He’s brushed aside the state’s woeful financial straits. He’s dismissed concerns that driving in parades with a machine-gun replica mounted on his Jeep might come off as offensive.
Instead, in an audacious performance that mimics President Trump more than anyone else, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach at every campaign stop touts his biggest achievement, a strict citizenship law for voters — that no longer exists.
Kobach has spent the last seven years as the state’s chief election officer burnishing his national profile as a crusader against illegal immigration and fashioning one of the toughest voting laws in the country, one that included a proof-of-citizenship requirement struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge in June.
But that has not stopped him from promoting the failed law as a career triumph as the heated race enters its final stretch, using deliberately misleading language that mocks the judge’s ruling. Polls show Kobach virtually tied with his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Laura Kelly.
“Every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen!” Kobach said at a rally here earlier this month as Trump beamed approvingly at his side, to a rousing chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” He called for other states to require proof of citizenship, too — “Just like Kansas!”…
He supports President Trump’s assertion that millions fraudulently voted for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, even though no evidence for that assertion has surfaced and voting experts roundly disagree. (The president, too, is not dissuaded, warning in an Oct. 20 tweet that poll violators would be prosecuted: “Cheat at your own peril.”)