Kansas business law expert strives for competitive balance in U.S. House race

TOPEKA — Kansas congressional candidate Colin McRoberts tells potential voters the 1st District has gone long enough without representation by someone who really wanted the job.

“We’ve got someone who wants the position, wants the prestige, wants the power, who is willing to purchase it for himself in a safe district, but not someone who wants to actually do the work it takes to represent the 1st District,” he said on the Kansas Reflector podcast.

McRoberts, a Lawrence attorney making his first run in elective politics, has been campaigning for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the Aug. 4 primary along with Lauren Reinhold, also a Lawrence Democrat. The winner would have an opportunity to pursue the seat held by U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann, a Republican from Salina running for a fourth term in Congress. In the GOP primary, Mann squares off with Craig Musser of Ellinwood.

In McRoberts’ view, political partisanship and congressional gerrymandering produced a 1st District with all or part of 60 counties that stretched from the Colorado border into eastern Kansas. He said an explicit purpose of the four-district map was to maintain a “safe” GOP seat in the “Big First” while neutralizing influence of Democratic-leaning voters.

The goal was a 1st District that Mann and other Republicans could win by running for reelection on party identity rather than on accomplishment, McRoberts said.

“This is not a district that Democrats can win just by mobilizing Democratic votes,” he said. “The only way to win this district is with a coalition of Democrats, independents and even Republicans who are sick of the rot that’s infected the Republican Party. The Republican Party has no reason to send a candidate who’s willing to work, who is willing to do the job honestly and sincerely, as long as they think this is a safe seat.”

Career in law, academia

McRoberts was raised in Texas and earned degrees in international studies at Trinity University in San Antonio and law at Harvard University. In Chicago, he practiced law at a firm that specialized in litigating against banks and hedge funds on behalf of family businesses. He met and married Jennifer, a geneticist and a former Golden Gloves boxer. He worked 10 years advising businesses in two dozen countries on how to do better deals under difficult circumstances. She accepted a faculty position at the University of Kansas.

“I stayed in the negotiation field for a little bit, but got kind of tired of commuting to Copenhagen and Singapore,” he said.

McRoberts accepted a position in KU’s School of Business to teach business law and negotiation. He has taught an undergraduate course examining the sociological, psychological and legal framework behind conspiracy theories.

“I never really thought too much about politics,” he said. “I was politically interested and cared about the issues, but it never honestly occurred to me to run for office until a little over a year ago.”

He noticed U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, was to attend a March 2025 town hall in Oakley. In part, McRoberts wanted to learn about Marshall’s aversion to vaccination mandates. Questions from the crowd, which included Kansans concerned about President Donald Trump’s job cuts and handling of war in Ukraine, irritated Marshall.

Marshall walked out before the scheduled end of the town hall. He claimed the gathering was sabotaged by political operatives. McRoberts posted footage to social media of Marshall’s exit from the town hall that was included in news coverage of the event. The video drew more attention than anything said at the town hall.

The senator’s conduct illustrated what could happen when an elected representative didn’t feel it necessary to engage voters with divergent ideas, McRoberts said.

“The 1st District has the same problem, a safe seat that gives us weak representation by a guy who just fundamentally does not care about the district,” McRoberts said.

He said that led to his filing for the congressional seat held by Mann and a campaign that incorporated a strategic goal of building the Democratic Party in rural areas of the state.

“Our goal is to make sure that whoever runs next, again, whether it’s me or somebody else, they know that the bar has been set higher. We’ve already exceeded the fundraising totals of the last two Democratic candidates combined. We’re showing that this is a competitive race, and that’s going to raise the bar for Democrats going forward,” McRoberts said.

On the issues

In terms of campaign issues, McRoberts said residents of the 1st District who depended on agriculture to drive the economy were vexed that Trump’s tariff policies undercut global marketing of crops and contributed to escalation of fuel and fertilizer costs.

“I teach business and we’ve been using for a long time tariffs as an example of one of the impediments on business,” McRoberts said. “I ask people on the trail all the time, ‘Can you imagine any circumstance in which Tracy Mann would stand up and say the Republican president is wrong?’ It absolutely will never happen.”

McRoberts said Congress should reverse the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which for decades relied on U.S. crops to provide food aid on a global scale. Staff reductions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have delayed processing of documents for federal programs relied on by Kansas farmers, he said.

He said the Trump administration’s decisions to diminish federally funded research was a blunder. Congress allowed the president to kill research programs “for very political and very stupid reasons,” he said.

Congress should stand up to Trump in terms of war with Iran, McRoberts said. The U.S. House should demand respect the rule of law among people working at the U.S. Department of Justice, by immigration enforcement officers and officials in the Trump administration engaged in conflicts of interest.

“As a lawyer, I look at what’s happening at the DOJ, and we’re seeing horrific things all around the country: Prosecutions that have absolutely no business going forward, indictments that are failing,” McRoberts said.