On Thursday, Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced he would run for governor to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Sam Brownback in 2018. Since taking office after ousting an appointed Democratic incumbent in the 2010 GOP wave election, Kobach has used his position as the Sunflower State’s chief elections administrator to become one of America’s foremost crusaders for restrictive voting laws.
Under his advocacy, Kansas passed a burdensome proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration. This law would have effectively made voter registration drives next to impossible, since few people carry around those documents day-to-day, and many citizens don’t have easy access to such documents. Kansas had suspended one in seven new voter registrations since 2013 under this system, but a federal court ruled that it violated federal law when it blocked a key component of it in 2016. Kobach convinced the legislature to make him the only state secretary of state with the power to prosecute voter fraud, but he has only successfully prosecuted one non-citizen voter, demonstrating just how extremely rare such fraud is.
Not only has Kobach been a leading opponent of voting rights in Kansas, his proposals have influenced Republicans around the country. Shortly after Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, Kobach was seen meeting Trump in D.C. while carrying documents that outlined proposed changes to federal voting laws. Following a lawsuit, a court ordered him to turn over those documents last month. He was most recently named Kobach as the vice chair of his “voting integrity” commission, a thinly veiled witch hunt effort that Democrats and voting rights advocates have widely condemned.
Kobach is almost equally notorious as one of the country’s biggest immigration opponent hardliners, having been a key force behind Arizona’s infamous SB-1070 law in 2010. That statute required law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone they suspected of being in the country without authorization, which was tantamount to legalized racial profiling. Just like his voting restrictions, core parts of that law were also struck down in court. Subsequently, Kobach supports many of Trump’s immigration policies, such as building a border wall with Mexico.
Over his two terms as governor, Brownback had pursued a radical conservative agenda of unaffordable tax cuts for the wealthy that busted the state’s budget, forcing a crisis that led to harshly unpopular cuts to services. He barely won re-election in the 2014 GOP wave, and after hardline Republican legislative candidates suffered severe losses in primaries and even the general election in 2016, Kansas’ state legislature finally overrode Brownback’s veto on Tuesday to enact a major series of tax increases.
While Kobach could be tough to defeat in this historically dark-red state if he wins the GOP nomination, his steadfast support for Brownback’s fiscal policies every step of the way could consequently give Democrats a major opening against him in 2018. His nomination isn’t guaranteed though, since Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer is also thinking about running, and a handful of other major Kansas Republicans previously haven’t ruled it out.