Four candidates — two Republicans, one Democrat, and one Libertarian — are running to represent Kansas’ 2nd Congressional District covering much of eastern Kansas outside the Kansas City suburbs.
The newcomers say Congress needs fresh faces. Voters will decide which candidates advance to the general election in the Aug. 4 primary.
Meanwhile, incumbent Republican Derek Schmidt aligns himself with President Donald Trump. His opponent in the GOP primary, Chad Young, touts himself as a strong anti-government candidate.
Libertarian candidate John Hauer said he doesn’t expect to win, but he’s running to rally for a smaller federal government.
Democrat Don Coover says Congress should worry more about the affordability of housing, food and health care. Coover does not have a primary opponent.
The Libertarian Party of Kansas nominated Hauer at its state convention in April.
Democrats have a strong shot to win control of the U.S. House in November, but the 2nd District is seen as a safe seat for Republicans. The seat has not been held by a Democrat since Rep. Nancy Boyda lost re-election in 2008 after a single term in Congress.
Since that election, the district has been redrawn. Experts say the district was gerrymandered, but the Kansas Supreme Court said it was constitutional.
Boyda ran against Schmidt in 2024, and lost by nearly 19 percentage points.
Schmidt has the clear lead in fundraising. Between January 2025 and March 2026, Schmidt raised almost $1 million in campaign donations. Coover raised about $517,000 in the same period. Young and Hauer do not take donations.
Republican candidates
Derek Schmidt, Republican incumbent
Political experience: The incumbent U.S. Representative from Independence, Kansas, has spent the majority of his career in elected office. He served in the Kansas Senate from 2001 to 2011. He was majority leader six of those years. He served as Kansas attorney general from 2011 to 2023.
Schmidt listed his accomplishments from his time as attorney general as challenging parts of the Affordable Care Act, fighting emissions regulations and opposing vaccine mandates.
Schmidt won the Republican nomination for governor in 2022 and lost to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly by two percentage points. He briefly worked at the Husch Blackwell law firm before running for the open 2nd Kansas Congressional District seat in 2024. He won easily.
Schmidt serves on the House armed service, judiciary, and small business committees.
What else? Schmidt spent six years working for former Kansas U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum. The three-term GOP senator co-chaired Schmidt’s initial campaign for Kansas attorney general in 2010, but she endorsed his Democratic opponent for governor in 2022.
Schmidt was seen as a moderate Republican in the beginning of his career. More recently, he’s aligned himself more with President Donald Trump. For instance, he challenged the 2020 election results, advocated for “Biden-proof” borders, and sought to ban transgender athletes from school sports.
Schmidt secured Trump’s endorsement in his gubernatorial run, and again for his congressional run in 2024 and this year’s re-election.
Platform: Schmidt is running again to maintain the Republican majority in the U.S. House, specifically to solidify Trump’s policy objectives into federal law.
His campaign site focuses on three main issues: border security, public safety and economic relief. He co-sponsored the act that made it easier for federal immigration officials to detain and deport people without legal status who have been charged with a crime, introduced legislation to strengthen police background checks and to strengthen competition for small businesses.
Chad Young, Republican challenger
Political experience: Young has never held an elected office, which he says is a good thing.
“Politicians have destroyed our country,” Young told KCUR. “Any time you spend 15, 25, 51 years in Congress, you’re paid off. You’re bought off. Lobbyists have bought you off.”
Young said he is funding his campaign entirely on his own, and won’t take money from anyone — including individual donors. His Federal Election Commission campaign finance listing doesn’t show any data.
What else? Young first ran for Congress in 2024 in a five-way Republican primary to replace former Rep. Jake LaTurner. He garnered 5% of the vote, but said he would run “again, and again, and again. Till it’s done.”
Young lives in Lawrence.
Young says his nonprofit, Lifeskills Programs — which aims to help youth and underprivileged people through boxing — is operating in Arkansas and Kansas, with a third location to open in Oklahoma. The business is not registered in Kansas and its Arkansas registration has expired.
Platform: The operative word in Young’s campaign is “no.”
No to big pharma, specifically “I swear to fight unto death to wipe them out.” No to big government — he wants to abolish multiple federal agencies and eliminate all taxes. No to lobbyists. A big no to data centers. He’s worried about the environmental and health impacts they could create.
He is particularly concerned with government surveillance. He’s against the widespread deployment of security cameras and license plate readers, and he says that digitizing ID cards is “another way to track you and take more freedom away.”
He also worries that coming 6G cellular networks threaten human health. But he is a fan of raw milk, and said that “man created synthetic foods out of greed.”
The Libertarian candidate
John Hauer, Libertarian challenger
Political experience: Hauer has never held elected office, but he has held positions for Libertarian organizations. Hauer is a veteran and works as a delivery driver and at a warehouse. He is based in Topeka.
“I’m running because there’s really nobody else that I know of that really represents my people, a.k.a., working class, the working poor,” Hauer told KCUR.
What else? He is not taking any donations for office because he is not doing it to win — he’s doing it to spread a message.
“The federal government doesn’t really do a whole lot for us,” Hauer said. “I understand that it’s there to protect our borders. But … most of what they’re doing beyond protecting our borders is wasting our money and causing inflation.”
Platform: Hauer wants a smaller — but not non-existent — federal government. He is especially tired of tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations. While he doesn’t want to tax them more — he wants to get rid of the federal income tax entirely — he certainly doesn't want to tax them less.
Hauer also wants to get rid of all foreign military bases. He was deployed to Iraq twice.
“I’ve always been sort of anti-war in principle,” Hauer said. “After seeing it in person, I’m never going back to pro-war.”
The Democratic candidate
Don Coover, Democratic challenger
Political experience: Coover is a political newcomer.
He wants to head to Congress to be the voice of Kansans feeling the impact of policies — especially ones that affect affordability. The Galesburg-based Democrat said his decision to run “isn’t about party or politics.”
What else? He’s a veteran, veterinarian, and rancher.
Coover graduated from West Point. He toured in Korea as a pilot and cryptographic operations officer. After serving in the U.S. Army, Coover became a veterinarian through Kansas State University and re-entered the Army to provide his veterinary services. He now helps to run the family business, which specializes in veterinary services for farm animals.
He spent most of his life as a registered Republican, and describes himself as “middle of the road.”
Platform: Coover’s website says he wants to “move our country in the right direction for my granddaughter and for Kansans.” How? By ending corruption like political insider trading and no-bid contracts, and boosting rural hospitals by protecting Medicare.
He’s especially concerned with affordability for Kansans. He said the One Big Beautiful Bill, with its tax changes for wealthy Americans, exacerbated pre-existing affordability issues.
“We have shifted the tax burden,” Coover told KCUR. “Not on those people that have the most ability to pay, and certainly have had the most success in their financial lives utilizing the structure that the United States has paid for. That’s illogical, I think immoral, and I think it’s stupid.”
Braeden Curwick, a 28-year-old Democrat, withdrew from the congressional race and is now aiming for the Statehouse.