LENEXA, Kan. (AP) – A Kansas official who’s helping lead President Donald Trump’s commission on election fraud announced Thursday that he’s running for the Republican nomination for governor.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach gained a national reputation for championing tough voter identification laws and helping to draft state and local laws aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. He’s jumping into the 2018 governor’s race only two days after Kansas legislators enacted a law rolling back past income tax cuts championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback over Brownback’s veto. Kobach criticized the Legislature’s move.
He launched a campaign website, changed his Twitter background to highlight his campaign, and spokeswoman Samantha Poetter confirmed to The Associated Press that Kobach was entering the race.
Kobach was opening his campaign at a barn converted into an events center in the Kansas City suburbs of Johnson County, the state’s most populous county and home to about 22 percent of all Kansas voters. It’s crucial, vote-rich territory for any candidate for governor, and Kobach has a strong base there, though he now lives on a farm outside Lawrence, about 30 miles west.
Kobach, 51, is a strong abortion opponent and gun-rights advocate, Harvard-, Yale- and Oxford-educated former law professor, ex-U.S. Justice Department official and former Kansas Republican Party chairman. He has advised Trump for months, first on immigration, then on election fraud issues.