Kansas Republicans are feeling left out in the cold. JEAN SCHODORF is the Democrat running against Kobach. THOUGH Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1 in Kansas, we are not united.
Our governor is fiscally irresponsible. Our candidate for health insurance, Ken Selzer, wants to upend Medicare. Our candidate for the U.S. Senate, Pat Roberts, knows only one word, “Obamacare.” And our secretary of state, Kris Kobach, is making a phantom problem — voter fraud — into a national issue.
Kobach’s crusade to seek out illegal voters has the tone of a witch-hunt. The result has been the delay of more than 22,000 voter registrations from being processed.
Kobach’s answer? “Every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a United States citizen.”
You have to ask yourself, how many illegal citizens would want to risk being found out just to vote, right?
To date, all of five registrations among Kansas voters have been found wanting, while the remaining hang in limbo.
Kobach is suppressing the votes of legitimate citizens who for one reason or another don’t have the necessary paperwork to prove they are U.S. citizens. Those who are born at home, for instance, may not have birth certificates. Others are senior citizens who no longer have driver’s licenses and can’t find their birth certificates. Whatever the reason, they are law-abiding citizens who pay taxes just like everyone else. And now, in Kobach’s eyes, they are criminals.
Truth is, it’s these marginalized citizens that Kobach is after, harking back to the days of Jim Crow and when Afro-Americans had to pay a poll tax to vote.
That we have a state official whose mission is to suppress the voting rights brings shame down upon us all.
Schodorf is a former Republican legislator whose moderate views ran her afoul of Gov. Sam Brownback. In 2012, Brownback worked to have Schodorf and other moderates, including Senate President Steven Morris, ousted. After serving from 2001 to 2013 in the state Senate, and most recently as its majority whip, Schodorf was defeated by ultra-conservative Michael O’Donnell.
She’s a past school board member and as a legislator chaired the Education Committee and as well served on the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Arts and Cultural Resources, Judiciary, and Ways and Means.
Disillusioned by what the Kansas Republican Party has become, Schodorf switched her allegiance to the Democratic Party.
Schodorf grew up in Independence, the daughter of Brigadier General William Curtis. She studied to become a speech pathologist and worked for 36 years as a speech and language pathologist in Wichita schools.
Her goal is to return dignity to the office of secretary of state by simply sticking to its business.
“I will be a full-time secretary of state, full time, for the people of Kansas, and not Arizona,” she said in a recent interview. As a “side job,” Kobach recently wrote tough anti-immigration law for Arizona and defended it before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ultra-conservatives have turned the party into a repressive faction that is neither of the people, by the people or for the people.
Republicans can right this sinking ship by voting no to Kobach & Co.
— Susan Lynn
Kansas Republicans held hostage by ultra-conservatives
