An interview with Rep. Brandon Woodard, Kansas House Minority Leader
When Rep. Brandon Woodard became House Minority Leader in 2025, the Kansas Democratic caucus did not have a single rural member. He told his colleagues what they had been doing wasn’t working, and his team set out to change course, visiting 14 cities across the state and focusing on small towns where Democrats had lost ground over the past decade.
“It was no longer us asking people for money or their vote a year and a half before the election,” Woodard said. “We were just saying, what do you care about?”
Those conversations shaped his next push: recruiting community-rooted candidates to run in these districts and grow the caucus.
Honest Advice for First-Time Candidates
Recruiting candidates was only half the battle. The other half was helping them run a viable campaign, the foundation of which starts with raising money. Woodard said ActBlue “transformed the game for down-ballot candidates” who don’t have a huge network of donors. He pointed to a recent example with Tandem Fundraising, which lets donors split one contribution across multiple campaigns on a single form. A donor to his leadership PAC, Yes We Kansas, told him she wanted to invest in the work being done by a variety of Kansas Democrats. All he had to do was send her one link, and her contribution was shared across multiple candidates at once, one of the many ways ActBlue makes giving easy.
Changing the Balance of Power
All of that recruiting and fundraising has been building toward one goal: breaking the Republican supermajority in the Kansas House. Asked directly what would change if Democrats pulled that off, Woodard immediately mentioned committee seats and the ability to stop conservative-backed amendments from being put before voters.
As an example, he pointed to two Republican-backed amendments that Kansas voters rejected: a 2022 abortion amendment and a 2026 amendment to elect Supreme Court justices. “Us breaking the supermajority means that we will have the votes to say, you’re not putting this on the ballot unless Democrats think it’s a good idea,” Woodard said. Not only that, but ending the supermajority and electing a Democratic governor, would also open the door to Medicaid expansion, medical marijuana, and fully funded special education.
All Eyes On Kansas
These efforts are playing out alongside a historic Senate contest. Kansans have a chance to send the first Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly a century, and Woodard said the energy is spilling into down-ballot races. He describes Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton, a longtime pastor, as someone who “represents the traditional center of Kansas,”and said Hamilton gives voters who are “terrified of what they’re seeing on the right” something to vote for, not just against.
How To Get Involved
For Kansans inspired by this moment, Woodard’s advice starts local: “You knocking doors or making phone calls for a state-level candidate is the literal difference of a win or a loss, and one canvassing shift can change that outcome.”
The ground in the heartland is shifting, and the people willing to show up, one door at a time, are the ones who are moving it.
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In the closing days of Election Day, pick one state legislative candidate from the ActBlue directory and sign up for a canvassing shift.
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