The voters have spoken.

This is one.

Nation in the history tumbling.

Right?

It's very humbling.

We are confident that once all the votes are counted, we will win.

It's so cool.

I know what I'm afraid.

We're going to have.

Look at this.

This is the most humbling.

Experience of my life.

Tonight.

Missourians once again made history as we defended the will of the people and defeated an another force ban at the ballot box.

Tonight we said no to their power grab.

Our democracy belongs to us.

We look at election days, biggest local winners and losers.

The campaign gambles that paid off and spectacularly backfired.

And we dig into the part that really matters.

What happens next?

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Marlys Gourley, the Francis Family Foundation, through the discretionary fund of David and Janice Francis, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nick Haynes, and welcome to our world.

What's happened?

And what happens now?

Edition of the program.

Hopping on board the Weekend Review bus with us this week from the Kansas capital in Topeka, Washington University political scientist Bob Bailey.

And if one political scientist is good, is to even better.

Tracking voting behavior and elections at our hometown university, Umkc Debra Leiter is with us.

He probably moderated more debates this election season than anyone else at the helm of the Johnson County Post.

Kyle Palmer and former star political reporter.

Now Mr.

Kansas City stack on Substack Dave Helling.

Now we're going to be tracking the winners and losers of this election.

And perhaps more importantly, what changes are now going to happen as a result of your choices at the ballot box?

But could there be any bigger winner on Election Day in our neck of the woods than this man, a 62 year old Leeward minister who would never run for elected office before, who's now the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Kansas in close to a century.

I'm going to tell you a little secret.

I want to become his best friend.

Everything he can for us tomorrow for the rest of the.

United States in deeply.

Read chance the heart of America.

I want us to model what it looks like, be thankful people actually work together to solve problems successfully and each other.

I don't have any answers.

I can just tell you it's been.

The great.

Honor my life to serve the state of Kansas for ten years.

And just just love this day.

Love this.

Country.

Well, given this was a massive Democratic wave election, Bob, is there anything Roger Marshall could have done differently to alter the result on election night?

Well, I do think so.

It would have taken six years, though, because the first thing that Roger Marshall did when he got elected six years ago was vote to not certify Joe Biden's electoral votes, while Jerry Moran did not do so.

And so, I think immediately Marshall hooked himself up to Donald Trump.

And we know that in 2026, that was the absolute worst thing that could happen.

But even candidates like Suzanne Collins in Maine, who would always had a distant relationship with Donald Trump, lost big time in this election.

But this is Kansas and Kansas had 88 straight years of Republicans.

He probably would have survived if he hadn't done that.

Let me ask you, was Adam Hamilton a uniquely compelling candidate?

Could anyone, and a well-funded Democrat have pulled that off?

Well, there was a well-funded Democrat in 2020 who lost by 11 percentage points to Roger Marshall.

That was Barbara Boyer, also of Johnson County.

I don't know if she outraised Marshall that year, but it was pretty close, and there was a lot of hope, at least from Democrats, that she would break through.

Hamilton ran a very disciplined, ruthlessly kind of focused campaign that focused on affordability, pocketbook issues in a state where diesel prices were going up, beef prices were going up.

And that hurt a lot of people not in Johnson County, but in other parts of the state that he was able to speak to in a way that a Johnson County and had not been able to in the past.

I think there were three elements, three classic elements in this race.

Nick one.

Roger Marshall wasn't a very good candidate for six years, and certainly in the closing weeks of the campaign, did not do himself any favors in terms of how he approached the electorate.

Adam Hamilton, while not unique, was certainly an extraordinarily good candidate.

Focused, didn't have a record.

You know, he was kind of a blank slate for a lot of people, that were.

Looking you said at the end of the program last week after we stopped taping.

Boy, has there been an election.

We've heard so little about actual policy from candidates, no question.

And I think that, you know, his argument was, I'm not Donald Trump, I'm not Roger Marshall, which in this case was good.

And then the third element is the national environment.

And you put all three of those things together, a poor candidate on the other side, a good candidate on the D in the national environment, and you get the recipe for this once in 100 years.

At the end of Adam Hamilton's victory speech this week, he said, well, now the real work happens on January 3rd when they're all, sworn in.

What is his biggest challenge?

Democrats made really big promises this election.

We saw that across the United States, but we definitely saw it here in Kansas and Missouri.

Being able to produce the kinds of outcomes that Hamilton emphasized was kind of cooperative, bringing back a sort of sense of of decency, of cross partizan cooperation is really challenging given that national environment.

And so trying to find those spaces where they can work together is going to be critical.

Is the Senate going to be Adam Hamilton's lasting resting place, though, because we all hearing about his bolder ambitions, if you think about, Barack Obama was only two years in the Senate when he announced he was running for the white House.

JD Vance was in the Senate for just two years, and then he's picked by the president to be a vice presidential nominee.

He visited Washburn University and a couple of people came up and told me after his visit, boy, he could run for president.

Like, whoa, yes, it's possible.

He is very compelling and also has a way about him that makes people want to listen to him and want to follow him.

That other leaders I've seen, he's got to prove himself in the Senate.

But the potential certainly.

There now, Adam Hamilton deserves recognition for breaking the Democrat's 94 year losing streak in Kansas, but complete this sentence.

Deborah, the other biggest winner this election in Kansas and Missouri was blank.

You know, this is going to sound a little cliche, but I actually think the biggest winner of this election was voters because, oh.

What a cop out.

On a cop out.

All right.

And I can give you candidate two.

But, you know, for a long time we've had this idea that partizanship is how people vote.

That if you're a Republican, you're going to vote for Republican candidates.

If you're a Democrat, you're going to vote for Democratic candidates.

And that's the way the world is.

And yet a 16 seat pickup for the state legislature in Missouri and a 20 seat pickup in Kansas shows that voters really can't be taken for granted in this way.

I was looking when it comes to voters, and we had this belief everybody's voting, everybody's voting.

But I saw some of your own figures from Johnson County.

This wasn't the record breaking turnout.

In fact, in the first, Trump administration, the first midterms there in 2018, Johnson County voters voted at a higher level than this time.

Yeah, it's still quite a good turnout.

I don't think it quite match 2018 like you said.

But I was also speaking to your colleague at UNC, Greg Vaughn, to me about, turnout.

And he noted in Johnson County that actual Republican turnout was, slightly ahead or like 102% of what it was in 2024.

It's just that Democratic turnout was even higher, more than 130% of what it was in 2024.

So Republicans don't necessarily stay away, at least in Johnson County.

But Democrats just flooded in.

In Kansas and Missouri, the Democrats broke the supermajorities on both sides of state line and Topeka and Jefferson City.

But again, we focus on national politics so much.

Why on earth should people care?

What difference does that make, though?

In Topeka, for instance.

Cindy Horse's victory and then breaking the supermajority is so impactful for for many, many Kansans because for the last eight years, Laura Kelly, the governor and the Republican legislature have been doing battle and vetoes and overrides and controversy and now it's very simple.

Cindy Halter can veto the legislature and they can override her.

That means we think we hope they might compromise on some things.

And talk about things before just butting heads.

What's the difference in Jefferson City now that the Democrats are broken?

The supermajority in both chambers.

Now, Republicans cannot completely act on their own.

Many of the emergency powers that they have used for a number of controversial issues, they're simply not going to be able to do anymore.

And what this also means is that the Republican faction in Jeff City, which has always been a little contentious with each other, is really going to either have to hang together or they're going to be forced to work with Democrats for major issues.

And if there are ever any differences or disagreements with the governor, the legislature is going to have to turn to the Democrats to overturn those vetoes.

Dave Helling, I haven't forgotten about you.

Your biggest winner on election night.

Was I had originally written down Johnson County.

Johnson County politics have flipped.

Whether it's permanent or not, we don't know.

But it has changed Kansas politics for a generation, without question.

But I wrote down finally the biggest winner with a Casey or Harvest home.

I hope I said that right.

Cindy horse's running mate.

Yeah.

African-American.

It's the first African-American elected statewide in Kansas in modern history.

That's an important bar to clear.

And, the new lieutenant governor, assuming he takes office, of course, will have cleared it.

And that's something we should know.

And I almost said Johnson County, too, but I think I would look too much like a homer.

Yeah.

You know, as we recalled this program this Friday, the Kansas governor's race, though, still hasn't been officially called a close rate, a close race audit now underway.

What does that mean, though?

And with Democrats and the culture up at last check 7000 votes, Bob, is it conceivable Republican Tie Masterson can catch up?

Am I allowed to say it's over?

We've never had in Kansas this many votes, you know, flipped and overturned.

It's just not going to say impossible.

But we're talking.

The mail in votes are now coming in and they're going holsters way provisionals, massive amounts of provisionals don't even get, counted because the Provisionals are provisionals, people.

It's messed up or they don't have their IDs.

So, it's over.

Except for the official.

Official notification that it's over.

No, he mentioned so in that clip that we saw at the beginning of this program that lawyers may now have to get involved.

Kenny pointed to discrepancies in the vote, and there was certainly some concerning incidents he could point to some voters leaving a polling station, for instance, in Leavenworth County, after they ran out of ballots on Election Day.

Also on Election day, a Kansas postal worker indicted for stealing 4000 pieces of mail targeting, according to reports.

Republican candidate mailers to these stories help Masterson's case.

Deborah, you know, it's certainly, I think, an important part of the story about just electoral trust and these are things that they're going to point to to ask for really important recounts.

But I think it's going to be a really hard legal case to make.

These are certainly issues, but we haven't really seen these kinds of issues be used to overturn elections.

But they are important for how people feel about elections going forward.

And I will just say there's a difference between recounts in this close race audit.

This is the close race audit mandated by Kansas law, because all these races were within 1% after Tuesday night.

Recounts are things that the a candidate after the canvasing has been finalized can request.

But I have seen some chatter on social media, particularly that there's something nefarious about these close race audits and this is something that is routine and is actually mandated by law.

And Ty Masterson, if he wants a recount at this moment, would have to pay for it.

So it's it's free paid for by the state, not free if it's within 0.05%.

But right now wholesalers up by about 0.06 going on point.

But let's scroll down just for a moment on this.

On this governor's race, city hawks have made data centers a big dividing issues in this campaign.

She's called for a state wide moratorium on new facilities.

Can she just issue an executive order on on day one to do that, or does she need legislative support?

Well, I think there might be some things she could do in terms of executive orders, but ultimately this will be a decision for the legislature.

And really for local governments as well.

Now, like a lot of politicians, she's hedged this a little bit.

It isn't.

I'm going to ban data centers or we're going to ban I from Kansas.

She wants a moratorium until we can figure this thing out, whatever that means.

So there will be great discussion in Topeka in 2027 about these projects.

And maybe at the end of the session, some verdict from Kansans, how they want to proceed, by the way.

Not again, not getting huge numbers of headlines, but in Kansas, there were three cities, had bans on data centers at the polls in Peoria and Ottawa and in El Dorado, Kansas.

They voted for those bans in every single one of those cities, Debra, 100%.

And, you know, this is one of these cases where as Kansas goes, so goes the country, because we've seen in similar races in 39 to 40 different races about data centers.

It went against data centers.

And I think that that's an important part of the story is that while the state legislature is going to have to probably put a B on the, you know, drivers stick for for these bans, there's a lot of popular sentiment against data centers on both Republican and Democratic side.

And that gives the governor an advantage and really putting pressure on the state legislature to really take the lead.

And don't we also think that at the national level, this will be a huge issue for the Senate in the Congress going forward?

Democrats, a newly elected Democrats particularly, will want to seize on this issue.

So it may be that Washington will preempt whatever Kansas wants to do.

And I met with a political operative on the Missouri side for lunch this week.

And he said, if City Hall does indeed become governor, the biggest loser will be the chiefs, because she was much more lukewarm about that deal.

But I mean, it's too late to do anything about the Chiefs Stadium at this point in time.

Even if she is elected.

Well, it may not be too late.

But I'll tell you one thing about Kansas.

If you go against the Kansas City Chiefs, you're done in four years.

So she's she's she's not going to do that.

She'll figure out a way to maneuver through and get that stadium built.

But in Kansas, I'll tell you, one of the most popular things that I've seen in 25 years is, sorry, Missouri is getting the.

Chiefs too late to make any difference.

No, I think she'll want to make a difference on some of the details.

I don't think she's going to try and stop the stadium, but she'll want to make sure that the state is as protected as possible.

Because she's signing off on hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of tax money.

And let's keep this in my neck.

It's on her watch.

I mean, if this thing falls apart, if there's a financing problem, if there's a labor shortage, something goes wrong.

People will blame Cindy Holzer, not Laura Kelly, and not really the Republicans in the legislature.

So she'll want to have some major influence on the final details of this.

Let's move next to election days.

Biggest losers.

Now, sitting Kansas Senator Roger Marshall may be top of people's lists, and it looks like Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is also one of the victims of the Democratic tidal wave.

But complete this sentence.

Kyle, in my judgment, the biggest loser on Election Day was flunk.

Well, for when I went to House district 43 for loser.

I'm going to go to another House district in southern Johnson County.

That's House district eight, in southern Overland Park.

This was held for years by House Majority Leader, Chris Croft, a well known commodity in Topeka, has won reelection pretty easily in previous elections.

He appears to be going down to, Democrat psychologist Megan Phillips in that district.

And Croft is not only going to lose the job he had, which was representative, but he also is likely going to lose a job he was going to have because with Dan Hawkins moving to insurance commissioner, he was next in line to be House speaker.

And so he's not even going to have that.

And so it was a really big loss for him, but a big pickup for Democrats that again, that district was not on Democrats.

Bingo card.

Biggest loser Deborah.

You know Griffin in the Missouri side it's got to be Ann Wagner.

This was and she was the at the Saint Louis area Republican congresswoman.

Correct.

She had been in office for more than a decade.

And, you know, as probably a lot of your viewers know, a big fight in Missouri was whether it was going to be A71 map or A62 map, referring to the number of Democrats versus Republicans winning on very few folks.

Bingo card was A53 map.

And it really shows that, especially in the suburban areas in Missouri, we've seen a big shift from Republican to Democratic votes.

But and Wagner is also interesting because one of the biggest losers overall in the night was moderate Republican women.

And and Wagner is exactly in that class.

We saw a huge number of Republicans lose, certainly.

But particularly a lot of Republican women have lost.

And she is of that.

Class, as you mentioned, the map again, proposition eight was on the ballot.

This was the Republican drawn map.

Should we vote for that or vote?

No.

And 61% of Missouri voters voted no.

Is that the end of the map question in Missouri now?

We'll see.

I mean, okay, you know, my biggest loser, frankly, is the Missouri legislature because amendment six became law, which really curtails their power to overturn citizen led, petition efforts, both amendments and statutes.

In Missouri, the governor, Mike Kehoe, is also a big loser.

I know we'll talk about him in a minute.

He lost big time this year.

Talked a little bit about drawing up another map in the 2027 session, whether there's any enthusiasm for that now, it's not clear to me at all.

Bob Bailey, the Biggest Loser election.

I know you told me not to say it, but it has to be Roger Marshall, 88 years of Republican senators, and you're the person who breaks that streak.

You figure out a way, which he did to lose that election.

It's so it.

Has to be.

I saw a headline from the national press about, you know, Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

If if the Texas governor, Greg Abbott is going to lose, boy, no Republican is safe.

So, I mean, wasn't this just a Democratic wave?

And no, I don't think so.

But if I have to go to a second, it's obviously Ty Masterson.

I mean, he he basically thought he could coast to victory.

We saw a clip there when you watched him on election night.

He was like, what the heck?

He'd you know, I don't think he saw this coming.

Like maybe some others did, like Chris Kovac.

He had, of course, plans for his next 4 or 8 years.

So that was a pretty, pretty dramatic loss in Kansas.

Well, you mentioned Kris Kobach there.

I mean, isn't that couldn't he turn this into something different?

Could he be now heading to Washington, DC?

I understand that in the Trump administration, there was an out effort.

Some people want to resign.

There's going to be forced out.

Is there a slot for Kris Kobach?

There's always a slot for Kris Kobach.

He's I would never call him the Biggest Loser, despite having when he's lost several big races because he's become a mainstay in Kansas.

And we certainly have not seen the last of it.

What about some other, other Republican losers this election Day?

I mean, Roger Marshall, could there be a place for him in the Department of Health in Washington?

There might be.

I mean, you know, Donald Trump leaves office in two years.

So it's not clear to me that people will make a career decision to go join the Trump administration when they know that said, best, an 18 month job.

Plus, if you go for a job that requires Senate confirmation, you're going to have to go before a Democratic Senate.

I would not want to be Kris Kobach seeking confirmation, from a Chuck Schumer, led the United States Senate.

So, it's more problematic than it looks.

I will say the defeat of Kris Kobach.

Really?

Marks are turning of the page in Kansas political history, too.

He's been a part of it for a quarter century.

It may be the beginning of the end of his role in our count.

I think we'll see.

We'll see.

Yeah.

How much do we read into one election now?

Some, as you mentioned, will say The Biggest Loser wasn't on the ballot at all.

It's Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe.

As Republicans lose their super majorities in the House and Senate in Jefferson City, he's a Republican.

Drawn map, failed his push for an abortion ban.

Failed his plan to eliminate income taxes, failed at the ballot box in August.

And despite his grand special session to keep the Chiefs in Missouri, they moved to Kansas.

Again, we shouldn't say too much about one election result, but, his days numbered as governor of Missouri.

I go back on the ballot in 20.

Yeah.

If he runs again there, you can hear whispers of people saying, gosh, he's been so smacked around that maybe he won't run again.

And he almost certainly neck will face a primary challenge from his right there.

All.

Andrew Bailey, the former attorney general and Trump administration official, has come back to US Missouri and spent the day Wednesday criticizing Republicans and Mikio.

He might run bill legal over in Saint Louis.

So he faces a primary challenge now, what will the Democrats do?

What Democrat can step forward to run for governor in two years?

That isn't clear.

I think there's whispers about Quentin Lucas maybe taking that on.

I also heard yesterday that Republicans I'm sorry, Democrats in Missouri are looking for their own Adam Hamilton to say, let's find somebody.

Yes, let's find somebody without a record, without someone we can sort of put up against a key or more importantly, Eric Schmidt, who's run who's up in 2028, has tied as closely to Donald Trump as any U.S.

senator that might be down.

And in 2028, Jerry Moran, our other Kansas U.S.

senator, is up for grabs.

I mean, does he look at this election and say, you know, I've I've had a nice time in Washington.

I'm not going to run for reelection, Bob.

No, actually, I would call Jerry Moran the winner on the Republican side and really isn't even running because he's highly respected.

He stayed away from Trump.

Adam Hamilton, in his victory speech, namechecked Jerry Moran and saying, I want to work with him.

And I think Moran low key, you know, is looking forward to, maybe a bit of a change in Washington.

Are you saying.

The pressure on Jerry Moran to run again will be enormous from national Republicans and local Republicans?

Because Kansas, the prospect of Kansas having two Democratic senators, is almost too much to bear.

And so the party will really say, Jerry, you're electable.

We need to keep at least one of these seats.

You need to go and build.

Up a popular brand as well, independent, popular brand.

Well, now that the election is over without going, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly finally reveal her own next chapter.

The two term Democrat has been tight lipped about life after the governor's mansion.

Do we know what she wants to do, Kyle?

Is this not for her?

I don't know what she wants to do, but yeah, I think she's really forged a really unique career, particularly in the last ten years.

And I think, you know, Cindy Holzer, interesting to see that in the primary.

They weren't on the same side.

Of course, the Kelly endorsed Ethan Corson during the primary, but they came together, and I think Cindy Holzer would do well to kind of mimic and follow what the Lord has done.

Yeah.

So I think.

There is talk also that there might be a last move of Laura Kelly, and there have been pushes for her to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in Kansas.

Could we see one last big surprise from Governor Laura Kelly before she heads out the door in just a matter of weeks?

Now, you know, I would say never count out Laura Kelly and what she's going to do, especially given that she does know there's a Senate seat challenge coming up in a couple of years.

So I think this is an opportunity for her to really bring out some major changes at the last minute, and it's going to be down to her to decide if that's the sort of final image she wants to leave with voters and with Kansans.

And I think, keep an eye on her in the governor's mansion.

Now, we are now hearing from the political parties who tell us they're now in listening mode.

They're learning lessons from this election.

Dave Helling, complete this sentence.

The biggest lesson Republicans in Kansas and Missouri should take from this election is blank.

You have to figure out a way, have to figure out a way to bring some distance between yourself and Donald Trump.

I think Roger Marshall's biggest problem the entire race was he couldn't find any daylight between a very unpopular president and his own, his own constituency.

And that's true for Republicans across the country.

Donald Trump is the lamest of ducks, and Republicans have to figure out how that equation works.

Oh, don't.

Condescend to the voters.

They wanted to talk about issues, affordability and and what they were told was vote Republican because you're a Republican, Kyle.

I would say you don't necessarily see Johnson County.

Just two years ago, the Kansas House delegation from Johnson County was nearly evenly split.

14 Democrats, 13 Republicans.

If results hold from Tuesday, that's going to be 25 Democratic seats, compared to two Republican seats.

But the dates point.

They need to fashion some sort of message that resonates with the Johnson County voters.

That goes beyond some sort of MAGA base post Trump message, because they have they have lost Johnson County for now.

Deborah, get back to basics.

That's really it.

This is the thing is, I think that, in Kansas and Missouri, national level issues distracted the candidates, distracted what voters are looking for.

And we say this election was certainly a referendum on Donald Trump, but the economy mattered.

Issues of security mattered.

People care about the affordability and other.

Issues and complete this, sentence.

The biggest lesson Democrats should learn from this election, Bob, is blank.

Do not do what the Democrats did from 20 to 24.

And that's that's my lesson, Dave.

Democrats have to understand that candidate quality matters.

You can't just nominate anyone to these big statewide races.

You have to find someone who can run a credible quality race.

I think Kansans did that.

Democrats in Missouri will have to find that in the next two years.

Now, on the flip side, I would say, you know, be wary of how big a mandate you think you have in Kansas, in Johnson County.

It could totally reverse itself.

In two years.

We saw Republicans actually pick up seats in Johnson County in 2024.

And now this wave election.

So some of these districts in the western and southern Johnson County were one by 1 or 2%.

So you're still on pretty tenuous margins in a lot of these district.

It's run, run, run.

One of the great success stories that we're now talking about is Missouri Democrats made it so that there were almost no uncontested races for the state House, and that played out hugely for them.

There were a few uncontested race on the Kansas side that it's possible even the Democrats could have picked up for too long.

There's been too many uncontested races in the Midwest, and I think that this election is a story where every single election is a possibility of a flip.

And on that, we will say our election week has been reviewed courtesy of Umkc political scientist Debra Leiter and Washburn University political guru Bob Beatty from the Johnson County Post, Kyle Palmer and news icon and Mr.

Kansas City Stack on Substack.

Dave Helling and I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.