• Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly was ahead of the Republican with little less than 50% of the vote after more than 95% of ballots had been counted.
• Kelly’s victory gives Democrats the opportunity to veto some of the more conservative legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Democratic Governor Laura Kelly will win reelection in Kansas, defeating Republican state Attorney General Derek Schmidt in a state that former President Donald Trump won by 15 percentage points two years ago.

Kelly will do so by defeating Schmidt in a state that has a Republican attorney general.

Although both Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican candidate Derek Schmidt departed their election watch parties stating the results weren’t nearly clear enough to settle the contest, it appeared as though Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly was headed toward reelection.

But based on her lead as of early Wednesday morning, it appeared like Kelly would be able to secure a second term as a moderate Democrat governing a state that Donald Trump had previously won comfortably on two separate occasions.

Kelly was ahead of the Republican with little less than 50% of the vote after more than 95% of the ballots had been counted. In smaller rural counties, Schmidt won by sizable percentages, but Johnson County voters gave Kelly an advantage of more than 50,000 votes that he was unable to overcome.

She was maintaining her lead with slightly more than 19,600 votes out of more than 961,000 votes cast statewide.

Kelly’s victory, if the results hold, gives Democrats the opportunity to veto some of the more conservative legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, including measures that would further restrict abortion.

Conservative lawmakers could have tested how far the state’s top court would allow laws to make abortions more difficult to obtain in the state even though the state’s voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have made a ban conceivable in August.

Kelly stopped short of declaring victory but encouraged her followers anyway.

“There are just a few more votes that need to be counted,” she said. “And I believe once they are counted, we will win.”

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