Davids began competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) as an amateur in 2006, and went professional in 2013. She had a 5–1 win–loss record as an amateur and a 1–1 record as a professional.[18] She tried out for The Ultimate Fighter but did not make it onto the show, leading her to shift her focus away from MMA to travel the U.S. and live on Native American reservations to work with the communities on economic and community development programs.[13]
During a July 2018 episode of the Millennial Politics Podcast, host Jordan Valerie Allen asked Davids whether she supported abolishing ICE, the agency that enforces immigration laws and falls within the oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, to which Davids responded, "you asked me about defunding, which I think is probably essentially the same thing. But yeah."[24][25] Despite denials by Davids through campaign statements and a television advertisement, the Associated Press fact checker ruled that she did in fact lend her support to ending the agency.[26]
In October, Kansas City NPR member station KCUR fact-checked the claims that incumbent representative Kevin Yoder and Davids made in separate interviews on its station and gave Yoder an "F". Yoder said that immigrants were making false asylum claims and would increase crime. Davids said that she supported single-payer health care, but it could not be enacted with Republicans in the White House. Meanwhile, she supports short-term goals like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and getting generics to market faster. KCUR said that Davids's claim that teachers are not paid enough and can no longer take tax deductions for buying their own school supplies, was "partly true and partly false" since the tax deduction had been reinstated.[27]
Davids defeated Yoder in the November 8 general election by 53.6% to 43.9%.[28][29] Upon her swearing-in on January 3, 2019, she became the first Democrat to represent Kansas in the House since Dennis Moore left office in 2011.[3] She is also only the second Democrat to represent what is now the 3rd since 1963.
In 2019, Davids and Deb Haaland of New Mexico, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, became the first Native American women to serve in Congress. In March 2021, Haaland left Congress to become the secretary of interior in the Biden administration.[30]
In 2022, Davids ran for reelection in the newly redrawn 3rd district. Redistricting shifted the district's boundaries westward, losing parts of Kansas City and adding more ex-urban and rural territory, which made the seat slightly more Republican-leaning. Despite these changes, Davids defeated Republican Amanda Adkins for the second time, winning 54.9% of the vote to Adkins's 42.8% and 2.3% for Libertarian candidate Steve Hohe.[35] This represented a 2.1% improvement over her 2020 margin.
On December 18, 2019, Davids voted to impeach President Donald Trump and was the only person representing Kansas to do so.[36] In March 2020, Davids quarantined herself for possible exposure to coronavirus. Before that, she had mostly switched her congressional office from physical to digital.[37]
Davids voted with President Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time in the 117th Congress, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. This results in a Biden Plus/Minus score of +10, indicating more support for Biden's priorities than would be expected given the makeup of her district.[39]
Davids voted for the America COMPETES Act of 2022, which passed on a party-line vote. The bill authorized billions of dollars of government spending on American manufacturing and scientific research in an effort to compete with China.[40] Davids added an amendment to the legislation that would include small and medium-sized manufacturers in a $500 million pilot program for producing personal protective equipment and medical supplies.[41]
In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an event widely considered a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named Davids one of the Pride50 "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".[59][60] She was also named to the 2021 Fast Company Queer 50 list.[61]
Electoral history
Kansas's 3rd Congressional District Democratic Primary (2018)[62]
^"DAVIDS, Sharice". U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved June 25, 2019. Official listing on the History archives of the U.S. House of Representatives.
^"Subcommittee Rosters for the 119th Congress"(PDF). Clerk of the United States House of Representatives- Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. January 22, 2025. Retrieved January 22, 2025.
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