[3][1][10][6][8] While working with essentially the same staff and budget as his predecessor, McKinney managed a "major increase" in the amount of state-held unclaimed property returned to Kansans.

[8] With a booth at the Kansas State Fair, McKinney outreached taxpayers to familiarize them with the office role in locating unclaimed property.

[13] McKinney announced his candidacy to seek the Democratic party's nomination for Kansas's 4th congressional district in the 2017 special election to fill the vacancy left by the departure of new CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

[6][7][14] The seat, in a strongly Republican district, had not been won by a Democrat since popular moderate Dan Glickman narrowly lost his re-election bid for a 10th term in 1994.

Another AFL-CIO affiliate, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Central and Western Kansas—a coalition of 13 Kansas building-trades unions, representing over 10,000 members—also endorsed McKinney for Congress.

[19] In announcing his candidacy, McKinney blasted Congressional efforts to privatize Medicaid, citing Kansas troubles with that approach in its failing Kancare system.

[1] Citing his farmer/rancher background, McKinney claimed his experience with those issues, first-hand, and as a legislator, could bring a competent voice to the drafting of the upcoming Farm Bill, critical to the state's foremost industry, agriculture.

[7] The party nominee was selected by a vote of delegates to the 4th District Democratic convention, at the Sedgwick County Courthouse Jury Room, in Wichita, on Saturday, February 11, 2017.

[22][1][6][7] Estes won, 52.5 to 47.7%, in a race where the Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez refused to provide financial support to Thompson.

The NRCC contributed $92,000, in part for last minute "venomous" ads supporting Estes, which without any basis, characterized Thompson as an advocate of taxpayer funded, late term abortions, and those based on gender selection.

Thompson lost to State Treasurer Ron Estes, McKinney's successor, but by 6.2% in a district where the incumbent, Mike Pompeo, and presidential candidate Donald Trump, won by 31% the previous November.

Joined by the Superintendent of Schools, Darren Hedrick, they soon found and extricated a mother and her nine-month-old son from where they had been buried, deep in the rubble of her home.

Utilizing state of the art, sustainable technology, and marshalling prodigious public, corporate and private funding, Greensburg was rapidly transformed into perhaps the "greenest" city in America.