Kris Kobach again? After failed runs for Senate, Kansas governor, he’s back for more
No Republican should want former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach to seek elective office again. For most of the GOP, his run for Kansas attorney general, announced on Thursday, will have all the appeal of a pop-up thunderstorm at the family picnic.
The candidacy of the two-time losing bomb thrower, whose bombs mostly go off in his own face, has moved Christmas up from December for the state’s Democrats. With current AG Derek Schmidt running for governor, the right Democrat could actually win this office.
The last Democrat elected statewide was Gov. Laura Kelly in 2018 — and who, to review, helped make that possible? Kobach, who ran a lazy campaign and lost to Kelly.
His subsequent candidacy for retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts’ seat last year mobilized national support for the Democratic nominee, Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier, who raised an unprecedented $13 million in campaign cash in just a three-month period before last November’s election.
Bollier still didn’t win, no. But then, she wasn’t running against Kobach, who lost in the Republican primary to now-Sen. Roger Marshall.
The nickname “Kansas Cyclone,” once applied affectionately to Dwight D. Eisenhower, could very well be affixed pejoratively to Kobach’s miles-long trail of legal destruction. Time and again through the years, he has lost in court and had to be schooled, reprimanded and sanctioned.
A federal judge not only found him in contempt but ordered him into continuing legal education for his behavior in a lawsuit challenging the voter citizenship law he championed. Plaintiffs’ attorney fees and expenses in the case, a bill passed on to taxpayers, surpassed $3 million.
Remarkably, within hours of Kobach’s campaign announcement Thursday, Kansas Chamber President and CEO Alan Cobb issued a statement questioning Kobach’s fitness for office: “The Kansas business community has great concerns whether Kris Kobach, as attorney general, can adequately and effectively represent Kansas businesses and individuals successfully in court. Kobach’s candidacy puts too much at risk.”
The ever-assured Kobach, immune from such honest appraisals, still seems to think he’s got a glow about him, but that’s his radioactivity.
Even the Trump White House, which Kobach courted two years ago in an effort to become “immigration czar,” appeared to be put off by his presumptuous demands, which, according to The New York Times included “access to a government jet 24 hours a day. An office in the West Wing, plus guaranteed weekends off for family time. And an assurance of being made secretary of Homeland Security by November.”
Kobach is highly qualified in one respect, however. In his AG campaign press release, he said he wants to combat what he sees as the Biden administration’s “unconstitutional overreach.” And no one knows more about overreach than Kris Kobach does.