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00000179-cdc6-d978-adfd-cfc6d7d40002Coverage of the issues, races and people shaping Kansas elections in 2016, including statewide coverage in partnership with KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, and High Plains Public Radio.

If Pompeo Joins Trump Administration, Special Election Will Fill 4th Congressional District Seat

Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW/File photo
Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo speaks with attendees after a 4th Congressional District candidate debate in September.

If Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo is confirmed to the post of CIA director in the Trump administration, it will leave his House seat vacant.

Pompeo was recently re-elected to a fourth term in Congress. He beat out three challengers in the general election--Democrat Dan Giroux, independent Miranda Allen and Libertarian Gordon Bakken--and received 61 percent of the vote.

If the 4th Congressional District seat is vacated, it will be filled by a special election, explains Bryan Caskey, elections director with the Kansas secretary of state’s office.

“When a letter of resignation is submitted, then the governor will proclaim a day of a special election," he says. "He has to do that within five days of receiving notice of the resignation. And the date of the special election is between 45 and 60 days.”

Credit Ballotpedia.org
The 4th Congressional District boundaries.

The state Republican and Democratic parties will hold congressional conventions to elect their new nominees. Independent candidates can also get on the ballot if they collect signatures from 4 percent of registered voters in the district, which covers south-central Kansas.

The Republican Fourth District Convention has 126 members; each county in the district automatically gets two delegates, with larger counties having more. Sedgwick County has 66 delegates.

Caskey says the last time Kansas held a special election for a House seat was in 1950. The last special election for a Senate seat was in 1996, when Sen. Bob Dole ran for president.

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Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.