• Johnson County, KS Sheriff: Republican voters in Kansas' largest county could do something almost unthinkable in the Trump-era GOP: replace an incumbent fond of spreading election conspiracy theories with a challenger who has expressed faith that votes are being counted fairly.
That incumbent is Sheriff Calvin Hayden, who has spent the last three years probing local elections in Johnson County, a populous suburban region outside of Kansas City that has swung sharply to the left in recent years. The Kansas City Star writes that, while Hayden has said little about what he's looking into, he seems focused on an election software company called Konnech.
According to the Star, however, local election officials used Konnech's products to manage personnel in 2020, not for any voting-related tasks. Konnech, which has been at the center of other right-wing conspiracies, has dismissed Hayden's efforts as a "baseless investigation for the past several years into nonexistent election fraud."
Hayden announced Monday that his inquiry, which has not resulted in any charges, "is no longer active," though he nevertheless made it clear he's not letting the matter go.
"It's absolutely not over," the two-term sheriff said at a primary debate the following day. "It's now not being actively investigated until we get more information."
Hayden's intra-party foe, former undersheriff Doug Bedford, had a different take. Bedford accused Hayden of wasting taxpayer money on his crusade while refusing to provide local officials with any actionable information.
"We've had a lot of elections since the 2020 election," Bedford said at Tuesday's debate. "If there is an issue going on with our election process, tell us what it is." Bedford added that he would terminate Hayden's probe if he found it lacking.
"Yes, I would look into the investigation to find out if there is anything there," he said. "If there's nothing there, then I would immediately shut down the investigation, and it would be closed."
The two candidates also presented very different responses when they were asked if they trust Johnson County elections.
"Honestly I can't say that I do," Hayden insisted, "knowing what I know and knowing the information we have uncovered."
Bedford, by contrast, argued that "there's been no evidence at this point that proves we can't trust it." Still, Bedford, like his opponent, did not provide an answer when the moderator asked if he'd accept the results of the Aug. 6 primary.
Bedford also used the forum to take Hayden to task for calling local elected officials "communists" at a far-right conference last year. The sheriff is no stranger to such crowds: As Star columnist Derek Donovan writes, Hayden addressed the 2022 national gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which the Anti-Defamation League has classified as an "anti-government extremist group."
Whoever wins the GOP nomination will face Prairie Village Police Chief Byron Roberson, a Democrat who was the first Black person to lead a police department in the county. Roberson cited the success of local Democrats in recent years when he told the Star back in March, "The political conditions in Johnson County would have to say a Democrat is a favorite."
That's a very different state of affairs than Johnson County Democrats are used to. After Woodrow Wilson carried the county in 1916, Democrats would not do so again for more than a century. During that long stretch, Republicans could usually depend on its support in tight statewide elections. (One such beneficiary was the late Sen. Bob Dole, whose strong showing in Johnson County helped him narrowly win reelection during the 1974 Watergate wave.)
The area's longstanding GOP leanings were tested in the 2010s, though, after then-Gov. Sam Brownback's radical tax cuts devastated local schools and hardline Republicans replaced pragmatists in the legislature. Still, the GOP remained the dominant faction: Donald Trump took the county 47-44 in 2016, while Hayden won his first general election uncontested.
But Johnson County, like many other well-educated suburban enclaves, reacted to the Trump administration by punishing the party down the ballot. Democrats Laura Kelly and Sharice Davids both carried the county in 2018 as they were respectively flipping the governorship and the 3rd Congressional District. Joe Biden's 53-45 victory here two years later finally snapped the GOP's winning streak at the top of the ticket, though Hayden won his second term, again without opposition.
Johnson County again helped Kelly and Davids prevail in 2022, and the Democrats' strong showing in local school board elections last year was another sign that it wasn't done moving to the left. Regardless of the outcome of the showdown between Hayden and Bedford, Roberson and Democrats throughout the region are hoping this trend will continue into November.