photo by: Tracey Mann

U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann.

Rep. Tracey Mann, a Republican serving Kansas’ 1st Congressional District, is not planning on attending a candidate forum in Lawrence on Saturday, but a spokesman for the congressman declined to answer questions about where Mann would be on that day.

A spokesman for his Washington, D.C., office said Mann “has other meetings scheduled” for Saturday. The Journal-World asked for more details about what meetings were taking precedence over the candidate forum, but did not get any.

Mann’s office gave a similar response to the Lawrence-Douglas County Chapter of Women for Kansas, which will be hosting the event at 2:30 p.m. at the Lawrence Public Library, telling organizers that he has “another engagement” scheduled.

Asked whether he has plans to attend future forums in Lawrence before the Nov. 3 election, Mann’s office gave an indirect response, saying Mann is “very interested in speaking with Kansas voters,” and that he is “in Lawrence all the time.”

It is not clear, though, that Mann will end up participating in any candidate forums in Lawrence during this general election season. None have been announced that Mann has committed to attending. Lawrence is the largest city in Kansas’ 1st Congressional District, which stretches all the way to the Kansas-Colorado border. Lawrence also has the largest concentration of Democrats in the 1st District.

Mann’s two opponents in the race, Democrat Lauren Reinhold and Libertarian Steven Jacob, criticized Mann’s decision to skip the forum.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Reinhold told the Journal-World on Wednesday.

“As with most Republicans, they avoid Lawrence like the plague,” Jacob said in a text message.

Mann, a conservative from Gove County, will face Reinhold and Jacob next month in his third reelection bid for the 1st Congressional District. Lawrence was added to the district after a new congressional map was approved in 2022, which moved the city out of the 2nd Congressional District. The move was contentious, in part, because it paired a northeastern Kansas city with dissimilar western Kansas communities, and the redistricting also split the city of Lawrence from the rest of Douglas County. Douglas County areas outside of Lawrence are in the 2nd Congressional District.

While Mann isn’t planning on attending the forum on Saturday — and was absent at another forum in Hutchinson on Tuesday — he did show up in Hays on Monday, where all three candidates were present. Hays is in Ellis County, a Republican stronghold that voted for President Donald Trump in all three elections with more than 70% of the vote.

Reinhold gave Mann credit for showing up at the Hays event. At the Hutchinson forum, she was the lone candidate on stage. (Jacob did not receive an invitation, according to the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event.) She said it wasn’t easy being the only candidate present in a debate.

“It’s definitely harder to really discuss the issues,” Reinhold said, “because in a forum setting with a rebuttal there can really be back and forth discussion where the voters in the audience can really balance both sides of the issue.”

“It was definitely less helpful for the voters,” she added.

Mann has been representing the 1st Congressional District since 2021. He was contested in his two reelection bids, but easily overcame his challengers. Before seeking congressional office, he served as Kansas’ lieutenant governor for less than a year, from 2018 to 2019.

With less than four weeks until Election Day, the scramble is on, and Republicans in Kansas are pressing forward. Next week, the Kansas Republican Party will launch its “Take Back Kansas” tour, a six-day bus tour with stops in more than a dozen cities.

Prominent Kansas Republicans, including U.S. Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Mann, are expected to join the tour, according to a press release.

“The tour will visit more than 20 cities from Wichita to the Kansas City metro before closing in Kansas’s 4th Congressional District,” the release said.

Of the 21 cities listed, Lawrence isn’t one.