Topeka ? Gardner Mayor Chris Morrow announced Wednesday that he will run as a Democrat against Sen. Julia Lynn, R-Olathe, in the 9th District of Johnson County.

Morrow said in a telephone interview that he is running because of what he called a “crisis of confidence” in state government.

“Gov. (Sam) Brownback and his allies, including Sen. Lynn, in the Legislature have created uncertainty with disastrous policies regarding taxes, education funding and health care accessibility,” he said. “They have pillaged the state’s transportation program to try and fix it. I think this is creating a crisis of confidence across the state and the way people see us across the country.”

Morrow is the third sitting Democratic officeholder in recent weeks to announce plans to challenge an incumbent Republican in the Senate.

Chris Morrow

Sen. Julia Lynn

He follows Saline County Clerk Don Merriman, who announced in the 24th District against Sen. Tom Arpke on Tuesday; and Oxford school board president Don Shimkus, who announced in the 32nd District against Sen. Steve Abrams Nov. 18.

Morrow is a Navy veteran who has lived in the southern Johnson County area for 10 years. He has spent most of his civilian career working for various employment agencies.

He was elected to the Gardner City Council in 2013. Although municipal races are officially nonpartisan, Morrow said he was “outed” as a Democrat during the campaign, but still finished first in an eight-person race.

Two years later, he ran for mayor and unseated an incumbent Republican who’d been in city government for 18 years.

Still, he faces an uphill battle against Lynn, who was appointed to the seat in 2005 and has won three elections in her own right since then. In 2014, she won with 64 percent of the vote against Democrat Merlin Ring.

In 2014, Brownback carried the district in the gubernatorial race with 54 percent of the vote, significantly better than his statewide average of 49.8 percent. In the 2012 presidential race, Republican Mitt Romney carried the district with 60 percent of the vote, about equal to his statewide average.

Lynn currently chairs the Senate Commerce Committee where, in 2015, she pushed for legislation to prohibit public agencies and school districts from collecting union dues through payroll deductions. That bill failed to win approval, however.

But she also sponsored two bills that did become law: one banning a certain type of abortion procedure that abortion opponents call “dismemberment” abortions; and the “constitutional carry” gun law that allows people to carry concealed firearms without a permit.

The abortion bill was overturned as unconstitutional by a Shawnee County judge. The full 14-judge Kansas Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in an appeal of that decision next week.