U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt determined to help GOP deliver on campaign promises

2nd District congressman to be lone former state attorney general in U.S. House

BY: TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA — U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt was persuaded by coffee shop chatter and November exit polling that voters were motivated in 2024 by a desire to elect politicians who could effectively do the basic work of governing.

“It wasn’t so much that folks want this or that,” Schmidt said. “It’s that they want something to happen, to show motion, which they then can judge as to whether it’s progress or not. That’s consistent with … a lot of the coffee-shop talk around the 2nd District.”

On the Kansas Reflector podcast, Schmidt said it was safe to assume the clock on the GOP would start ticking in January as soon as Republicans regained the White House with President-elect Donald Trump and assumed leadership of the U.S. Senate in addition to the U.S. House. It was reasonable to think that window of opportunity for an all-GOP D.C. could close with elections in 2026.

“We don’t have to solve every problem, but we have to make progress on many of the things that we’ve talked about,” he said.

Schmidt, 56, won a competitive August primary and coasted through the November general election in the eastern Kansas district. He was chosen by voters to replace U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican who declined to seek reelection. Schmidt focused his campaign on support for Trump and a commitment to border security, inflation reduction through lower government spending and relief from federal overregulation.

Schmidt was no stranger to politics after 12 years as the state’s attorney general and a decade in the Kansas Senate. He narrowly lost the 2022 governor’s race to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

‘Unified government’

In Washington, he has been appointed to the House Judiciary Committee. He’ll be the only former state attorney general in the 435-member House. He also was chosen to serve on the House Armed Services Committee. The state hosts Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth as well as the Kansas National Guard’s refueling wing in Topeka.

“Armed services is very important for the district, as well as obviously, for the country,” Schmidt said. “We face a time when, you know, America’s positioning around the world is a bit challenging, a bit in flux. That’s an area I can help fill a gap that would be very good for the state and for the 2nd District in particular.”

He said his previous work as majority leader of the Kansas Senate and as leader of the attorney general’s office from 2011 to 2023 would serve him well at the U.S. Capitol. That background could speed his learning curve in terms of legislative fundamentals. It ought to help with dynamics of interacting with people who come at issues from different perspectives and in anticipating consequences of public policy in terms of the federal bureaucracy and courts.

One clear distinction would be the thin majority Republicans hold in Washington compared to the large GOP majority that has existed in Topeka, he said.

“At some points, it may be down to one vote. That’s difficult, holding everybody together,” Schmidt said. “But the flip side of that is we’ll have unified government with Republican control in all three areas.”

Immigration, border

Schmidt’s campaign mirrored calls by Trump and others to bring order to national border crossings and to create more robust physical and law enforcement barriers to illegal entry into the United States.

There should be greater public awareness the past 3.5 years included the largest migration of people into the United States in history, Schmidt said. That’s part of the reason immigration gained so much traction among voters in 2024, he said.

“More than half of the people in the largest wave of migration to this country in our history came here in violation of our laws,” Schmidt said. “It is a different problem than just the sort of ongoing traditional dynamics of managing migration to a nation of immigrants, and I think that’s why you’ve seen so much public reaction to it on both sides.”

Schmidt said the initial focus of Congress ought to be on individuals who entered the United States without proper documentation and subsequently committed criminal offenses. He said as many as 1.3 million immigrants convicted of deportable felonies remained in the country.

He said it was impossible to have a rational discussion about immigration policy without better control of who was coming in and out of the United States.

In fiscal year 2024, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations reached a 10-year high. The 271,000 unauthorized immigrants deported under President Biden surpassed the highest mark set by Trump during his first term as president.

Inflation adjustments

In terms of inflation, Schmidt said the rapid rise in costs abated after surging through the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive infusion of federal dollars into the economy. There was no quick solution to the nation’s struggle with higher prices at the grocery store, he said.

“If there were a magic wand on inflation, it would have been waived already,” he said. “Just passing a bill that says make inflation go away isn’t going to work. The answer to what do we do is the old adage, ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.'”

Schmidt said the best move for Congress on domestic inflation would be to control spending and slow deficit financing of the government. In that sense, he was encouraged by ideas floated by billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who were selected by Trump to serve as special advisers on government efficiency.

“I don’t claim to know Mr. Musk. But we had a briefing the other day where he and Mr. Ramaswamy came and talked to the Republican conference, including those of us who are going to be new members, about what their project is — their DOGE project. It was useful. And, I have to admit, I was impressed by both of them. They came across very, very thoughtful,” Schmidt said.

Federal regulation

Schmidt said he was driven to reduce the growth in federal regulation, especially expansion of the administrative state by agency employees. He said recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions had put meaningful walls around agency discretion.

In this moment, he said, Congress had to accept responsibility for being less vague when drafting legislation so there were fewer opportunities for bureaucrats to shape laws.

He said he had always been a champion of free-trade and was wary of calls for sweeping tariffs on imports. Tariffs could make imported goods more expensive for U.S. consumers and, if retaliation occurred, render U.S. exports less competitive with suppliers from other countries.

“In the first Trump administration, yes, the president levied some tariffs, and yes, there was a price paid for those. But overall, he was pretty targeted. He was pretty effective in trying to change the behavior of some of our trading partners with tariffs that were much more targeted than the rhetoric was,” Schmidt said.