KS-Sen: The super PAC Keep Kansas Great, which supports Rep. Roger Marshall, is out with a new spot ahead of the August GOP primary attacking both former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Marshall’s adversaries at the Club for Growth.
The narrator begins, “Kris Kobach let President Trump down. Kobach demanded Trump give him a taxpayer-funded jet to accept a job.” The commercial then spends a significant amount of time laying into the Club, and if we didn’t know any better, we’d think that the extremist anti-tax group was also a candidate in this race.
The Club hasn’t endorsed anyone, but Keep Kansas Great still charges that Kobach is “being bankrolled by an anti-Trump D.C. special interest group.” The narrator continues, “Trump called the Club for Growth ‘pathetic’ and phony,’” and a clip then plays of Trump proclaiming, “We have the Club for Growth, which is … forget ‘em. They’re a fraud! They’re crooked!”
The Club famously spent millions on ads during the 2016 primaries attacking Trump, but it’s reinvented itself as a fanatically pro-Trump organization over the last few years. However, Keep Kansas Great isn’t the first group this year that’s tried to make the Club’s past transgressions a current issue for Republican primary voters.
In the February contest for Wisconsin’s 7th District, a group called Americans 4 Security PAC ran ads arguing that Club-endorsed state Sen. Tom Tiffany “opposed Donald Trump, and his big money backers spent millions to stop Trump.” However, the argument wasn’t enough to stop Tiffany from decisively winning the nomination.
The Congressional Leadership Fund had far more success the following month, though, with its victorious campaign to defend Texas Rep. Kay Granger from the Club’s attacks. The CLF went up with a commercial arguing that the incumbent’s opponents "spent millions attacking President Trump. They lost. America won." Just like Keep Kansas Great’s ad, the CLF spot never actually accused Granger’s opponent, businessman Chris Putnam, of opposing Trump, it simply framed the contest as a battle between the Trump-backed congresswoman and anti-Trump forces and asked the audience, “Whose side are you on?"
After several seconds attacking the Club, Keep Kansas Great’s ad goes back to hitting the actual candidate in the race and declares, “Now, Trump is done with Kobach.” This doesn’t seem to be true at all, though: While Trump’s aides advisers have reportedly tried to convince him to back Marshall in order to stop Kobach from being nominated, Trump hasn’t taken sides yet or even publicly come out against Kobach. The narrator then predicts, “Kris Kobach will lose again, and the liberal radicals will be back in charge.”