Late on Tuesday, Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer conceded last week’s Republican primary, officially making Secretary of State Kris Kobach the GOP nominee for 2018’s gubernatorial election. As a hardline conservative, Kobach could endanger the GOP’s chances of victory against Democrat Laura Kelly this fall in a state that normally leans solidly Republican but has seen a backlash in recent years against the state GOP’s reactionary fiscal policies that resulted in sharp cuts to education funding.
However, Kobach isn't just a threat to the GOP's general election chances, he's a threat to free and fair elections themselves. For years, Kobach has been the most prominent figure in the nation to crusade against supposed voter fraud as an excuse to suppress Democratic leaning demographics like young voters and Latinos. Kobach headed up Trump's now-defunct "Election Integrity" commission, which sparked outcry last year when it demanded every state send it their voter registration data. Trump shut down the commission in reaction to numerous lawsuits, but documents revealed Kobach always intended for the witch hunt of a commission to be a pretext for new federal voting restrictions.
Kobach is also the nation's lone secretary of state with the power to criminally prosecute suspected cases of voter fraud, and he convinced the GOP-run legislature to pass a law that required documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. That law led to one in seven new voter registrations being suspended, disproportionately among young voters. Furthermore, it devastated the ability of civic groups to conduct voter registration drives, since hardly anyone carries around their passport or birth certificate day-to-day.
However, that law was thrown out following a trial this year where Kobach's amateurish handling of the case was so humiliating that the judge ordered him to complete six hours of basic legal education on trial procedures. The court held the citizenship documentation requirement ran afoul of federal law, which only requires voters swear they're eligible under penalty of perjury. Most importantly, Kobach's bogus claims of widespread voter fraud were thoroughly discredited in the courtroom, and he has only ever secured a handful of prosecutions for illegal voting over the years, just one of which was by a non-citizen voter.
If Kobach becomes governor, he'll likely continue to push for new voter restrictions and efforts to deter immigration as a way to maintain the political power of conservative white voters. But if his past track record of losing legal battles is any indication, Kansas voters might not be too enthused at the prospect of their next governor repeatedly wasting taxpayer money on made-up boogeymen like widespread voting by undocumented immigrants.