Republicans, for their part, have not been shy about their motives. In 2022, then-attorney general candidate Kris Kobach called judicial elections “another path” to restricting abortion, and predicted that instituting them would allow conservatives to “slowly and quietly” overhaul the Kansas Supreme Court. In November 2025, gubernatorial candidate Ty Masterson told anti-abortion voters that supreme court elections were the “solution” they’d been waiting for, as long as they had the good sense to play it cool in public.
“You can’t go out there and say it,” Masterson said, according to the Marion County Record. “Because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore.”
Read more at Talking Points Memo, originally published at Balls and Strikes