Kansas senator leans into bipartisan allure in campaign for Kansas governor
Kansas Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Johnson County Democrat seeking the party's 2026 nomination for governor, appears for a recording of the Kansas Reflector podcast. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — All four of Democratic state Sen. Cindy Holscher successful campaigns for the Kansas Legislature were in districts distinguished by the strong influence of Republicans and independents.
Her political career began with defeat of GOP incumbent Rep. Amanda Grosserode in 2016 and reelection to that Johnson County seat in the Kansas House. Next was her 2020 campaign for a Kansas Senate seat held by retiring GOP Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, in which Holscher defeated former Republican Rep. James Todd.
Now, in her biggest electoral test, Holscher is asking red-state Kansas to make her the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor in 2026 so she can attempt to follow in footsteps of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
“It’s great training ground for a governor’s run. Of course, on the state level, you can’t just win with Democrat numbers. You have to have Republicans and independents,” Holscher said. “Kansans want commonsense solutions. That’s what it’s all about. I’m going to listen to people. I’m going to collaborate and work together with peers. I’m going to listen to the experts in terms of health care and issues like that.”
Voters of Kansas have a history of moving between Republican and Democratic governors. It began in 1965 with Republican William Avery, who was followed by Democrat Robert Docking, Republican Robert Bennett, Democrat John Carlin, Republican Mike Hayden, Democrat Joan Finney and Republican Bill Graves. From 2003 to 2011, Democrats Kathleen Sebelius and Mark Parkinson held the office. Republicans Sam Brownback and Jeff Colyer were in change from 2011 to 2019, at which point Kelly was elected to back-to-back terms as governor. She leaves office in January 2027.
“I wouldn’t have entered this race if there weren’t a path to victory for me,” Holscher said during a Kansas Reflector podcast interview.
She’s competing in the August 2026 primary against state Sen. Ethan Corson, D-Fairway, and Lawrence resident Marty Tuley.
Statehouse experience
Holscher, 56, said her nine years in the Legislature and a demonstrated ability to work across the aisle to pass legislation made her a viable candidate for governor.
She said she was among a group of House members who worked to adopt a bill in 2017 to expand eligibility for Medicaid. It wasn’t implemented because the House fell a few votes shy of overcoming Brownback’s veto.
She was a founder of the Women’s Bipartisan Caucus in the Legislature that formulated a plan to repeal the Brownback administration’s 2012 decision to slash state income taxes without sufficient resources to sustain funding for core programs in education, transportation and social services. The tax law was largely reversed in 2017 on a bipartisan vote after budget shortfalls made the tax policy unsustainable.
“We’ve had a lot of things happen every year since ending the experiment,” Holscher said. “Though, of course, the Brownback allies, the MAGA extremists, they have wanted to restart the Brownback experiment or some version of it. This is the concern.”
Holscher said Kansas was at a “crisis point” at the Capitol because two-thirds Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate continued to move damaging legislation to Kelly’s desk. The governor has relied on her veto authority, but she has been overridden many times.
In the future, Holscher said the presence of a Democratic governor and shrinking of the GOP’s numerical advantage in the House were important to balancing state policy.
“I’m not only committed to winning my race in terms of the governor’s race. I’m committed to flipping a few of those House seats. We just have to change the makeup of this Legislature,” she said.
‘That’s cheating’
She opposed the effort by Republicans in the Legislature to call a special session in November to consider new boundaries of the four congressional districts in a bid to undermine reelection of U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat serving the 3rd District in the Kansas City area. It would be done at behest of President Donald Trump, who has been anxious about the GOP’s potential loss of the U.S. House next year. The new Kansas map would divide Johnson County voters among two or three congressional districts.
“A lot of people are very concerned about this in Johnson County,” Holscher said. “It’s a scheme that is aimed to dilute the votes of hundreds of thousands of Kansans. There’s no reason to redistrict mid-decade except to rig the system in one party’s favor over another. Frankly, that’s not democracy. That’s cheating.”
Holscher was born on a farm at Slater, Missouri, as the granddaughter of tenant farmers. Her father worked in concrete construction, while her mother was employed at the local school as a bus driver and custodian.
She earned a degree at the University of Missouri to become a first-generation college graduate. Eventually, she moved to Johnson County to start a family. She worked in marketing before entering the Legislature.
In the statehouse, Holscher has been an advocate of funding K-12 public schools and an opponent of shifting millions of tax dollars to private schools.
“I’m a product of public schools. That’s what helped me rise out of poverty. I’m just so grateful to my teachers, the teachers my kids had who have had a profound impact on them. Our public schools hold together our communities,” she said.
She said private school vouchers were marketed as “school choice” and a way to assist lower-income kids enroll in better schools. In reality, she said, “it’s just a transfer of wealth” because seven of 10 vouchers go to families in which children already attend private school.
Holscher has been a supporter of abortion rights in the Legislature. She opposed the proposed 2022 amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have made it easier to restrict reproductive health services in Kansas. The amendment failed by a margin of 59% to 41%. At stake was a Kansas Supreme Court decision that says the state constitution offered Kansans a fundamental right to bodily autonomy, which included the decision to end a pregnancy.
“We settled that essentially with the amendment in 2022,” Holscher said. “Some of the extremists in the Legislature want to keep bringing that topic back. The public overwhelmingly said they wanted to protect access to reproductive health care.”
Holscher said as governor she would work to moderate the cost of living in Kansas, including essentials such as child care, health care and housing.
“My focus is on just making sure that, you know, we are working to make life more affordable for Kansans,” she said. “I come from, essentially, a background that struggled. I can understand those situations.”