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Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, thanks for being with us on The Takeaway. With less than a week left to vote in the midterm elections, let's go down to one of the most competitive races in the country, one that could determine political control in the US House of Representatives, the third congressional district of Kansas.

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Speaker: Right now I'm in South Olathe.

Speaker: So far I have loved my experience in Overland Park.

Speaker: The beginnings of Spring Hill date back to March of 1857.

Speaker: Kansas City, Kansas.

Speaker: Today I am at Prairie Center.

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Daniel Desrochers: It's a suburban district in Kansas. It's really a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. It looks a little different than it did in 2020 when this race was last run. I'm Daniel Desrochers, I am the Washington correspondent for The Kansas City Star. The legislature redistricted, they had control over what the new line should be. The district now has a little bit less of Wyandotte County, which is one of the most diverse counties in Kansas, and a little bit more of two South Central counties in Kansas that are a little bit more conservative that voted for former President Donald Trump by a larger margin.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now the district might look different than it did in 2020 but the candidates, they're the same.

Amanda Adkins: I'm Amanda Adkins.

Sharice Davids: I'm Sharice Davids, I would be proud to earn your vote.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes, it's a SHE-lection rematch.

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Daniel Desrochers: They look familiar because they were the same in 2020. It's representative Sharice Davids who has been in office since 2018. She's a Democrat. She got elected as part of the blue wave in response to the election of former President Trump in 2016. Her campaign was in 2018, as part of that wave. Then she's running against Amanda Adkins, who is a former executive, Cerner.

She worked a lot in politics, particularly she started as a staffer for Sam Brownback when he was a US senator, went on to become the chairwoman of the Republican Party in Kansas, and switched over more to the private sector.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Along with our partners at the Center for American Women in Politics, and with support in part from the MIS foundation, we're bringing you these SHE-lections, woman versus woman midterm contests this year. Now, representative Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, is one of the first two Native American women elected to the US House of Representatives, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress from Kansas. She's also an accomplished mixed martial arts fighter, a fact that made for some pretty memorable campaign ad material in 2018.

Sharice Davids: I've been put down, pushed aside, knocked out. Truth is, I've had to fight my whole life.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Throughout this race, the incumbent Davids has been touting her record in Washington.

Sharice Davids: I worked with local officials, Republicans, and Democrats on a plan to fix bridges and roads like this all over Kansas.

Melissa Harris-Perry: While Adkins' ads and messaging have been positioning her as an outsider with fresh eyes and ideas.

Speaker: Sharice Davids is a politician, Amanda Adkins is a businesswoman. You can trust her to represent you and your family in Washington.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's not the full story on Adkins.

Daniel Desrochers: She didn't come out of nowhere. When you're the chairwoman of the Kansas Republican Party, you clearly are entrenched and know the players and know the people who move and shake politics in the state. That said, because she worked in the private sector, she's definitely been emphasizing that part of her background more than the political part of her background, particularly when it comes to healthcare.

Because Cerner does a lot of work with organizational stuff and administrative stuff with healthcare. She has been talking about that in terms of things like negotiating prescription drug prices or how the federal government should be involved in Medicaid and Medicare decisions. She's really, really leaning on that background, particularly as a businesswoman, and talked about trying to get more women involved in business.

That said, campaigning is not a vacuum. The campaign for representative Davids has been really emphasizing how entrenched she's been in Republican politics in Kansas. Particularly by tying her to former Governor, former Senator Sam Brownback in Kansas. He was really, really, really unpopular when he left office to take an appointment with the Trump administration.

That unpopularity has still stuck. It seems like the way that his tax experiment affected the state of Kansas really still clings on. The Davids campaign, they're not making any references to Trump, but they are making a lot of references to Sam Brownback in order to associate her with him and drag her down in the process.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Davids was first elected to represent the third district back in 2018. What makes this SHE-lection a competitive race is the two things that happened this year. The first, redistricting.

Emily Vietti: This district became more rural and redder, it became a competitive but plus four for the Dems down to a competitive but plus three for the Republicans in terms of how it looks in general. I am Emily Vietti, a gender and politics researcher at the Institute for Leadership Studies at the University of Kansas and the director of Ready to Run Kansas. We lost a lot of Wyandotte County, which is where Kansas City, Kansas, and many of the African Americans and some other groups are highly populous in Kansas City, Kansas. That's going to change the race.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now Emily lives in the third district, and she lived there before the lines were changed too.

Emily Vietti: I think that if I was guessing, Amanda Adkins felt that that would be a positive for her and it certainly is. If you look at Sharice Davids, she has an incumbency advantage right now, there was a poll of Sienna College/New York Times Upshot poll that came out about a week ago showing Sharice Davids up plus 14. Now I don't think the race is probably going to be that wide of a margin.

I think that it will be closer than it was in 2020, which was a 10-point win for Congresswoman Davids because of the change in the district. I think that in addition to those things, this is a different race because of the ways that the candidates are trying to cast each other.

Melissa Harris-Perry: See, all of the district is redder. You might remember that a few months ago, Kansas was the first state to make its opinions known at the ballot box after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Kansans voted on an amendment that would have removed protections for abortion from their state constitution. They voted it down by a wide margin 59% to 41%.

Emily Vietti: Kansas is a red state but Kansans think of themselves as an independent group of people. I saw I think that while the response to the constitutional amendment maybe didn't surprise a lot of people in Kansas, the surprise was the margin. The amendment was voted down by a 59% to 41% margin, that's a pretty large and definitive no on that amendment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Given this definitive display of Kansans support for abortion rights, you might think the question of abortion wouldn't be playing a big role in either campaign here. It's been a key component for Davids. Here she's in a recent debate with Adkins hosted by Kansas City PBS.

Sharice Davids: We really can't trust her on these issues. She, on her website, supports an agenda that would lead to a total ban with no exceptions, not for right, not for incest, or the life of the mother.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For her part, Adkins does call herself a pro-life candidate and is against abortions after 20 weeks. She's been choosing to frame her messaging around the issue of state's rights instead.

Amanda Adkins: The people in the state of Kansas have already spoken. I have said because I believe it is a state-level issue and I believe in federalism that Congress does not have a role here. As such, I do not support a congressional ban on abortion.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To drive home these positions, both candidates have leaned into their identities as women. Adkins has emphasized her role as a mother and on the other side of the ring.

Emily Vietti: Sharice Davids is a very different candidate. She is the first out, LGBTQ congresswoman from Kansas. She is one of the first Native American women in Congress. She is a very different candidate. I have to say that these identity markers and these really interesting identity things about what these candidates have shown up less in their advertising than they did two years ago and that you might expect.

In fact, I saw an attack ad from Congresswoman Davids from one of the PACs that has been supporting her in which they had women saying things to the effect of Amanda Adkins said she's a mom runs as a mom but I don't trust her to make decisions about my daughter and her healthcare, which is a pretty powerful way to come at that identity.

Speaker: Adkins tries to portray that she's like the average Kansas mother, but as a mom of teens, it really concerns me that we're taking rights away from them.

Sharice Davids: I'm Sharice Davids, I approve this message.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The candidates have another shared identity that's even more salient in this race. Here's the Kansas City Star's Daniel Desrochers.

Daniel Desrochers: I think that there is still an identity that is playing out in this race, but it's less about their individual identities and about how Kansas they are. It's almost this focus on civility on moderation on being bipartisan. They're going to vote with Kansans and not with their political party, that sort of thing. It's almost as if they're trying to distance themselves from the concept of Washington DC as this swamp for a vicious politically nasty place and position themselves as Kansans first.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Here's Adkins in the Kansas City PBS debate.

Amanda Adkins: People are feeling the pain across the board because of poor decisions that have been made by Washington DC and by Joe Biden that Ms. Sharice Davids has supported.

Emily Vietti: Amanda Adkins her main message about Sharice Davids has been that she votes with Joe Biden 100% of the time. I don't know if that message is sticking quite as well. I've seen a lot fewer commercials and a lot less written about that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Even though Adkins doesn't have a record, an elected office for Davids to take shots at, she's certainly not a newcomer to politics. Remember, she was the chair of the State's Republican party, and here's representative Davids on that debate stage again.

Sharice Davids: We cannot trust her with our education. Sam Brownback's, Senior eight being there right by his side, when they were decimating our public schools, they had to go down to four-day weeks.

Daniel Desrochers: The campaign for Representative Davids has been really emphasizing how entrenched she's been in Republican politics in Kansas, particularly by tying her to former governor, former Senator Sam Brownback in Kansas.

Sam Brownback: Hi, I'm Sam Brownback.

Daniel Desrochers: He was really unpopular when he left office to take an appointment with the Trump administration. That unpopularity has still stuck. It seems the way his tax experiment affected the state of Kansas really still clings on.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If you need a quick refresher on exactly what Governor Sam Brownback did, that was so unpopular

Daniel Desrochers: At the end of the day, they were trying to really cut taxes. They didn't necessarily do it with having enough revenue. Then they had to slice a lot of the public services that people rely on. It really affected the budget. People noticed it. They noticed that things weren't being funded. Very quickly the legislature acted to reverse those. They called it a big tax experiment to reverse the tax experiment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As a reporter for the Kansas City Star, Daniel had a ringside seat to this SHE-lection rematch.

Daniel Desrochers: I think that if you break down this race, you're looking at a Democratic candidate who's really trying to establish her bipartisan moderate bona fides. She's talking about bills that she passed that had Republican support. When Adkins talks about how she voted with Biden 100% of the time, she mentions that 70% of her bills have been bipartisan.

She's really trying to say, "Look, I am not like the other Democrats I'm willing to work with Republicans." The race that Amanda Adkins is trying to run is a little different in that she is trying to speak to a conservative base with the knowledge that this district is now a little bit more conservative than it used to be, while also keeping them at an arm's length.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Stay right where you are because we're not done yet with the SHE-lection in Kansas' Third Congressional District. Thanks for sticking with us on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris Perry. In the lead up to the midterms, we've been taking a special look at matchups across the country, political contests between two or more women. For our final race in this series of SHE-lections, we've been digging into Kansas' Third Congressional District. I'm still here with;

Emily Vietti: Emily Vietti, a gender and politics researcher at the Institute for Leadership Studies at the University of Kansas, and the director of Ready to Run Kansas.

Daniel Desrochers: I am Daniel Desrochers. I am the Washington Correspondent for The Kansas City Star.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Democratic Congresswoman Sharice Davids has represented the third congressional district since 2018. Her opponent is also her second time challenger, former chair of the Kansas Republican Party, Amanda Adkins. Adkins and Davids have been exchanging blows on some of the biggest issues in this election cycle, reproductive rights, and the economy. Messaging about crime and public safety has also begin a lot of airplay across the country, but has it been a knockout in this SHE-lection?

Emily Vietti: It has shown up in what I have seen less about guns and more around immigration and protecting the border, and then also drug crimes and fentanyl, specifically.

Daniel Desrochers: What the Republican seem to have been able to do is there is a real problem with fentanyl that's going on, particularly among kids who may be thinking that they're taking something else and then overdosing on it. What the Republicans seem to be trying to do is using that scary thing which is fentanyl and fentanyl overdoses, and tying that to the southern border because immigration is an issue that works really well for the Republican base.

It gets them riled up. It's been an issue that's worked well probably since the early 2000 when Rush Limbaugh was talking about it on his show. It's allowing them to connect issues that we would call red meat for the base like immigration, like drug overdoses like crime and tie it into this triangle. That topic isn't working as well as the economy clearly. Otherwise they would be talking about immigration and crime a lot more in their ads than they are about the economy.

It seems to be that the most potent issue in this race is the economy. That's the one that they keep stressing over and over again. That's the one that they're really leaning into.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Emily, talk to me a little bit about the work that you do with Kansas Ready to Run. What are its goals and how do you see this particular race as connected to the work that you do?

Emily Vietti: Ready to Run is a national program that was started at Rutgers University through the Center for American Women in Politics. We run the Kansas chapter here out of the University of Kansas and we focus on giving Kansas women the skills, knowledge, and competence to run for office to serve on civic boards and commissions and really to just be more civically engaged in their communities.

Because we are at an educational institution, we focus a lot on collegiate women. Our program is fairly new, I am always heightened to see races where we have two women running against each other. As I said, that hasn't happened a whole lot at the national level. Certainly Kansas has a great history of women serving an office. Kansas is one of the states that has had the most women governors with three, the entire United States has had fewer than 50 and three of them have been from Kansas.

I think that these kinds of races are both an opportunity and also we can use them as a showcase to show women that these things can be done, they can be done in our local communities. They can be done regardless of your political affiliation. We hear a lot about, Oh, you care that women are running for office, you must be situated progressively or liberally, but we're actually a nonpartisan. I prefer to say multi-partisan program training women all across Kansas. I am thrilled when we get to see women running in these high profile races against each other to show the women who are training with me that it absolutely can be done.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let me follow up on that when you-- because one of the things we've been interested in is how younger women and girls may or may not be responding in similar ways. When you talk with younger women and girls what've they been telling you about what this particular race might mean to them?

Emily Vietti: One of the things, and I wanted to circle back to this is that this framing of the race around Sam Brownback is not working for them at all. Our students are Gen Z's and young millennials that I'm around and spending most of my time with talking about elections, don't remember the Sam Brownback experiment. I think that it's an interesting case study in advertising because they're betting a lot on who's going to turn out.

We know traditionally that younger people turn out in lower numbers, but we're also starting to see those trends change with Gen Z as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Why is it important for women to run for office? Emily, I'll begin with you.

Emily Vietti: When women get into public office, women tend to draft and pass more legislation once they get there. Women are also more likely to work collaboratively even across the aisle to get things done. Also because "women's issues", and I'm putting that in air quotes if you could see me, women's issues are human issues. Women issues like healthcare, education, childcare, elder care are relegated to women's issues, and yet there is not a person who's going to stand in a box and vote this November who isn't touched by those issues.

Those issues matter to everyone. Having women at the table to shift policy agendas is incredibly important. Then finally, speaking to our younger voters and women who are coming up right now in thinking about what their political life might look like, I think it's really important that we disrupt the image of who can and who should have access to power. 51% of the population deserves at least half of the representation. Women running matters.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Daniel, I'll let you in on this one as well.

Daniel Desrochers: We need different perspectives. We need people if Congress just looks one way and is just a bunch of men coming from one perspective isn't very representative of the population. I think Emily put it really well, but just that idea of it's women are 51% of the population. If congress doesn't match that doesn't look like that. How well are they really reflecting and representing the American people.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Daniel Desrochers is Washington correspondent for The Kansas City Star, and Emily Vietti is director of Ready to Run Kansas. Thank you to both of you for joining us.

Daniel Desrochers: Thanks for having me.

Emily Vietti: Thank you so much.

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