Kansas' 2nd district, considered a safe Republican seat for decades, has been thrown into play by the retirement of incumbent Lynn Jenkins.
The Republican: Former US Army Airborne Ranger and federal defense contractor Steve Watkins seemingly came out of nowhere to win a crowded Republican primary with just 22% of the vote, largely due to hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into the race by his father.
Watkins was practically unknown to Republican leaders and voters before running for Congress and was criticized during the primary for taking meetings with Democratic party officials in 2017, living and voting outside Kansas for most of life, and not having a clear policy record to look to.
The Democrat: Paul Davis is an attorney by training who served five terms in the Kansas House of Representatives, including almost 10 years as minority leader. He narrowly lost in a run for the Governor of Kansas by 3.7 points in 2014.
Davis says he wants to use his record of bipartisanship and working across the aisle in the Kansas legislature to help reform Washington. He is one of many Democratic congressional candidates who have publicly rejected Nancy Pelosi's leadership.
The lay of the land: Kansas' 2nd district includes most of the Eastern part of the state, including the capital city of Topeka and the city of Leavenworth, home to a US Army base. The rest of the district is largely rural and agricultural.
Partisan dynamics: The 2nd district is one of the most solidly Republican of FiveThirtyEight's toss-ups. It has an R+10 partisan lean and was carried by Trump in the 2016 election by a whopping 19 points. It was, however, briefly represented by a Democrat from 2007 to 2009.
Ratings & predictions: FiveThirtyEight rates the race as a "toss-up," giving Davis a 5 in 9 chance of winning. An October 27-31 NYT/Siena College poll showed Davis leading Watkins by 4 points, 41% to 37%.
What the local experts say:
“[Watkins] has tied himself pretty closely to Trump. He’s trying very hard to appeal to that conservative base," Jim McLean, a politics reporter and editor at Kansas News Service, told KCUR in August.
"We shouldn’t forget that Trump won the 2nd district pretty handily in the 2016 presidential election," McLean said. "However, Paul Davis also won that district when he ran for governor in 2014, so it’s looks like it’s going to be a pretty interesting race.”
McLean said Davis' visibility and extensive record in Kansas politics combined with his his repudiation of Pelosi, a deeply unpopular figure among Republicans, could help him make up ground in such a solidly Republican district.
“His political profile as a moderate Democrat willing to work across the aisle might be appealing to voters in this district,” he said.