Former Republican rivals Kobach and Colyer unite for $15,000-a-piece pheasant hunt

Republican standard bearer Kris Kobach will join with his former Republican rival for a $15,000-a-person pheasant hunt next month.

Gov. Jeff Colyer along with Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann are headlining the event next month with Kobach and his running mate, oil magnate Wink Hartman.

Kobach beat Colyer by just 343 votes in the August Republican primary for governor.

“Gov. Colyer is committed to Republican victories in November,” his spokeswoman Kara Zeyer said in an email. “He appreciates the opportunity to raise funds for Republican Get Out The Vote efforts.”

The hunt in Fall River, Kan., is to be held over October 12 and 13. The price is $15,000 per hunter to benefit the Kansas Republican Party, according to the invitation.

The GOP fundraiser comes in the wake of Kobach’s candidacy publicly being spurned by prominent Republican centrists. Bill Graves, the last moderate Republican to hold the governor’s office, and Nancy Kassebaum, who represented Kansas for three terms in the U.S. Senate, both said this month they support Democratic Sen. Laura Kelly’s run for governor.

Kobach is also running against independent Greg Orman.

A Star survey earlier this month found that almost 40 percent of Republicans in the Kansas Legislature, when asked whether they would support Kobach in November, either would not say or did not respond to repeated inquiries.

The hunting event reinforces that Republicans, from the party to the governor and Kobach, are all united to win, Kansas GOP chairman Kelly Arnold said.

“I look at it as a way of bringing all of our guys together to help raise money for the party so we can win elections,” Arnold said.

This story was originally published September 24, 2018 at 12:35 PM.