The Republican Governor's Association reportedly spent weeks urging Donald Trump not to endorse Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach ahead of Tuesday's GOP primary for governor, but Trump tweeted out his support for his longtime ally on Monday afternoon.
The New York Times' Jonathan Martin reports that RGA officials believe that the far-right Kobach would be a considerably weaker general election candidate than the more-mild Gov. Jeff Colyer, and they pointed to private polls showing that the secretary of state is unpopular with the general electorate.
Trump's own aides even tried to keep him from tweeting out his support, but they dreaded that they couldn't stop him during his unsupervised weekend at his New Jersey gold resort. Martin adds that White House advisors even told Trump Monday morning that Kobach could drag House Republican candidates down in Kansas' 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts, but he endorsed him hours later anyway.
Even before Trump weighed in, this looked like Kobach's primary to lose. The secretary of state released a poll last week showing him leading Colyer 34-25, and Colyer has been acting like he thinks he's the underdog. Remington Research recently unveiled a poll giving Colyer a narrow 34-32 lead over Kobach, with 2006 nominee Jim Barnett and state Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer at 14 and 9 percent, respectively. (As we've written before, Remington's parent company is Axiom Strategies, where one of whose senior vice presidents has consulted for Colyer's campaign.)
However, even if Colyer did go into Monday with a narrow lead, he may have a very tough time holding it now that Trump has sided against him.