WICHITA, Kan. _ Kansas Republicans are waiting to see whether a district they've won easily for the past two decades could flip to a Democrat as the Wichita region holds the first congressional vote since President Donald Trump assumed office.
GOP strategists warned in recent days that Democrat James Thompson, a civil rights attorney, was in striking distance against Kansas Treasurer Ron Estes, a Wichita Republican, in the special election to replace Mike Pompeo. The race also features Libertarian Chris Rockhold.
Pompeo, a Republican who won by 31 percentage points in November, gave up his seat in the 4th Congressional District in January to serve as Trump's director of the CIA.
"I'm absolutely unsure how it's going to go," said Jeff Glendening, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group that has ties to Wichita-based Koch Industries. "I think it's way too close to call. It could be one of those late nights."
Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district nearly 2-to-1.
The last time a Democrat won the 4th Congressional District was in 1992, but strategists on both sides of the political divide predicted a single-digit race heading into Tuesday. If those predictions hold true, it'll have reverberations both nationally and in Kansas as the state moves into 2018 with the governor's office up for grabs.
The University of Virginia's Center for Politics, which tracks elections, changed the race's rating from a safe Republican seat to a likely Republican seat on the eve of the election, citing signs of alarm from Republicans, including robocalls to GOP voters from the president and vice president in the election's final days.
"Ron Estes is running TODAY for Congress in the Great State of Kansas," Trump tweeted early Tuesday as voters went to the polls. "A wonderful guy, I need his help on Healthcare & Tax Cuts (Reform)."
Estes' campaign manager, Rodger Woods, struck a confident tone in an email an hour before polls officially closed in the state at 7 p.m.
"We are very optimistic that our voters saw the choices before them and will select the pro-life, constitutional conservative who holds the values of the 4th District to be their next representative in Congress," he said.
Thompson's campaign manager, Colin Curtis, said that Republicans' overconfidence enabled Democrats to make the race more competitive than most analysts initially expected.
"I think the key was that Republicans took this for granted," Curtis said. "They saw this seat as one that was safe for them. They just had to put their name on the ballot, and Ron Estes was going to be a congressman in a few months."
Curtis also pointed to the campaign's strategy of tying Estes to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who has struggled with low approval ratings for the last two years.
Curtis said that "witnessing what Sam Brownback has done" has made voters in the deep-red state more willing to vote for Democratic candidates, noting gains the party made in the Legislature in 2016 despite Trump's double-digit victory in the state.
Brownback's associates dismissed the idea that the governor was a drag on Estes.
"I believe that after tonight, the KS Republican Party will be 32-0 in federal and statewide elections since nominating Sam Brownback for Governor," said David Kensinger, who managed Brownback's 2010 campaign and served as the governor's chief of staff during his first term, in an email. "Good headline, no?"
Glendening said he's "sure there's some frustration with Topeka" that's impacting the race, but added that "it's unfair to tie the state treasurer really to any of that frustration. ...They have little say over tax policy and budgets."
Missteps by the Estes campaign also helped, according to Curtis. A television ad in which Estes stood in a swamp as an echo to one of Trump's campaign slogans became the base image for a Kansas Democratic Party mailer, which also featured Brownback's head digitally imposed onto the body of an alligator.
"He gave us great imagery to use against him. For a politician to climb into a swamp and look as uncomfortable as possible was a gift for us to be able to use it on mail," he said.
Former state Rep. Mark Hutton, a Wichita Republican, said that Estes' decision to skip events early in the campaign probably hurt him more than Democrats' efforts to tie him to Brownback.
"I think there's quite of few of us who would like to have seen Ron get out there a little earlier than he did. ... He had some debates that he missed, and I don't think that helped his image," Hutton said.
"I think there was a little bit of a 'where's Ron?' kind of deal, and of course the news media loved it," Hutton continued.
Jaci Bell, a Wichita teacher, said she didn't want to see Estes promote the "Brownback economic plan" on the national level. She voted for Thompson.
"I felt he cared more. He showed up to the debates," she said.
Carolyn Harris, who cast her vote for Estes, said she's a Trump supporter and wants to see more Republicans in Congress.
"Trump needs all the support he can get," Harris said outside the Machinists Union hall in Wichita.
Hutton said many people thought the race was "a sure Republican deal," but that he had anticipated a close race partially because voters remain split on Trump's presidency. "I'm not surprised that it's this close. There's just such a division in the country right now. Trump's popularity is either really strong or in the tank," he said.
Hutton said he still expected Estes to prevail in the race, but said that it "sure isn't going to be a mandate, I'll tell you that."
