TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans held onto an eastern Kansas congressional seat Tuesday they had been in danger of losing because of questions about their novice candidate’s public statements.

Steve Watkins defeated Democrat Paul Davis in the 2nd District and will replace retiring five-term GOP Rep. Lynn Jenkins.

Davis was better known as a former Kansas House minority leader and he had carried the district in an unsuccessful run for governor in 2014.

But the district leans Republican: Trump carried it by nearly 17 percentage points in 2016, and Watkins had the president’s endorsement.

Watkins, a former Army officer and government contractor, emerged from a bruising seven-person primary that saw one opponent label him a “fraud” and some local leaders question his commitment to the Republican Party.

Watkins told his supporters that he would work to bring conservative values and military leadership to Congress.

“You took a leap of faith in me,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”

He told WIBW-TV in a short interview that he will focus on immigration and economic issues.

Davis conceded defeat in the race and told a Lawrence crowd that he is done seeking public office. Davis said he called Watkins and congratulated him on his victory.

“He has served our country and I wish him well,” Davis said in remarks at the Douglas County watch party for the Democratic Party in downtown Lawrence.

Topeka voter Tuffy Radford, a 37-year-old Republican, said he voted for Watkins because was confident enough about the economy earlier this year to start his own tile-setting business after struggling to find work a few years ago.

“I need to keep the economy going in my direction,” he said. “The economy’s booming.”

Watkins himself emerged as an issue despite his attractive profile as a political outsider and a West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan and then worked there, in Iraq and in Central Asia as a government contractor. He’s run the famed Iditarod dog sled race twice in Alaska and attempted to scale Mount Everest in 2015.

But he was caught exaggerating his role in a small business in the Middle East and removed a quote about his “heroic leadership” during the Mount Everest expedition attributed to his guide, after the guide told The Associated Press that he’d never said it.

Even before, Republican critics noted that the Topeka native had spent most of his adult life living outside Kansas and had not voted in the state until a municipal election in November 2017, after he’d decided to run for Congress.

Also, Watkins’ father, a Topeka physician, was heavily involved in the race as the almost-exclusive source of funding for a political action committee, Kansans Can Do Anything, boosting his son’s candidacy. The elder Watkins contributed more than $765,000 to the PAC.

One former GOP foe, ex-state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, called him “a charlatan, a fraud and an opportunist,” days before the August primary, though he later wouldn’t criticize Watkins. Some GOP leaders also were wary of him after three Democrats said publicly that he met with them last year about running as a Democrat — something he strongly disputed.

___

CHICAGO (AP) — Immigration and health care were the most important issues for Kansas voters casting midterm election ballots, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate.

As voters cast ballots for governor and members of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, AP VoteCast found that nearly half of Kansas voters said the country is on the right track, while half said the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Here’s a snapshot of who voted and why in Kansas, based on preliminary results from AP VoteCast, an innovative nationwide survey of about 135,000 voters and nonvoters — including 3,786 voters and 755 nonvoters in the state of Kansas — conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

___

TOP ISSUES

About a quarter of Kansas voters considered health care to be the most important issue influencing their vote while another quarter named immigration as the top issue.

Margaret Masilionis, an 84-year-old state worker and self-described “proud Democrat,” said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is wrong.

“We all came from immigrants, Masilionis said. “I don’t understand how we can exclude people and go to bed at night feeling that we’re fair Americans.”

But Keith Noe, a 79-year-old semi-retired farmer who lives outside the small town of Lecompton, said he wanted to see the border wall built, adding that his views were shaped by living near the Mexican border in California in the 1990s.

“The farmers down there had to shut down their dairies down there because of illegal aliens c

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A former employee of a suburban Kansas City youth mental health facility has been placed on probation for sex charges.

27-year-old Dijon Willis will have to serve 30 days in jail as a condition of probation. He also was ordered Monday to undergo sex offender treatment and be placed on the state’s sex offender registry for 25 years.

Willis pleaded no contest in August and was found guilty of indecent liberties with a child and attempted sexual exploitation of a child. The charges stemmed from incidents in 2013 and 2014, when Willis worked at KidsTLC in Olathe.

Several residents, both current and former, alleged that Willis touched them inappropriately.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh seems open to the arguments of a Missouri inmate in Kavanaugh’s first death penalty case. The new justice could hold the key to the outcome.

The high court heard arguments Tuesday over inmate Russell Bucklew’s claim that his rare medical condition could result in severe pain during lethal injection.

Kavanaugh is seemingly the tie-breaking vote in Bucklew’s case. That’s because his eight colleagues split 4 to 4 in January over whether to allow Bucklew’s execution to proceed. Justice Anthony Kennedy provided the fifth vote to spare Bucklew. Kavanaugh replaced Kennedy, who retired in July.

Bucklew says a tumor in his throat is likely to rupture and bleed in a lethal injection execution.

He is on death row for a 1996 murder.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Latest on the midterm election in Missouri (all times local):

Marian Velder, a 59-year-old woman from Liberty, Missouri, voted for Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley because she is “done” with Democrats.

“I have had it up to here,” said Velder, while putting her hand above her head. “I am never voting for a Democrat again.”

Velder said she once voted for Democrats but President Donald Trump has her eyes to an “undercurrent of liberalism” across the country. She said Democrats no longer stand for the idealism she believed in past decades.

Nicholas Bowers, of Liberty, said he voted for Democrat U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in part because he was disappointed with how Hawley conducted himself since being elected state attorney general in 2016.

Bowers, 28, a worker for Ford Motor Co., said he was upset with the attorney general’s support of a right-to-work law and his “ridiculous” investigation into former Gov. Eric Greitens,’ who faced several scandals before he resigned in June.

12:20 p.m.

Voters are experiencing some problems as they cast their ballots in Missouri.

The Kansas City Star reports that the power was out when voters arrived Tuesday at the Coves Clubhouse in northern Kansas City. Platte County Board of Elections director Wendy Flanigan says voters were able to continue voting during the outage. The ballots were submitted to an emergency compartment so they could be feed back into the reader when power was restored.

Clay County Board of Election Commissioners director Patty Lamb says there have been issues with some voter machines not working properly, but they have addressed the issue and everything was fixed.

In Jackson County, a ballot counter at the Lee’s Summit City Hall was down for about 20 minutes before a different machine was brought in.

11:50 a.m.

Turnout appears strong as voters cast ballots in a tight race that will determine whether incumbent Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill can withstand a challenge from Republican Josh Hawley.

In south St. Louis, 37-year-old Amanda Cline waited almost an hour for a ballot. She told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it “almost feels like a presidential election.” She says its “good to see a lot of people.”

Outside Rock Bridge Christian Church in Columbia, the line began forming before the doors opened. Poll volunteer Lisa Glass told the Columbia Missourian that it is the most voters she has ever seen.

Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller described the lines as steady. The Springfield News-Leader reports that by 10 a.m. Tuesday, 12 percent of all active voters in the county had cast their ballots.

6:15 a.m.

Polls have opened in Missouri as voters cast ballots to decide whether to send Democrat Claire McCaskill back to the senate and approve ballot measures that would raise the minimum wage and allow medical marijuana.

McCaskill is running against Josh Hawley, the young challenger backed by President Donald Trump. Hawley, the 38-year-old, Ivy-league educated state attorney general, says the 65-year-old McCaskill is too liberal for Missouri. Trump won the state by 19 points in 2016.

McCaskill campaigned as a moderate and focused on health care issues. Republicans badly want to defeat McCaskill after she survived in 2012 when her opponent made a major gaffe.

Missouri voters also will face ballot measures Tuesday to raise the gas tax and a major change to drawing district boundaries after the 2020 census.

10:03 p.m.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has survived near-political death before in the red state of Missouri.

Voters on Tuesday will decide whether to re-elect her over Josh Hawley, the young challenger backed by President Donald Trump.

Hawley, the 38-year-old, Ivy-league educated state attorney general, says the 65-year-old McCaskill is too liberal for Missouri. Trump won the state by 19 points in 2016.

McCaskill campaigned as a moderate and focused on health care issues.

Republicans badly want to defeat McCaskill after she survived in 2012 when her opponent made a major gaffe.

Missouri voters also will face several ballot measures including three separate proposals for medical marijuana, a measure to raise the minimum wage, one to raise the gas tax and a major change to drawing district boundaries after the 2020 census.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A Springfield high school student is facing charges for allegations he sexually assaulted two girls in stairwells at two different schools.

17-year-old Marquies Thomas was charged on Sunday with multiple counts of sodomy and sexual abuse. He’s being held in Greene County Jail on $30,000 bond.

A probable cause statement says a female student reported to police on Friday that Thomas groped and forced himself on her in a stairwell at Central High School. Court documents say another student witnessed part of the encounter.

Court records describe a similar incident in June 2017 involving Thomas forcing himself on a girl in a stairwell. The school’s name has been redacted from documents obtained by the newspaper.

No attorney is listed for Thomas in online court records.

Missouri automatically tries 17-year-olds as adults.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – Two members of a now-shuttered fraternity at the University of Missouri have been sentenced to five years of probation for breaking one student’s jaw and knocking out another’s tooth.

Nikolas Childress, 21, Forest Park, Illinois, and Zachary Barabasz, 21, Columbia, were sentenced Monday for charges of third and fourth-degree assault.

The two victims, freshmen Sean Freihaut and Benjamin Poss, alleged in a lawsuit that Childress and Barabasz were freshmen pledges living in the Sigma Phi Epsilon at the time of the September 2017 attack. The suit says it was required as part of a hazing ritual.

The national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization subsequently closed the Columbia chapter. The chapter has denied responsibility and argued against allowing punitive damages to be awarded.