The National Republican Congressional Committee's reported last-minute ad buy to bolster GOP enthusiasm in Kansas ahead of Tuesday's special election appears to signal worries about a reliably red House district.
Last month, the Cook Political Report rated the race to replace CIA Director Mike Pompeo in Kansas' 4th District "Safe Republican."
"Kansas should not be in play, but Kansas is in play," one Kansas GOP consultant told Politico, which first reported the ad buy for GOP state Treasurer Ron Estes, who is running for Pompeo's House seat.
New York magazine reported the jitters are a surprise in the 4th district, where Pompeo last November easily won his race, President Donald Trump won by 27 percentage points – and no Democrat has won a presidential or House election since 1992.
"If the idea is that Republicans need to beat expectations in all these special elections to avoid a buzzkill for the troops or a Twitter screed from the White House, the NRCC going medieval on Thompson makes some sense," New York magazine's Ed Kilgore wrote.
"But if they're really worried about losing KS-4, that should terrify" Republicans, he wrote.
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