Democrat Sharice Davids wins Kansas Farm Bureau PAC endorsement, a first for KC-area rep

Rep. Sharice Davids has won the endorsement of the Kansas Farm Bureau’s political arm, with the state’s most influential agricultural group coming to view the Kansas City-area Democrat as a reliable ally as Congress struggles to pass a farm bill.

The nod marks the first time the Kansas Farm Bureau’s political action committee - Voters Organized to Elect Farm Bureau Friends, or VOTE FBF – has weighed in on the state’s 3rd Congressional District since backing Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder, who lost to Davids, in 2018. Davids has consolidated support since then, earning a greater percentage of the vote in each election.

While the core of Davids’s district is centered on highly-populated suburban Johnson County, state Republican lawmakers redrew its boundaries in 2022 to include more rural areas southwest of the Kansas City metro area. In turn, Davids secured a position on the House Agriculture Committee.

Davids’s position on the committee has given Kansas additional influence as Congress develops the next farm bill – a package of agricultural and food assistance policy approved by Congress every few years. The most recent legislation, from 2018, will expire at the end of September after a previous extension.

Democrats may retake the House from Republicans in November. Davids’s reelection would ensure either way that Kansas has at least one representative in the majority on the House Agriculture Committee because Republican Rep. Tracey Mann, who represents Kansas’ 1st District and will likely win reelection, also sits on the committee.

The Kansas Farm Bureau’s PAC announced the endorsement in a message to its members on Thursday.

“Rep. Davids has worked to build relationships with our members across the 3rd District,” Kansas Farm Bureau President Joe Newland said in a statement.

“From water conservation to her service on the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Davids has sought the input of farmers and ranchers as part of her decision-making process,” Newland said. “I’m confident she’s the right choice for agriculture and look forward to her re-election.”

Davids in a statement said she was humbled to receive the endorsement and that she would continue working to support “our agricultural economy and the hardworking families who make it thrive.”

“Kansas farmers and ranchers are the backbone of our state, and I’m committed to ensuring their voices are heard in Washington,” Davids said.

Davids faces Republican Prasanth Reddy, a Lenexa physician, on the November ballot.

The Kansas Farm Bureau PAC endorsement comes after Davids in May joined other Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee in a largely party-line vote against advancing a Republican-backed farm bill. Davids praised some provisions in the bill but criticized a reduction in food assistance funding and the reallocation of dollars intended to help farmers implement climate-friendly practices.

After the vote, Reddy sharply criticized Davids’s position. He said Kansas producers “need a leader they can count on.” Reddy, whose family emigrated from India when he was a child, said his family moved to Kansas because the state is an agricultural leader.

“Sharice Davids voted against the Farm Bill. That’s absurd, and it’s a betrayal of Kansas farmers and ranchers. But that’s what you can expect from a professional politician who puts party leaders before common sense. Let’s vote against Sharice Davids in November,” Reddy said in a May statement.

Davids said after the vote that the bill while including many great provisions, would have provided “false hope” to farmers and put Kansans into hunger. She has praised the bill’s strengthening of crop insurance and boosted agricultural research – items she previously identified in a Star op-ed as two of her priorities for the bill.

Davids said in May she was committed to upholding the Kansas tradition of bipartisan agricultural policy.

“To truly support Kansas’ agricultural economy, we must put Kansans first, stop playing political games, and promote a broadly bipartisan Farm Bill that can realistically make it across the finish line,” Davids said in May. “There are many provisions in this bill we all agree on, which is why I remain optimistic.”

Despite the vote by the House Agriculture Committee, that version of the bill will almost certainly not pass Congress. It appears to lack support to pass the full House, where Republicans hold only a razor-thin majority.

Davids has also cultivated a relationship with former Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican long associated with the farm bill process who left the Senate in early 2021. In March she participated in a farm bill-focused event in Johnson County with Roberts, U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small and others.

She has also held a farm bill listening tour within the 3rd District, which extends from southern Wyandotte County south and west past Garnett.