Election 2018: This is the fourth of a series of articles on the five candidates for Kansas governor.
TOPEKA, Kan. Hes brushed aside the states woeful financial straits. Hes dismissed concerns that driving in parades with a machine-gun replica mounted on his Jeep might come off as offensive.
Instead, in an audacious performance that mimics President Trump more than anyone else, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach at every campaign stop touts his biggest achievement, a strict citizenship law for voters that no longer exists.
Kobach has spent the last seven years as the states chief election officer burnishing his national profile as a crusader against illegal immigration and fashioning one of the toughest voting laws in the country, one that included a proof-of-citizenship requirement struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge in June.
But that has not stopped him from promoting the failed law as a career triumph as the heated race enters its final stretch, using deliberately misleading language that mocks the judges ruling. Polls show Kobach virtually tied with his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Laura Kelly.
Every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen! Kobach said at a rally here earlier this month as Trump beamed approvingly at his side, to a rousing chant of U.S.A.! U.S.A.! He called for other states to require proof of citizenship, too Just like Kansas!
When Kobach, 52, was tapped as vice chair of Trumps now-disbanded voting fraud commission last year, he cemented his reputation as a national leader in the Republican effort to tighten voting laws in ways that civil rights activists say imperil voting rights of the poor, youth and minorities.
He supports President Trumps assertion that millions fraudulently voted for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, even though no evidence for that assertion has surfaced and voting experts roundly disagree. (The president, too, is not dissuaded, warning in an Oct. 20 tweet that poll violators would be prosecuted: Cheat at your own peril.)
Its a pervasive problem, Kobach insisted in an interview at the GOP party headquarters in a small strip mall in the state capital.
To support his argument, he cited an estimate ruled statistically invalid by the court: Just looking at Kansas, if youre talking up to 30,000 noncitizens on the rolls in the state of our size, the numbers would have been much, much bigger in Texas and California. (The judge ruled that 67 people at most had wrongly registered to vote in Kansas since 1999, while thousands were prevented from voting.)
Democrats and voting rights activists contend that if anybody is engaged in vote rigging, it is Kobach. Democrats have repeatedly raised questions about Kobachs conduct as the states elections officer he essentially oversees his own tight race and alleged at a news conference Thursday that the general election could be stolen. The Democratic minority leaders of the state House and Senate called for him to step down.
Voters in Kansas have received a flurry of texts with misleading voting information recently, and Latino groups have protested a local decision to move a polling station in Dodge City out of bus range for a huge immigrant population there.
In this Aug. 7, 2018 file photo, a jeep with a replica machine gun mounted on back sits outside the hotel where Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobachs supporters were meeting in Topeka, Kan. Kobach has ridden in the Jeep at multiple events. (John Hanna/AP)
Kobachs spokesman, Danedri Herbert, called the allegations ridiculous.
