LENEXA, Kan. — State Senator Dinah Sykes, a Democrat for three whole weeks, told the retirement home residents that she had felt ignored by Republican leaders. She said that she remained a political moderate. She promised that her views on policy hadn’t changed when she quit the Republican Party, only the letter beside her name.
But just like America, and just like Kansas, the roomful of Ms. Sykes’s constituents was divided.
“You flipped — I’m disenfranchised,” said Kent Crippin, 82. “And I’ve been a Republican all my life.”
Another man told her, “I still feel betrayed, and I won’t make the mistake of voting for you again.”
Ms. Sykes choked back tears as she responded. “If I’m not re-elected, that’s O.K., but I did what I felt was right,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.”
Ms. Sykes is one of four state lawmakers in Kansas who switched allegiances last month, walking away from the Republican Party that has controlled this state’s Capitol and dominated its politics for years. The defections won’t affect control of the Legislature — Republicans have plenty of votes to spare in Topeka — but they reveal a larger problem for the party as 2020 approaches, and one that reaches well beyond Kansas.
The departures reflect a political shift in suburban areas of Kansas, a state that surprised political experts by electing a Democrat as governor in November. That shift is part of a larger realignment in traditionally Republican suburbs across the country, where long-marginalized Democrats are now ascendant and where voters who are upset with President Trump, especially women, have punished some moderate Republican candidates.
All four of the lawmakers who announced in December that they were becoming Democrats are women, and all four are from Johnson County, just outside Kansas City, Mo. They each said that distaste for Mr. Trump and unease with Kansas’ increasingly conservative Republican Party contributed to the decision to leave.
Centrist Republican lawmakers in Johnson County have found themselves facing a painful choice: Leave the state’s dominant party and alienate loyal voters, or remain Republican despite clear shifts to the left in their districts.
“I’ve got constituents saying, ‘We’re cool with you, but how can you be associated with this?’” said State Representative Stephanie Clayton, describing the pressure she faced before leaving the Republican Party in December, a month after she was re-elected as a Republican.
