an executive administrative assistant at The Kansas City Star newspaper. “Our Hispanic community lost a beautiful, wonderful person.”Jacey Fortin More

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      Pieces of Jackie Robinson Statue Are Found Burning in Kansas Park

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      The life-size bronze tribute to the legendary baseball player who broke the color barrier was stolen from a different park last week. What was left of it “is beyond repair,” officials said.Parts of a life-size bronze statue that celebrated the legacy of the legendary baseball player and civil rights figure Jackie Robinson were found dismantled and burned early Tuesday after it had been stolen from a Kansas park last week, the authorities said.Remnants of the statue were found after a city worker reported a fire in a trash can at Garvey Park in Wichita at around 8:38 a.m., Andrew Ford, a police spokesman, said in a statement.The Wichita Fire Department responded and, “while assessing the damage, they found pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue that had been stolen.”The Fire Department immediately notified the police, who collected the pieces at the scene, he said, noting that “unfortunately, the statue is beyond repair.”The police are continuing to investigate, Mr. Ford said, and they have “already interviewed over 100 people.” The department is also looking into how the statue was dismantled and how the pieces ended up at the location of the fire. Mr. Ford had previously said that the motive for the theft of the monument was not known.Additionally, the Fire Department’s arson investigators are looking into the trash can fire, he said. In a statement posted on Facebook, the department said that “additional parts of the statue have not been recovered at this time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Who was Joan Meyer? Kansas paper co-owner who rebuked police raid as ‘Hitler tactics’ – and died a day later

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      Police in the Kansas town where Joan Meyer had lived for almost a century had just raided her home and her newspaper – seizing electronics and reporting materials – during what she understood to be a leak investigation when another media outlet called her for comment.“These are Hitler tactics, and something has to be done,” Meyer, a co-owner of the Marion County Record, told the Wichita Eagle on Friday, invoking a fascist dictator as her colleagues contemplated legal strategies to recover their confiscated items and hold authorities accountable for what many contend was an illicit raid.Barely a full day later, on Saturday, after hours of being unable to eat or sleep and of being “stressed beyond her limits”, the 98-year-old Meyer dropped dead in her home, according to the Record’s reporting.Meyer’s sudden death has since ignited an outcry from news media advocates who condemned the police raid as something straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Critics are calling the move an egregious trampling of free press protections enshrined in the constitution’s first amendment.The community around Meyer, who spent most of her life “in about a six-block radius”, has since been mourning, her moving obituary in the Wichita Eagle said Monday.Her run in the increasingly tenuous local newspaper industry began with an interest in reading and spelling as well as a knack for delivering quotable lines while growing up in Marion, a county of about 12,000 people approximately 50 miles north of Wichita. As the Eagle told it, Joan married a man named Bill Meyer who began working at the local paper in 1948 as an associate editor. He successfully insisted that the title return to the Marion County Record name which it had when it was founded in 1870.Sometime in the 1960s, Joan herself gained employment at the Marion County Record, compiling and editing news of “who ate dinner with whom” that was sent to her by a couple dozen correspondents, the Eagle recounted. She also copy-edited and began writing a column on the history of the community while Bill was promoted to top editor.“She was an encyclopedia of knowledge,” her son Eric Meyer – who is now the Record’s publisher – told the Eagle. “She was sort of the living historical record of the Marion area.”The Record’s continued existence as a family-owned newspaper came under threat when Bill Meyer retired in 1998. The local estate which owned the newspaper considered selling the tile to a corporation. But instead, Bill, his wife Joan (pronounced Jo-ann) and their son bought the weekly which publishes Wednesdays.Joan’s work with the 153-year-old Record helped her maintain a sense of purpose after her husband died in 2006 and much of the rest of her family lived out of state, the Eagle reported.She constantly listened to a police scanner in her house for possible stories. That habit reportedly became exceptionally useful when a new cell tower atop a local grain elevator blocked the scanner signal in the newsroom.A medical treatment which caused her vision problems last year forced her to scale back her work at the Record, the Eagle noted. But Joan would still have her son read her potential entries for the newspaper’s column so that she could approve them for publication.And then came her last order of business for her beloved Record. The staff received a confidential tip that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk driving yet continued using her car without a license.The newspaper did not publish anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected the source of the tip was relaying information from Newell’s husband during their divorce. Still, Newell received notification from the police that the information was going around.Later, at a public local city council meeting, she accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining and disseminating sensitive documents, the contents of which she did not dispute.Newell had police kick out Record representatives from an open forum held by a US congressman at a coffee shop which she operates. One of the Record’s responses in recent days was to publish a story setting the record straight about the tip it had received from Newell.By Friday, police had obtained a search warrant that alleged identity theft as well as unlawful use of a computer in the matter involving Newell. Marion’s entire five-officer police department – along with two local sheriff’s deputies – then went to the Record’s offices as well as the homes of its reporters and publishers.They seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials, at least some of which the Record was counting on to put out its next edition. The Record reported that Meyer’s house was left a mess after the hours-long search, which so disturbed her that she was unable to eat or sleep.“Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?” Joan Meyer said in her final hours, her son told the Eagle.Eric Meyer tried to soothe his mother by telling her that something good would come from the raid – that the cops would be taught, through litigation if necessary, that they can’t operate like that without consequence, according to what he told the Eagle.“Yeah, but I won’t be alive by the time that happens,” Eric Meyer recalled his mother saying, the Eagle reported.Her words were a prophecy, Eric bitterly noted. His mother died shortly after he woke her up to see if she had it in her to eat something Saturday afternoon.He insists that she was in good health and does not believe she would have died over the weekend without the police’s raiding her home and newspaper.Police have acknowledged that there’s a federal law which provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law mandates that authorities instead subpoena such materials.But police have maintained those protections don’t apply if journalists are “suspects in the offense that is the subject” of an investigation. Separately, Newell has also cited the same exception, saying someone illegally impersonated her to gain information about her arrest and therefore violated her privacy.As of Monday, police and Newell had not cited evidence linking any journalist at the Record to the alleged breach. The local judge who reportedly signed the warrant authorizing the raids, Laura Viar, hasn’t publicly commented.Press freedom advocates reacted to the police’s attempted justification with scorn.Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press were among more than 30 entities who sent a letter to Marion’s police chief, Gideon Cody, demanding that his agency return all seized materials to the Meyers’ newspaper.“Your department’s seizure … has substantially interfered with the Record’s [constitutionally]-protected newsgathering,” the letter said. “And the department’s actions risk chilling the free flow of information in the public interest more broadly.”In its own statement, the free expression group PEN America said, “Law enforcement’s sweeping raid on the Marion County Record … almost certainly violates federal law [and] puts the paper’s ability to publish the news in jeopardy.“Such egregious attempts to interfere with news reporting cannot go unchecked in a democracy. Law enforcement can, and should, be held accountable for any violations of the Record’s legal rights.”Despite the news industry’s vocal support, Eric Meyer told the Eagle he remains “perturbed” about his mom’s last moments.“What bothers me most is a 98-year-old woman spent her last day on earth … feeling under attack by bullies who invaded her house,” Eric Meyer said. More

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      Indigenous Voters Mobilize in Midterm Elections

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      ANCHORAGE — Tesla Cox’s eyes filled with tears as she thought about watching her state elect its first Alaska Native to Congress this year, and what it could mean for the future.“If we can mobilize our people, we can really shift the way that our world is working for us,” said Ms. Cox, 31, who is Tlingit and gathered late last month with other Alaska Natives for a three-day convention, where their influence as a voting bloc was a major topic of discussion.“Our next steps are not just getting our people to go and vote, but getting our people to be the people that people vote for,” she said.Indigenous voters have become a major power center across the country in recent years, including in 2020, when the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous voters helped flip Arizona for President Biden. This Congress saw the first Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native elected and seated alongside enrolled members of tribes from Oklahoma and Kansas. The Senate confirmed Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, as the first Native American to serve as interior secretary.It is a trend that is expected to continue on Tuesday, when races that will determine control of both the House and Senate may come down to razor-thin margins in states with sizable Indigenous populations. There are nearly 90 Indigenous candidates on state and national ballots, according to a database maintained by Indian Country Today, a nonprofit news organization. Those candidates include Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who is likely to become the first Cherokee senator since 1925.“We’ve made a lot of progress in the country and we’ve made progress in the judiciary and in Congress and across the federal administrations,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. “For us not to turn out during the midterms would send an unfortunate message to policymakers that our numbers aren’t there.”Alaska Native corporations have offered key endorsements that could help Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska, a Democrat who is Yup’ik, and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican who was formally adopted by a clan of the Tlingit tribe, keep their seats in Congress and overcome conservative challengers.Representative Mary Peltola, Democrat of Alaska, is the first Alaska Native in Congress.Ash Adams for The New York TimesSenator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the top Republican on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.Brian Adams for The New York TimesThe five major tribal nations in Oklahoma have offered a rare joint endorsement of the Democratic candidate for governor, jolting the race into a tossup, while the Cherokee Nation has reignited its campaign for the United States to fulfill a nearly 200-year-old treaty and seat Kimberly Teehee as their congressional delegate.“We’ve been in a process of people awakening to the power of our collective voice,” said Judith LeBlanc, of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma, and the executive director of Native Organizers Alliance. “That collective voice can manifest itself as political power on Election Day and in between election days on the issues that we’re advocating for.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.The assertion of political power and sovereignty comes as the Supreme Court seems poised to challenge some tribal authorities and protections and Indigenous voters face steep barriers to the ballot box. They could not vote in every state until 1957 and now face increasingly restrictive voting laws passed by state legislatures. Distances to polling stations still could require round trips of 100 or more miles for some voters.In May, a federal judge ruled that South Dakota violated portions of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires state officials to provide voter registration renewal guidance at several state-run agencies.“The majority of voting access laws that were passed since 2020 have all been passed in states where the Native vote is politically significant and it therefore targets Native voters,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “And it has a big impact, especially when it comes to early voting, access to voting, voting locations and transportation to voting locations.”Beyond representation in the highest seats of government, there has been an increased acknowledgment of needs of tribal communities across the country, though lawmakers say far more needs to be done to fulfill their obligations.A document circulated by Democrats on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee noted that lawmakers had approved the largest direct investment in tribal governments in American history in 2021 with passage of the $1.9 trillion stimulus law, and set aside billions of dollars for tribal health care, housing, broadband and transportation. Tribal nations and villages will receive funds through a new program created under the Biden administration to help them relocate and avoid the toll of climate change.People attending the Alaska Native Federation candidates forum in Anchorage last month. All of the top candidates in congressional elections made appearances.Brian Adams for The New York Times“It’s a long game and change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Allie Redhorse Young, of the Navajo Nation and founder of Protect the Sacred, who led voters on horseback to polling stations in 2020 and will lead a similar ride this year. “But as we continue to show up and as we continue to make our voices heard and ensure that our votes are counted, the more we will invest in this change.”In 1955, only one Alaska Native was elected to serve among the 55 delegates at the state’s constitutional convention. Sixty-six years later, Ms. Peltola made history in September as the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, when she was sworn in to finish the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term following his death. She is running for her first full term representing a state where Alaska Natives account for about 15 percent of the population.“It’s a remarkable evolution, really,” said William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, 81, a Democrat who is Inupiaq and served as a state senator. He was among those who were instrumental in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which set aside about 44 million acres for a dozen regional native corporations in 1971 and elevated Alaska Natives into a pivotal role for the new state’s economy.“Our people have seen the importance of participating in the political process and have done so extensively,” he added.Mr. Hensley, like others who gathered for three days in Anchorage at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, pointed to the role of Alaska Natives in helping Ms. Murkowski mount a successful write-in campaign in 2010 as another moment that underscored their political might. Ms. Murkowski has worked closely with Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, to direct millions of dollars to the Indigenous communities in their states as the top lawmakers on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Faye Ewan and Tesla Cox.Brian Adams for The New York TimesRyen Aavurauq Richards, who is Inupiaq, said she has seen that change in recent years, in part because Indigenous voters have come together more frequently advocating issues that impact their way of life, from commercial fishing to taking care of their lands. She once felt disconnected from the political process because to her the outcome of races in Alaska appeared predetermined.“The more that all of us tribes come together and discuss these big issues and work on them together — I feel like it has shifted my perspective and I can see a difference,” said Ms. Richards, 34, a peer support specialist based in Palmer.Beyond national representation, Indigenous organizations are urging participation in state elections as they fight to maintain gaming rights as a crucial part of their economy. Communities are also working to keep salmon from going extinct in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest.Preservation of natural resources has been particularly acute in Alaska, where attendees at the convention cheered for Ms. Peltola’s emphasis on a “pro-fish” platform and others spoke about how they had become more involved in the push for better subsistence fishing in their regions.“We’re fighting for our salmon, we’re fighting for our food — that’s our way of life,” said Faye Ewan, 68, who lives in the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah and is a longtime champion for Indigenous sovereignty over fishing. “It’s sacred.”But like other elders, she said she had seen a change in the organizing and impact of Indigenous voters.“The younger generation is more educated and more aware of the policies,” Ms. Ewan said. More

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      The 2022 Race for the House, in Four Districts, and Four Polls

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      President Biden is unpopular everywhere. Economic concerns are mounting. Abortion rights are popular but social issues are more often secondary.A new series of House polls by The New York Times and Siena College across four archetypal swing districts offers fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall as the party dominated among voters who care most about the economy.Democrats continue to show resilience in places where abortion is still high on the minds of voters, and where popular incumbents are on the ballot. Indeed, the Democrats were still tied or ahead in all four districts — three of which were carried by Mr. Biden in 2020. But the party’s slim majority — control could flip if just five seats change hands — demands that it essentially run the table everywhere, at a moment when the economy has emerged as the driving issue in all but the country’s wealthier enclaves.The poll results in the four districts — an upscale suburb in Kansas, the old industrial heartland of Pennsylvania, a fast-growing part of Las Vegas and a sprawling district along New Mexico’s southern border — offer deeper insights beyond the traditional Republican and Democratic divide in the race for Congress. They show how the midterm races are being shaped by larger and at times surprising forces that reflect the country’s ethnic, economic and educational realignment.“The economy thing affects everyone while the social thing affects a minority,” said Victor Negron, a 30-year-old blackjack dealer who lives in Henderson, Nev., and who was planning to vote for the Republican vying to flip the seat from a Democratic incumbent. “If everyone’s doing good, then who cares what else everyone else is doing.”The Four Districts Polled More

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      In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly Tests if Any Politics Is Still Local

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      FORT SCOTT, Kan. — Two months ago, Kansas became the unlikely toast of the Democratic Party after voters here overwhelmingly affirmed their support for protecting abortion rights in the State Constitution, a result that electrified national Democrats and revived their hopes of surviving the midterm elections across the country.Locked in her own re-election battle, the state’s Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, was not focused on electrifying anyone as she arrived in this small city in a deeply Republican corner of Kansas to dispense local highway grants — part of a bipartisan initiative, she noted about 30 seconds into her remarks.Ms. Kelly’s relentless talk about working with Republicans, her understated, no-nonsense style and her emphasis on education funding and economic development help explain why she enjoys strong approval ratings in a state that former President Donald J. Trump won by nearly 15 percentage points, and why, as the only Democratic governor seeking re-election in a state Mr. Trump won in 2020, she has narrowly led in some limited recent polling.Traditionally, candidates for governor — from Kansas to Massachusetts — have separated from their parties more successfully than contenders for federal office have, even as the nation’s politics have grown ever more tribal. Now, amid signs of a worsening environment for Democrats, the final stretch of the Kansas campaign is testing how much protection a strong local, personal brand still affords in governor’s races against gale-force political headwinds.“People can and often do distinguish governor’s races and look at them differently,” said Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, who also acknowledged the difficulties of the “tough environment.” “They want people who are competent and pragmatic.”Ms. Kelly, center, and Mr. Schmidt, right, at their debate in Overland Park this month. She has sought to tie him to former Gov. Sam Brownback, an unpopular Republican, while he has tried to link her with President Biden.Evert Nelson/The Topeka Capital-Journal, via Associated PressThat is Ms. Kelly’s argument, both on defense and on offense: As she runs against Derek Schmidt, the attorney general of Kansas, she is linking him not to far-right national Republicans but to former Gov. Sam Brownback, whose tax-cutting experiment led to spending cuts in education and other programs that ignited a bipartisan revolt several years ago. In turn, Mr. Schmidt is seeking to tie Ms. Kelly closely to President Biden.Ms. Kelly, who built an early fund-raising edge, has gone to significant lengths to distance herself from her party. She filmed a campaign ad from the middle of a road, saying, “Like most Kansans, I’m not too far right or too far left.”In an interview last week, she declined to say whether she wanted Mr. Biden to be the 2024 Democratic nominee. And she did not directly answer whether Americans were better off with Mr. Trump out of the White House, sidestepping to discuss her tenure instead.“I’ll deal with the national issues when I need to and when Kansas needs something,” Ms. Kelly said. “But otherwise I stay focused like a laser” on the state.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.She suggested she had worked productively with Mr. Trump on pandemic management, and noted her disagreement with Mr. Biden over coronavirus vaccine mandates, as well as her support for the infrastructure spending package passed by Congress with bipartisan backing.She has also plainly benefited from the power of incumbency, allowing her to focus on less ideological economic matters. A month before Election Day, she joined representatives from Pratt Industries for an opening of a corrugated-box plant near Wichita, and earlier this year she announced a large deal for a Panasonic factory in De Soto, which has faced scrutiny but seems to have resonated with some voters, judging from interviews.Ms. Kelly has been endorsed by several moderates who served as Republican officials in Kansas, including former Gov. Bill Graves, former Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum and Carla Stovall, a former state attorney general. (Mr. Schmidt had stints working with all of them.)Matthew Wells, a Republican city commissioner in Fort Scott, Kan., predicted that many voters would stick with a straight G.O.P. ticket.Chase Castor for The New York TimesThat was significant to Matthew Wells, a Republican city commissioner in Fort Scott who said he was inclined to back Ms. Kelly, though he said he doubted she was connecting with many others in his conservative community.“The use of divisive political rhetoric that has driven a wedge between the two parties — I believe, especially in our area, it has become much worse,” he said, predicting that many voters would stick with a straight Republican ticket.But in more than a dozen interviews just over an hour north, in suburban Kansas City, voters indicated significant willingness to cross party lines..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“She’s a good fighter for our state,” said Nancy Kenyon, 60, of Overland Park, Kan., who said she typically voted Republican but was considering backing Ms. Kelly.Ms. Kenyon was shopping at an upscale complex in politically crucial Johnson County. Like many other bedroom communities home to educated professionals, Johnson County was once a moderate Republican bastion but swung toward Democrats during the Trump era. Representative Sharice Davids, a Democrat, serves the area in the House.Ms. Kelly will need strong margins there to offset more conservative parts of the state. Mr. Schmidt does not need to win Johnson County, but he cannot afford to lose in a blowout.Private Republican polling conducted this month found Mr. Schmidt trailing Ms. Kelly by double digits in the Kansas City suburbs and surrounding areas. Roughly 70 percent of voters in Johnson County also opposed the anti-abortion rights ballot question this summer, which Mr. Schmidt supported. In an interview, Mr. Schmidt said the result of the August referendum “has to be respected” and vowed to focus on defending abortion restrictions that are already in place.Ms. Kelly is not making abortion rights a focal point of her campaign, in contrast to many other Democrats, but she is not running from the issue, either.“There will be a bill in the Kansas Legislature, no doubt, to impose greater restrictions,” she said in the interview. “If I’m in office, it can be vetoed. If my opponent is in office, it’ll become law.”Like other states, Kansas had a surge in women registering to vote after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the abortion rights vote in August drew extraordinary turnout.Stephanie Sharp, a Republican former state representative who is now a political strategist in Johnson County backing Ms. Kelly, worried aloud about whether that energy was translating into enthusiasm about November.Fort Scott, where Ms. Kelly recently appeared, is in a deeply Republican area of eastern Kansas.Chase Castor for The New York Times“I just think those Aug. 2 voters aren’t continuing to be as engaged,” said Ms. Sharp, who said she saw Ms. Kelly at a fund-raiser with Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota in suburban Kansas City last week.Ms. Sharp said she wished she “could just take all of those Democrats and unaffiliated voters from August by the lapels, and just shake them and say, ‘Do you realize the power you have?’”Mr. Schmidt was recently outside a local Republican office in Wichita, in Sedgwick County, which Ms. Kelly won in 2018, rallying with Republicans who had no doubts about their voters’ enthusiasm.“I’ve never seen Kansans so angry,” said Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican.While a state senator, Dennis Pyle, is challenging Mr. Schmidt from the right with an independent bid, Mr. Schmidt is no centrist. He signed on to a baseless effort to challenge the 2020 election results and has embraced cultural battles over education and barring transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.Stylistically, though, Mr. Schmidt is more low-key than lightning rod. He sounds traditional Republican notes about valuing “personal liberty, freedom and fiscal responsibility” over an “overreaching, big-government mentality,” and has emphasized public safety and the economy.Mr. Schmidt, who received Mr. Trump’s endorsement but dodged when asked whether he wanted Mr. Trump to be the 2024 Republican nominee, has secured the backing of some groups that either supported Ms. Kelly or stayed neutral last time, as well as her first budget director, who previously served as a Republican state lawmaker.The Republican Governors Association has continued to invest in the race; former Vice President Mike Pence is slated to campaign for Mr. Schmidt on Friday; and Robin Dole, the daughter of Bob Dole, the former Senate majority leader from Kansas, recently wrote an op-ed article in support of Mr. Schmidt, noting he received her father’s final political endorsement.Still, Mr. Schmidt’s candidacy has given some national Republicans heartburn. Ms. Kelly and Democratic allies started advertising on television in April; he waited until nearly September. In late summer, national Republican strategists made clear to Mr. Schmidt and his campaign that they wanted to see sharper lines of attack against Ms. Kelly, and a more affirmative case for his candidacy, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations.“We have run a very strong campaign, and I am very pleased to have a wide range of support,” Mr. Schmidt said when asked about some of that angst.Nancy Kenyon of Overland Park said she typically voted Republican but was considering casting a ballot for Ms. Kelly.Chase Castor for The New York TimesOn air, Mr. Schmidt has been pummeled as an acolyte of Mr. Brownback. And at Mr. Schmidt’s stop in Wichita, the final event on a statewide bus tour, it was easy to see why. Melinda Pore, 66, a Trump voter who backed Ms. Kelly in 2018, arrived at the gathering saying she was undecided, but she was clearly bothered by memories of the former governor.“If you know anything about Brownback, there’s a lot not to like,” she said.Mr. Schmidt has scoffed at the comparisons, saying Ms. Kelly has “spent a lot of time and money talking about somebody who’s not on the ballot.”Asked to name the biggest difference between himself and Mr. Brownback, Mr. Schmidt did not exert himself: “I’m a candidate this year who’s focused on where we’re headed,” he said. In other venues, he has distanced himself in more detail.Then again, Mr. Schmidt, too, is highlighting someone who is not on this year’s ballot.“We have a Biden Democrat in this governor’s office,” Mr. Schmidt told his audience in Wichita. “This election is about correcting that problem.”For Ms. Pore, that may be reason enough to give him her vote.“There are so many things that I don’t like that President Biden’s doing,” she said after Mr. Schmidt spoke. “I think I’m just going to vote straight ticket. And I usually don’t do that.” More

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      in Elections

      GOP Governor Candidate in Kansas Walks Abortion Tightrope in a Debate

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      As Republicans on the ballot this fall navigate treacherous terrain on abortion, Derek Schmidt, the party’s nominee for governor in Kansas, said in a debate on Wednesday that officials would “have to respect” the decision voters made in August to preserve abortion rights in the state.Mr. Schmidt, the state’s attorney general, said that if he were to be elected over Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, he would defend the restrictions Kansas already has on the books, which include a ban on most abortions after 22 weeks. But, in contrast to Republicans in many other states and longtime conservative orthodoxy, he did not call for stricter ones.“Well, I am pro-life,” Mr. Schmidt said when asked what changes, if any, he would make to the state’s abortion laws if elected. “I prefer a Kansas that has fewer abortions, not more. Obviously, Kansas voters spoke to a portion of this issue in August and made the decision that any state involvement in this area is going to have to satisfy exacting judicial scrutiny, and we have to respect that decision going forward.”After those comments, which echoed remarks he made about a month ago, he turned his focus to Ms. Kelly, saying she had not identified “any limitation on abortion that she would support.”Kansans’ resounding vote against an amendment to remove abortion protections from the state’s constitution was the first to reveal the depths of the electoral backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Since then, Republican candidates have often sought to paint Democrats as out of step with public opinion by saying they support unlimited abortion policies, while dissociating themselves from the near-total bans that have taken effect in several states.Responding to the same question asked of Mr. Schmidt, Ms. Kelly said that “an overwhelming majority of Kansans” had expressed their support for abortion rights and added, “I believe and always have believed — and have been very consistent in my position on this — that a women’s medical decisions should be made between her, her family and her doctor, and that women should have bodily autonomy equal to that of men.”When Mr. Schmidt repeated his attack, Ms. Kelly did not engage.“I really for 18 years have had the same position on this issue,” she said. “So I really don’t have much more to say.”Ms. Kelly and Mr. Schmidt’s race is one of the most competitive governor’s races in the country this year. Nationally, many Democrats in close contests have seized on abortion as a campaign issue, while many Republicans have hastened away from it.A day earlier, former Gov. Paul LePage of Maine, a Republican, stumbled in his debate on Tuesday against Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, when she challenged him on abortion. More

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      in US Politics

      A new generation of voters empowered by Roe: Politics Weekly America – podcast

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      Poppy Noor has been looking into how the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade back in June might influence midterm elections this November.
      She tells Jonathan Freedland that after Kansas voters chose to keep abortion legal in their state in a surprise result last month, she spoke to three people in Michigan about why they’re canvassing to get more voters registered before a similar ballot on reproductive rights.

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      Subscribe to The Guardian’s new six-part series Can I Tell You a Secret? on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More