WICHITA, Kan. (AP) Kris Kobach isnt fazed that fellow Republicans worry hes unpopular or too brash in pushing his hard-right views to keep Kansas open Senate seat in GOP hands next year.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others are so concerned that theyve spent months urging Mike Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, to step down as U.S. secretary of state and run for the seat Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is leaving. Pompeo in the race would make it far more difficult for Kobach to win the GOP primary in August.
But Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, isnt softening his rhetoric or putting less focus on the tough immigration policies that built his national profile. Hes tripling down and deriding critics as weak Republicans seeking a malleable senator.
One main reason Republican voters have supported me in the past is that I havent waffled, Kobach said during an interview.
Republican leaders worry about red-state losses that include the Kentucky and Louisiana governors races this year. Setbacks in 2018 included Kobachs loss to Democrat Laura Kelly in the Kansas governors race.
Still, Kobach appeals to many conservative GOP voters, and the speculation about Pompeo is a sign that Kobach has a good chance of winning the Senate primary if Pompeo doesnt jump in. If Kobach had no political base, top Republicans in Washington would not be wooing Pompeo, said Kelly Arnold, a former Kansas GOP chairman.
This seat would no longer be a priority on their list because theyd know its in good hands here in Kansas, Arnold said.
All the major GOP candidates for Roberts seat support Trumps wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, defend the president, and oppose abortion and gun control. What makes Kobach different is how aggressive he is about poking his critics.
Its likability and then, touching-third-rail, caustic comments that drive controversy and nothing else, said Doug Heye, a GOP consultant in Washington. Yeah, Donald Trump can do it, but not everybodys Donald Trump.
Yet for all the GOP concerns, Kobachs brand still sells on the right where the partys primary races are waged.
I like a fighter, someone like Donald Trump, said Sandy Connary, a 66-year-old retired county clerk who attended a Kobach fundraiser in Wichita last week. He is a known quantity. I know him. I trust him.
Critics of Kobachs aggressiveness often reference an iconic jeep he used in the governors race for summer and fall parades with a replica machine gun on back. Kobach called criticism of it a snowflake meltdown.
He knew that, that bothered people, said Tim Shallenburger, another former Kansas GOP chairman and an ex-state treasurer. He kind of flaunted it.
The Wichita fundraiser last week featured David Clarke, the cowboy-hat-wearing ex-Milwaukee sheriff who has likened the Black Lives Matter movement to terrorism. Clarke urged the audience of 60 or so people to recapture their anger from 2016.
Kobach has also had fundraisers with ex-White House aide Steve Bannon and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. A 2018 events headliner was gun-rights rocker Ted Nugent.
